Linguistic fieldwork in the region of Kinshasa (DRC)

Joseph Emboto and Flore Bollaert (Mbankana, DRC)
Linguistic fieldwork in the little town of Mbankana (DRC)
Collecting Bwala data with Joseph Maba (Mbankana, DRC)

Flore Bollaert (MA African Studies, UGent) carried out linguistic fieldwork in the region of Kinshasa (DRC) in August 2018 as part of her MA research. She is carrying out a comparative study of the noun class systems of the Nzebi (B50), Mbete (B60) and Teke (B70) languages of West-Coastal/ West-Western Bantu. The objective of her fieldwork was to collect new data on some Teke languages, since these are underrepresented in the existing literature. She collected the bulk of her data in Mbankana, a small town approximately 150 km east of Kinshasa. She primarily worked with Joseph Emboto, who was her main consultant, but she also met and spoke to several other people. In Mbankana, Flore collected data on Bwala, an undescribed and undocumented Teke variety. Additionally, she collected in Kinshasa some data on Wumbu (B78), another Teke variety, in collaboration with native speaker Edouard Mbabu.