Dr Jakob Lesage
- Foto
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- Name
- Dr Jakob Lesage
- Status
- Field assistant
- jakob.lesage (at) hu-berlin.de
- Institution
- Humboldt-Universität → Präsidium → Kultur-, Sozial- und Bildungswissenschaftliche Fakultät → Institut für Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften → Afrikanische Sprachen
- Visiting address
- Invalidenstraße 118 , Room 411
- Phone number
- (030) 2093 66006
- Consultation hours
- by arrangement via email
- Mailing address
- Unter den Linden 6, 10099 Berlin Courses
Teaching
I am open to supervising BA and MA theses focused on or incorporating African languages, language description and documentation, linguistic typology and linguistic analysis in general. Reach out to me if you're interested!
In the 2024/25 Winter Semester, I'm offering a course on Language in West Africa, which creates a space to acquire existing knowledge together, have open discussions, and co-create new contributions relevant to people in West Africa and people from the West African diaspora in Berlin.
Interested students can reach out to me with any questions. Everyone is welcome. The course is taught in English and is very international student friendly.
Research
As a linguist with a focus on African languages, I specialize in language documentation, particularly in documenting endangered or understudied languages in Nigeria. My research and publications, including my PhD thesis, have contributed to the description and analysis of Kam, a Niger-Congo language spoken in Central-Eastern Nigeria. My recent work has emphasized natural interaction and community-driven ethnographic documentation, reflecting my commitment to collaborative and community-based approaches to language documentation.
My research on remote fieldwork methods for language documentation, including planning and conducting remote fieldwork, has resulted in courses and training for students preparing for fieldwork and for native speaker collaborators in Nigeria, particularly for speakers of Kam.
In addition to my expertise in African languages, I contribute to linguistic typology through my work on typological databases like Grambank. My publications have highlighted gaps in grammatical descriptions and the insights that can be gained from using typological databases for cross-linguistic comparison.
My current research also explores linguistic approaches to studying the history and dispersal of words and concepts in sub-Saharan Africa, with a focus on the spread of words for 'iron'. I use this topic, among others, to explore the challenges and opportunities of interdisciplinary research that aims to understand the human past.