Between 2018 and 2022 the BantuFirst archaeology team conducted seven field seasons across Kinshasa, Kwilu, Mai-Ndombe, and Kongo-Central provinces. Through a combination of large-scale survey and targeted excavations, the project has identified 176 new sites ranging in age from the Middle Stone Age (~300ka BP) through the colonial period. Excavations at 26 of these locations has produced voluminous new information on the changing material culture, subsistence practices, and settlement patterns of the communities south of the Congo rainforest, as well as the evolving palaeoenvironmental conditions in which they lived. This data also includes c. 100 new carbon-14 dates, extending from 30ka – 400 BP, with which these processes have been radiometrically anchored. This BantuFirst workshop is meant to prepare an edited book volume that will publish, contextualize and valorize this wealth of new and varied datasets. It will develop from these original data new insights on early settlement south of the Congo rainforest over the last three millennia, and challenge settled truths about the Bantu Expansion. In order to expand the scope and perspectives, multiple subject experts unaffiliated with the BantuFirst project have been included as contributors to the workshop and the volume.
Discussants: Guy Kouarata (BantUGent), Yuka Makino (ILCAA/JSPS)
Day 2 (open session)
Session 3 (09.30-11.00 JST = GMT+9)
Makoto Furumoto (ILCAA): “Rethinking the historical relation of Zanzibar Swahili with Comorian”
Minah Nabirye (BantUGent): “Cleft constructions in Lusoga (Bantu, JE16)”
Sara Pacchiarotti (BantUGent) & Heidi Goes (BantUGent): “The reconstruction of Proto-WCB independent and possessive pronouns for speech act participants: does morphological evidence align with lexicon-based phylogenetic groupings?”
Symposium (13.00-16.15 JST = GMT+9)
13.00-13.15: Opening remarks
13.15-14.00: Cross-Bantu typology
Daisuke Shinagawa (ILCAA) “A micro-parametric appraoch to cross-Bantu typology and its insight to the group-internal structural diversification” — Discussant: Sara Pacchiarotti (BantUGent)
14.15-15.00: Historical linguistics
Koen Bostoen (BantUGent) “The Bantu Expansion or how West Africans transformed Africaʼs linguistic, cultural and biological landscapes” — Discussant: Nobuko Yoneda (Osaka University)
15.15-16.00: Lexicography
Gilles-Maurice de Schryver (BantUGent) “Investigating the feasibility of a hub-and-spoke model to hold ILCAA’s Bantu lexica into a single multipurpose online dictionary database” — Discussant: Kanji Kato (Research Organization of Information and Systems/TUFS)
16.00-16.15: Closing remarks
This event is organised and financially supported by the JSPS-FWO Bilateral Project “The Past and Present of Bantu Languages: Integrating Micro-Typology, Historical-Comparative Linguistics and Lexicography”. It is co-organized by the UGent Centre for Bantu Studies (BantUGent) and ILCAA’s core project of linguistics “Description and Documentation of Language Dynamics in Asia and Africa: Toward a More In-depth Understanding of the Languages and Cultures of People Living in Asia and Africa (DDDLing)”.
‘The Past and Present of Bantu Languages: Integrating Micro-Typology, Historical-Comparative Linguistics and Lexicography’ is a bilateral joint research program funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) in association with the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO).
Alphaconceptual+ combined with hub-and-spoke lexicography to produce a new type of online dictionary
What? BantUGent research seminar
When? February 23, 2023
Where? Camelot, Blandijn, Blandijnberg 2, Gent
Who? Sara Pacchiarotti & Heidi Goes on The reconstruction of Proto-WCB independent and possessive pronouns for speech act participants: does morphological evidence support lexicon-based phylogenetic groupings?
We prefer to welcome you in real life, but if you cannot make it, you can follow online through MS Teams. Ask Sifra Van Acker to get the link.
What? BantUGent research seminar
When? January 26, 2023, 3pm
Where? Faculty Room (first floor Blandijnberg 2)
Hilde Gunnink (UGent) will give a talk on Auxiliary constructions in Southern Bantu.
We prefer to welcome you in real life, but if you cannot make it, you can follow online through MS Teams. Ask Sifra Van Acker to get the link.
Rasmus Bernander (Gothenburg & Helsinki University) will give a talk on Possibility adverbs in East African Bantu – a typological-comparative overview.
We prefer to welcome you in real life, but if you cannot make it, you can follow online through MS Teams. Ask Sifra Van Acker for more information.
What? BantUGent research seminar
When? November 24 2022, 14am
Where? Faculty Room (first floor, Blandijnberg 2)
Who? Lorenzo Maselli will share notes on labial-velar consonants in Sakata. There is room for one more communication.
We prefer to welcome you in real life, but if you cannot make it, you can follow online through MS Teams. Ask Lorenzo Maselli for the link.
3-4 pm: Makoto Furumoto (ILCAA, Tokyo) and Malin Petzell (University of Gothenburg): Exploring the diachronic link of the perfective between Zalamo and Makunduchi.
