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

Projects

Language and identity: reactions of local languages and their speakers to changes in their physical and emotional living environment

Project lead: Dr.Linda Gerlach
Project period: April 2021 – March 2024

This project has two research focuses. One is on the continuation of the documentation of the 'Khoisan' language ǂ'Amkoe (Kx'a, Botswana) with a special interest in the phonetical and phonological differences between the varieties of ǂ'Amkoe. Additionally, a languages corpus shall be set up.
Besides the linguistic research a second focus is on the question of identity. It shall be investigated how changes in the physical environment (especially through projects of China's Belt and Road Initiative) influence the identity/ies of entirer groups as well as their perspectives on the world as well as on themselves.

The project is part of the joint project "De:link//Re:link: Local perspectives on transregional (dis-)entanglements" funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).