SIL International Media Release
WOCAL 6—SIL presents 18 papers on African linguistics
(August 2009) Eighteen SIL linguists presented papers 17–21 August at the 6th World Congress of African Linguistics (WOCAL) in Cologne, Germany. The theme of WOCAL 6 was African Linguistics for Understanding and Progress. One SIL linguist addressed the special forum on African sign languages.
Approximately 290 presentations covered all the main areas of African linguistic research and all the main regions of the African continent. Nearly 600 scholars from more than 50 countries attended WOCAL 6, which was organized by the Institute for African Studies at the University of Cologne.
SIL presentations
- Wolfgang Berndt—"A cognitive approach to the functions of the particle me in Jola-Bandial"
- Ginger Boyd—"ATR harmony in ten Mbam languages (Bantu A40-60, Cameroon)"
- Daniel Duke—"Pharyngealized vowels in Kwasio"
- Maik Gibson—"Language shift in Nairobi"
- Richard Gravina—"Vowels, consonants and prosody in two Central Chadic languages"
- Jason Hopkins—"Social network theory as a predictor of sign language boundaries"
- Andreas Joswig—"The vowels of Majang"
- Heidrun Kroeger—"Nasal assimilation in Mozambican Ngoni"
- Oliver Kroeger—"Typology put to use for communities"
- Christiane Lauschitzky—"Nasality in Bozo Jenamaa"
- Constance Kutsch Lojenga—"Kilungunya: A newly discovered and endangered secret Bantu language spoken in Congo (DRC)"
- Lukas Neukom—"The suffix -ó in Kenga: Venitive and past, one or two functions?"
- Russell Norton—"Non-concatenative morphology in Dinka and Arabic: Augmentation and replacement"
- Mary Pearce (presenter) and Michael Ahland (co-author)—"Tonal behaviour in the Northern Mao possessive construction: Downstep and double downstep?"
- James S. Roberts—"Goundo, a dying language of Chad"
- Helga Schroeder—"Incorporated subject pronouns in word order typology"
- John R. Watters—"Tone in Western Ejagham: The case of lexical and postlexical tone on verbs"
- Katharina Wolf—"Status planning parameters for the languages of the Guera region of Chad"
WOCAL is the world's largest congress series in the field of African linguistics. It takes place every three years, hosted alternately by African universities and by universities on other continents. WOCAL was founded in 1994 in Southern Africa to overcome the scientific isolation of linguists from South Africa caused by the academic boycott of the Apartheid regime.
Related links of interest
- Official conference Web site
- African language information in the Ethnologue
- Language, nationhood and education policies in Africa (June 2009 media release)
- Sketch grammars and dictionaries in Cameroon (August 2009 media release)
- Grammar of Akoose: A Northwest Bantu Language (May 2009 media release)
- Language development in Bantu languages (SIL 2008 annual report)
- SIL Senegal celebrates 25 years of language development (May 2009 media release)
- Forty years of partnership in Cameroon (April 2009 media release)
- 40th ACAL (April 2009 media release)
- BANTU 3 (March 2009 media release)