Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences - Institute of Asian and African Studies

Workshop: Gender across Niger-Congo - 29.11. / 30.11.2018

 

Location: Humboldt University Berlin "re:work", IGK Arbeit und Lebenslauf in globalgeschichtlicher Perspektive
Georgenstr. 23, 10117 Berlin, 6th floor, Conference room

Organizer: Dr. Indes Fiedler, Prof. Dr. Tom Güldemann

 

Understanding ‘gender’ as noun classification combined with grammatical agreement, the project “Nominal classification between gender and declension” investigates gender and its relation to morphological and other formal marking on the noun in African languages.

One main goal of the project is the reconstruction of gender systems in Niger-Congo on different genealogical levels. By focusing on five geographical pools of Niger-Congo that possess functioning gender and associated systems of nominal inflection and derivation and that show a wide geographical and genealogical spread, the project hopes to shed light on the still enigmatic history of the largest language family in both Africa and on a global level.

The international workshop “Gender across Niger-Congo”, organized by the Department of African Studies within the framework of this research project, brought together leading researchers on nominal classification in such Niger-Congo groups as Atlantic, Adamawa and Benue-Kwa, thus providing important insights into the macro- and microstructure of gender systems in these language groups.

 

Program

 

  29.11.18  
09.00 – 10.00 Tom Güldemann & Ines Fiedler

Introduction

 
10.30 – 11.30 Lee Pratchett

An areal and typological appraisal of gender in Ju

 
11.30 – 12.30

Ron Schaefer

Edoid noun class and gender systems

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14.00 – 15.00 Ines Fiedler & Tom Güldemann

The reconstruction of the Guang gender system

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15.00 – 16.00 Mark van de Velde & Dmitry Idiatov

The relation between noun form classes and agreement classes in Adamawa and beyond

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16.30 – 17.30 Ulrich Kleinewillinghöfer

Agreement and noun form classes in Vere (Benue-Volta)

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17.30 – 18.30 Florian Lionnet

The gender system of Laal (isolate) in typological and areal perspective

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30.11.18

 
09.00 – 10.00 Jack Merrill

Evidence from Atlantic for a recently grammaticalized classifier system in early Niger-Congo

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10.30 – 11.30 Konstantin Pozdniakov

Some properties of the Atlantic noun class systems in the Niger-Congo context

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11.30 - 12.30 Michael Schulze

Morphosyntax of gender and deriflection in Southern Mel

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14.00 – 15.00 Denis Creissels

Genders, inflectional classes of nouns, and the non-contextual use of “classes” in Jóola Fóoñi (Atlantic)

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15.00 – 16.00 Guillaume Segerer

Noun class assignment in a comparative perspective: the Bak languages (Niger-Congo, Atlantic)

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16.30 – 17.30 Tom Güldemann & Jan Junglas

Gender and number in Kadu with particular reference to Krongo

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17.30 – 18.30   Roundtable