Sara Pacchiarotti and Koen Bostoen presented the online talk “The West-Coastal Bantu Velar Merger and its Evolutions: Genealogical Diagnosticity and Lexical Diffusion” at the 15th International African Studies Conference in Moscow on May 25, 2021 (1pm CET). The program is available here.
On May 12, 2021, BantUGent and the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA) in Tokyo (Japan) have the first kick-off meeting of their FWO-JSPS-funded collaborative project on “The Past and Present of Bantu Languages: Integrating Micro-Typology, Historical-Comparative Linguistics and Lexicography“. It also covers BantuFirst research.
The meeting is online. The Zoom link to participate can be obtained via koen.bostoen@ugent.be upon request.
9:30-9:40: Opening remarks
9:45-11:15: The first session
9:45-10:15 Sara Pacchiarotti: “Phylogenetics and the Comparative Method as tools for the internal classification of West-Coastal Bantu: results and challenges”
10:15-10:45 Lorenzo Maselli: “Phonetic and phonological research on hunter-gatherer substrate interference in the West-Coastal Bantu homeland region: some preliminary results and methodological remarks”
10:45-11:15 Kyoungwon Jeong: “Micro-parametric research on cross-Bantu phonological microvariation: a test case in Swati”
11:15-11:30 Coffee
11:30-13:00: The second session
11:30-12:00 Yuka Makino: “Contrastive analysis on the local variation of TAM expressions in M40 and M50″
12:00-12:30 Makoto Furumoto: “A synchronic and diachronic analysis of the Kimakunduchi final vowel”
12:30-13:00 Hilde Gunnink: “Language contact between migrating Bantu speakers and resident Khoisan speakers in southern Africa“
On April 22, 2021, Koen Bostoen presented the talk titled “Spread-over-spread events in Bantu language history: New cross-disciplinary insights from Central Africa” for the Kalahari Basin Area network.
On April 21, 2021 Sara Pacchiarotti presented the FunC-talk “Phylogenetics and the Comparative Method as tools for the internal classification of West-Coastal Bantu: results and challenges in the light of other interdisciplinary evidence” at Leuven University.
Referring to BantuFirst research, the Africa Report headlines that “New research pokes holes in idea of ‘Bantu expansion’ in West Africa“.
In the April 2021 issue of the French monthly Jeune Afrique an article on Bantu history titled “Pandémie chez les Bantous” was published. It is based on the recently published BantuFirst research on a population collapse in the Congo rainforest from 400CE.
The recently published BantuFirst research on a population collapse in the Congo rainforest from 400CE is mentioned in the March 31, 2021 issue of the Flemish weekly Knack.
© Sifra Van Acker, 2021 |
© Emiel De Meyer, 2021 |
| Despite the global Covid-19 pandemic, Sifra Van Acker carried out linguistic fieldwork in and around Idiofa (Kwilu Province, DRC) in February 2021 as part of her PhD research project which focuses on the historical-comparative linguistic study of subsistence-related plant vocabulary in West-Coastal Bantu (WCB), a major branch of the Bantu language family. During her one-month fieldwork mission, she collected new plant vocabulary in Nzadi B865, Lwel B862, Ngwi B861 and Ding B86, four languages forming the first paraphyletic grade to split from the ancestral WCB node (Pacchiarotti et al. 2019), as well as in Mbuun B87 as spoken in Idiofa (WCB, KLC extended) Besides the specialized plant vocabulary collected by Koni Muluwa (2010) in Nsong B85d, Ngong B864, Mpiin B863, Mbuun Imbongo B87 and Hungan H42, this kind of vocabulary is usually poorly documented in the available sources. The description of plant names in the existing literature on these little described languages is poor (cf. Mertens 1939; Mula 1977; Khang Levy 1979; Niendéka & Djedje 1986; Nsumuki 1993; Crane et al. 2011). |
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© Sifra Van Acker, 2021 |
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| To collect this specialized vocabulary, Sifra designed a survey containing useful plants occuring in the region. For each plant, she included pictures, a description as well as its noun in the surrounding WCB languages to help the consultant recognize the plant in question. Beside this survey, she also collected plant terminology by taking walks in the garden and forest, but this method proved difficult, as the consultants did not find many additional plants. Finally, she also collected the names of the medicinal plants collected by Emiel De Meyer and the tropical trees observed by Prof. Joris Van Acker during their joint fieldwork trip to Idiofa. | 
© Sifra Van Acker, 2021 |
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On March 15, 2021, Peter Coutros has joined the BantuFirst team as a post-doctoral researcher in African archaeology. His research will focus on the archaeology of the first Bantu-speaking settlements in the vicinity of the West-Coastal Bantu homeland area situated between the Kamtsha and Kasai Rivers in the Kwilu Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. |
On March 5, at 3 pm, Koen Bostoen presents at talk titled “Epidemic-driven population collapse in Congolese rainforest 1600-1400 years ago urges reassessment of the Bantu Expansion” for the DiaLing research group.
