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

14.02. Colloquium on African linguistics: Reconstructing Proto-Ndogoic (Anlauff)

“Reconstructing Proto-Ndogoic: method, problems and preliminary results” - Talk by Luka Anlauff (HU Berlin, Master project) given within the colloquium of African linguistics and languages
  • When Feb 14, 2023 from 04:15 to 05:45
  • Where Institut für Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften, Invalidenstr. 118, room 410 & via Zoom
  • Contact Name Christfried Naumann (christfried.naumann (AT) hu-berlin.de, please contact for Zoom access information)
  • iCal

Ndogoic is a Ubangi language family of 5 languages (Ndogo, Tagbu, Bai, Bviri, Sere). They are mostly from an area in today's South Sudan and probably still spoken, but the last available sources date back to the 1980's. The goal of my Master's thesis is a reconstruction of this family, as thorough and complete as possible. Using the comparative method on non-spread-zone lineages comes with its own challenges, as one has to expect a lot of interference from language contact. Another issue is the available corpus, which is not small but often not recorded according to modern standards and even contradictive at times. In the talk I will present my data, my approach to the mentioned issues and show some preliminary results regarding proto-Ndogoic phonology and lexicon, based on Swadesh-lists of the five languages.