Along with several colleagues from the UGent ΔiaLing research group, BantUGent was present with three talks at the jubilee 26th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, 50 years after the first ICHL conference, which was held from 4 to 8 September 2023 at the University of Heidelberg.
The first one was part of the workshop “Interactions at the dawn of history: Methods and results in prehistoric contact linguistics” organized by Rasmus G. Bjørn (Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, Jena) and Marwan Kilani (University of Basel – Swiss National Science Foundation), the second part of a general session on “Reconstruction and periodization”.
1. “Pre-Bantu substrate in Batwa Bantu languages of the Congo rainforest: A comparative study of nasal-oral stop cluster reduction” by Koen Bostoen, Jean-Pierre Donzo, Guy Kouarata, Lorenzo Maselli, & Sara Pacchiarotti;
2. “Uncovering lost paths in the Congo rainforest: A new, comprehensive phylogeny of West-Coastal and Central-Western Bantu” by Sara Pacchiarotti, Natalia Chousou-Polydouri, Jean-Pierre Donzo, Guy Kouarata, Lorenzo Maselli & Koen Bostoen;
3. “An evolutionary loner in Southern African Bantu: The classification of Yeyi” by Hilde Gunnink, Natalia Chousou-Polydouri & Koen Bostoen.
Due to a technical issue causing delay in generating of phylogeny of West-Coastal and Central-Western Bantu, the second talk was eventually replaced last minute by the following talk:
4. “Word-final reduction of Proto-Bantu *ng as a diagnostic feature for successive divergence and convergence in West-Coastal Bantu” by Sara Pacchiarotti, Guy Kouarata & Koen Bostoen.
