Author: Koen Bostoen

Martine Robbeets, Mark Hudson and the Archaeolinguistic Research Group of the Max Planck Institute of the Science of Human History in Jena (Germany) organize a three-day online workshop (November 16-18, 2021) on “Archaeology and Language” involving all the  contributors to the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Archaeology and Language, which they co-edit.

 

On November 18 (11.30-11.55 am CET), Koen Bostoen (BantUGent), Peter Coutros (BantUGent) & Carina Schlebusch (Department of Evolutionary Biology, Uppsala University) will present a concept paper on the interdisciplinary “Niger-Congo including Bantu” chapter, which they were invited to write for the handbook.

Sifra Van Acker, Sara Pacchiarotti and Koen Bostoen (BantUGent) have, together with the world-renowned banana expert Edmond De Langhe (KU Leuven), a new article out in the journal Studies in African Linguistics. It is titled “Reconstructing West-Coastal Bantu Vocabulary as Evidence for Early Banana Cultivation in Central Africa” and part of the first author’s PhD project within the wider BantuFirst project.

On September 15, 2021, Maud Devos (RMCA – BantUGent) talked about “Language and Orality in the AfricaMuseum” during a workshop on “Voices from the past” at the Ghent Museum of Daily Life, aka “Huis van Alijn”. She showcased the oral heritage in African languages, mainly from Bantu-speaking Africa, exhibited and archived at the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren. Her talk and those of other speakers are available here.

A first version of the program for the Linguists’ Day of the Linguistic Society of Belgium on 22 October 2021 at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel has been drafted. You can find a copy in the attachment. One of the opening talks is on “Phonetic documentation in the  underexplored linguistic  landscape of the Mai–Ndombe  Province of the Democratic  Republic of the Congo” by Lorenzo Maselli, Jean–Pierre  Donzo, Sara Pacchiarotti and  Koen Bostoen from BantUGent

 

If you would like to attend, you can do so free of charge, even without being a member. Registration is possible through this form. Deadline for registration is 30 September 2021. Registration is compulsory, but free of charge and sanitary measures allowing, the conference will be organised on campus. If Covid measures prevent a live event, the entire conference will be moved online.

For more information check here.

On October 7, 2021, Hannah Gibson and Jenneke van der Wal organise an online workshop exploring the expression of mirativity and evidentiality in Bantu languages with research from amongst other Deo Kawalya (University of Makerere – BantUGent) & Maud Devos (RMCA – BantUGent).

Please contact Hannah Gibson (h.gibson@essex.ac.uk) or Jenneke van der Wal (g.j.van.der.wal@hum.leidenuniv.nl) if you are interested. They will send you the Zoom link!

 

13:00	Start and welcome	Hannah Gibson and Jenneke van der Wal
13:10-13:40	A corpus-driven analysis of the Luganda near-synonym evidential particles mbu and nti	Deo Kawalya
13:40-14:10	Looking for evidentiality in Bantu	Thera Crane
14:10-14:40	Mirativity in Gĩkũyũ and Kiswahili	Claudius Kihara
14:40-15:00	BREAK
15:00-15:30	The expression of miratives in Rukiga	Allen Asiimwe
15:30-16:00	On the possibility of a mirative enclitic in Shangaji	Maud Devos
16:00-16:30	Post-verbal clitics and mirativity in Bemba	Nancy Kula, Hannah Gibson and Kyle Jerro
16:30-17:00	BREAK
17:00-17:30	Possible evidentiality in Copi	Melle Groen
17:30-18:00	Evidentiality Contrasts and TAM Marking in Bamiléké-Dschang: A Case of Double Duty	Matthew N. Czuba
18:00-18:30	Emphatic interpretations of Object Marking	Hannah Lippard, Justine Sikuku, Crisófia Langa da Camara, and Michael Diercks

On September 7, 2021, Koen Bostoen gave a short online master class on the Bantu Expansion in the precolonial African History course of Prof. Mohammed Bashir Salau and Drs. Matthew Lempke at the Arch Dalrymple III Department of History of the University of Mississippi (USA).

As the President of Euralex, the European Association for Lexicography, Gilles-Maurice de Schryver (BantUGent) attends and chairs several events at the virtual Euralex XIX congress,  which is organized by the Democritus University of Thrace in Alexandroupoli, Greece (7-9 September 2021).

 

Peter Coutros (BantUGent) and Igor Matonda (UNIKIN) left early August for a 6-week archaeological fieldwork mission along the Kwilu-Kasai-Loange river network (DRC) as part of the BantuFirst project.

From April 16 to June 16, 2021, Guy Kouarata carried out a BantuFirst fieldwork in the territories of Mbandaka, Maluku, Kwamouth, and Kinshasa of the DRC and in the area north of Brazzaville in Congo. For a short blog post, click here.