Category: Uncategorized

Sara Pacchiarotti and Koen Bostoen talk at Princeton Phonology Forum (PɸF 2025)

On April 18-19, 2025, the fourth meeting of the Princeton Phonology Forum (PɸF 2025) took place at Princeton University (New Jersey, USA). The theme for PɸF 2025 was Sound Patterns and Human History. The workshop brought together scholars whose research examines the connection between human history, events, and migration (as evidenced from oral history, archeology, genetics, etc.) and large-scale areal zones of sound system convergence. BantUGent was present with two talks:

Father Damase Ndembe Nsasi (1936-2025) passed away

Former rector at Scolasticat Père Laurent Nkongolo and the first rector of the Philosophat Saint Augustin in Kinshasa, Missionary of Scheut Father Damase Ndembe Nsasi (b. 1st of November 1936 in Bete di Niolo, Mayombe, DRC) sadly passed away at the Centre Médical Kinois (CMK), Kinshasa, on April 9, 2025. Three days of funeral program will be held after Easter (21-23 April), including several masses, a condolences book and time for testimonies.

Damase Ndembe Nsasi defended his doctoral dissertation in Leiden, the Netherlands, on the verb in Kiyombe, his mother tongue, under the supervision of Achiel Emiel Meeussen. His dissertation is one of the important Kiyombe sources cited in the doctoral dissertation of Heidi Goes (BantUGent) on the Kikongo Language Cluster.

In August 2021 Father Ndembe Nsasi celebrated 60 years since his ordination as a priest and only two years ago, in april 2023, a celebration was held on the occasion of the release of a book in Father Ndembe’s honour about the promotion of local languages. He spent his last years in Maison Symeon for elderly and chronically sick missionaries, close to the Fatima Mission house, where Heidi Goes and her Kiyombe-speaking partner visited him in the week before the book launch (see pictures). It was a pleasure having a conversation together in Flemish and Kiyombe. Father Ndembe Nsasi will be remembered in and outside of Congo. May he rest in peace! Muelaku u vundila mu ndembama!

 

BantUGent authors rebut recent Nature Human Behaviour paper on Central African hunter-gatherers

In a rebuttal to the Padilla-Iglesias et al. (2024) paper published in the Nature Human Behaviour journal, the BantUGent scholars Hilde Gunnink, Sara Pacchiarotti, Guy Kouarata, Paulin Baraka Bose and Koen Bostoen refute the claim that ten Central African Hunter-Gatherer communities share a history of genetic, cultural, and linguistic evolution, that started many millennia before the first food producers settled in the Congo basin. Padilla-Iglesias et al. (2024) base this claim on comparative evidence from musical instruments, foraging tools, specialized vocabulary and genome-wide data. Hilde Gunnink and colleagues consider the linguistic evidence for this hypothesis unsubstantiated because (1) the historical-linguistic methodology of Padilla-Iglesias et al. (2024) is flawed, and (2) much relevant data were overlooked. As Nature Human Behaviour has not published yet their rebuttal titled “Central African Hunter-Gatherer Music Lexicon Does Not Predate the Bantu Expansion” (submitted on June 26, 2024), Hilde Gunnink and colleagues published a pre-print on SocArXiv, the open archive of the social sciences.

Lorenzo Maselli holds public conference at Université de Bangui

On March 26th, 2025, Lorenzo Maselli held a public conference at Université de Bangui to present the work, activities, and data collected during a two-month fieldwork mission in the Central African Republic within the framework of their postdoctoral research and an ongoing partnership between the Université de Bangui and Ghent in the context of the ERC project CongUbangi hosted at Ghent University. The collection of aerodynamic data during this mission was made possible by the collaboration with Université de Mons (UMONS). Click here for more information. The radio-broadcasting of this event can be found here in French and Sango.

Lis Kerr receives FEL grant for Átɔmb documentation and revitalisation

Congratulations to Lis Kerr (BantUGent, MBAM project) for receiving a small grant from the Foundation for Endangered Languages (FEL) to make the first audio recordings of Átɔmb (Tuotomb, ISO 639-3 ttf), an endangered Mbam Bantu language spoken by <300 people in central Cameroon. The project aims to lay the foundations for further work on a community dictionary and grammar sketch. The project was set in motion with a successful first visit to the Boneck village in March 2025, as pictured.

Lis Kerr talks at the University of Yaoundé I

During her ongoing fieldwork in Ndikiniméki (Cameroon), our post-doc Lis Kerr took time to travel to Yaoundé to give a talk for masters / PhD students and staff at the Department of African Languages and Linguistics of the University of Yaoundé 1. She talked on the topic of OV/VO word order in Cameroonian Bantu/Bantoid languages.