Research seminar: Linguistic repertoires and language change in a small-scale African setting

Abstract

This talk will provide an overview of interdisciplinary research looking at the relationship between multilingualism, space, and language change in a linguistically diverse micro-region of Cameroon, known as Lower Fungom. After providing an overview of the general sociolinguistic profiles of individuals from the region, the patterns of multilingualism found there will be situated with respect to the growing body of work on the multilingualism of small-scale societies across the globe. The discussion will then turn to wo interrelated topics: (i) the role of spatial factors in explaining the distribution of knowledge of different languages and (ii) how this distribution could foster processes of deliberate language change, which we believe are very likely to have impacted the lexicons and grammars of at least some of the region’s languages.

The seminar will be followed by a post-seminar in the kitchenette at the Department of Linguistics, welcome!

About the speaker

Jeff Good is Professor of Linguistics at the University at Buffalo. His research interests include the documentation of endangered languages of Cameroon, comparative Niger-Congo linguistics, and morphosyntactic typology, with a particular focus on linear relations in words and phrases. His current documentary work takes place in the context of the team-based project Key Pluridisciplinary Advances in African Multilingualism–Cameroon (KPAAM-CAM), which involves close collaboration between scholars at a number of Cameroonian institutions.

Read more about Jeff Good's research here