Activities

On Friday 17 May, the LHEAf research team from Leiden University will visit Ghent for a joint workshop with BantUGent on the fascinating world of Africa’s early linguistic history. On the program: exploring language contact, diagnosing substrate, and placing linguistic findings in an interdisciplinary context. Be welcome to join the workshop.

Contact: nina.vandervlugt@ugent.be

 

9am-12pm: Faculty Council Room, Blandijn

 

Introductions

• 9.15-9.45am
  • Introductions BantUGent and LHEAf
  • LHEAf project: Unravelling Africa’s Early Linguistic History

 

Language contact

• 10-10.45am
  (Pre)historic Bantu-Khoisan interactions in Southern Africa in a historical linguistic perspective — Hilde Gunnink

• 11am-12pm
  The Bantu Expansion in Eastern Africa — Maarten Mous

 

12-1.30pm: Lunch break

 

1.30-5pm: Room 3.1, Tweekerken, Campus Tweekerken

 

Diagnosing Substrate

• 1.30-2.15pm
  Substrate Interference in Bantu languages of Central Africa:  Insights from Diachronic Phonology — Sara Pacchiarotti
• 2.30-3.15pm
  Substrate Interference in Eastern Africa — Dominique Loviscach, Alba Hermida Rodriguez, Maarten Mous

 

Interdisciplinary research

• 3.30-4.15pm
  Bantu Language divergence and convergence and deep-time population history in the Lower Kasai area (DR Congo) — Koen Bostoen
• 4.15-5pm:
  From linguistic to interdisciplinary research in Eastern Africa

 

 

 

Maps are an important visualization tool for linguists. However, most linguists are not trained in and thus not able to design professional maps. QGIS is opensource mapping software that enables its users to plot features, create data points, or redraw existing maps. For researchers that work with little known languages, software like QGIS is vital in providing reliable maps when there are often none available.

 

To this end, Matthew Sung (affiliated with the Leiden University Centre of Linguistics and the Leiden University Centre for Digital Humanities) will teach several QGIS workshops at the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy from 21 May - 23 May 2024. Participants will also apply the software to their own data. The introduction session will be run twice on 21 May and 22 May. Each session can have up to 20 participants. The advanced session will be run once on 23 May and has availability for 15 people. Please register here. Registration will close 15 April 2024.

 

As this event is financed by the Doctoral School of UGent and the Flemish Government, doctoral students are given priority during registration. If PhD students participate in the introduction session, it will count as a transferable skill course. If PhD students participate in both the introduction and advanced session, it will count as a specialist course. Evaluation for PhD students will be based on attendance and active participation.

 

If you have any questions, please reach out to: nina.vandervlugt@ugent.be.

 

See below for the preliminary program, still subject to change.