B02 - Beyond split case marking: Participant coding strategies in East African languages
The project investigates participant coding strategies in two East African languages with split case marking: Tima (Niger-Congo, Sudan) and Datooga (Nilotic, Tanzania). The goal is to understand how interlocutors deploy the following morphosyntactic constructions for prominence management in discourse: the case-marked structure, the corresponding non-case-marked structure(s) and structures that pragmatically implicate a clausal participant that is not realized morphosyntactically (impersonal, antipassive). The investigation is
based on corpora of natural discourse, taking into account the discourse context, the socio-relational dynamics between the interlocutors, and the role of co-speech gesture. The project thereby continues to contribute to the CRC’s understanding of prominence cues from different dimensions, with a focus on the discourse contexts of the relevant constructions and the impact of social and interactional factors on morphosyntactic prominence relations.
Team
Prof. Dr. Birgit Hellwig
Project Leader B02
Deputy Spokesperson of the CRCOffice: Allg. Sprachwissenschaft, Meister-Ekkehart-Straße 7
E-Mail: bhellwig(at)uni-koeln.de
Phone: (+49) 221 470-3889
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Alice Mitchell
Project Leader B02
Office: Afrikanistik, Meister-Ekkehart-Straße 9E-Mail: alice.mitchell(at)uni-koeln.de
Phone: (+49) 221 470-6936
Dr. Gertrud Schneider-Blum
Associated Researcher B02
E-Mail: schneider_blum(at)yahoo.de
Elisabeth Clages
Doctoral Student B02
Office: SFB, Luxemburger Str. 299, room 2.05E-Mail: e.clages(at)uni-koeln.de
Phone: (+49) 221 470-89910
Student Assistants
Miriam Rathenow | miriam.rathenow(at)uni-koeln.de
Publications
To appear
- Dimmendaal, Gerrit J. & Gertrud Schneider-Blum. To appear. Locative expressions and their semantic extensions in Tima. In James Essegbey & Enoch Oladé Aboh (eds.), Predication in African languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Hellwig, Birgit. To appear. Caused accompanied motion in a direction: BRING and TAKE in Katla (Niger-Congo, Sudan). In James Essegbey & Enoch Oladé Aboh (eds.), Predication in African languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Mitchell, Alice. To appear. Documenting difference: Interactional approaches to the documentation of special registers. In Rich Sandoval & Nicholas Williams (eds.), Interactional approaches to language documentation (Language Documentation & Conservation SP). Honolulu, Hawai’i: University of Hawai’i Press.
- Mitchell, Alice. To appear. Pointing for time-of-day reference in Datooga. In Eric Dzwiza-Ohlsen (ed.), Deixis – Zeigen – Pointing. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven. Darmstadt: WBG.
- Tabain, Marija, Jaye Padgett, Gertrud Schneider-Blum, Adele Gregory & Richard Beare. To appear. An acoustic study of ATR in Tima vowels: vowel quality, voice quality, and duration. Phonology.
2026
- Compensis, Paul, Marco García García, Birgit Hellwig, Sonja Riesberg & Gertrud Schneider-Blum. 2026. Differential argument marking and discourse prominence. Studies in Language.
2024
- Alamin, Suzan & Gertrud Schneider-Blum. 2024. A cautious approach to spatial orientation in Tima. In Andrea Hollington, Alice Mitchell & Nico Nassenstein (eds.), Anthropological Linguistics - Perspectives from Africa, 49–82. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
- Compes, Isabel. 2024. Argument coding and the alignment type of Beria. STUF - Language Typology and Universals 77(2). 283–313.
- Hollington, Andrea, Alice Mitchell & Nico Nassenstein (eds.). 2024. Anthropological Linguistics: Perspectives from Africa (Culture and Language Use, 23). John Benjamins.
- Mitchell, Alice & Nicola Zimmerman. 2024. Mouths, tongues, and ears: Source concepts for ‘language’ across Africa. In Andrea Hollington, Alice Mitchell & Nico Nassenstein (eds.), Anthropological Linguistics: Perspectives from Africa (Culture and Language Use, 23), 88–103. John Benjamins.
- Veit, Nataliya & Gertrud Schneider-Blum. 2024. Kin-relational expressions of the Tima (Nuba Mountains, Sudan). In Andrea Hollington, Alice Mitchell & Nico Nassenstein (eds.), Anthropological Linguistics - Perspectives from Africa, 223–252. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
2023
- Hellwig, Birgit, Shanley E. M. Allen, Lucinda Davidson, Rebecca Defina, Barbara F. Kelly & Evan Kidd (eds.). 2023. The acquisition sketch project (Language Documentation and Conservation SP 28). Honolulu, Hawai’i: University of Hawai’i Press.
- Schneider-Blum, Gertrud. 2023. The impact of attentional centering on ergative marking in Tima. STUF - Language Typology and Universals 76(1). 87–112.
- Tabain, Marija & Gertrud Schneider-Blum. 2023. Tima. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 1–25.
- Veit, Nataliya. 2023. Semantic verb classes in Tima (Niger-Congo). Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Cologne.
2022
- Hellwig, Birgit. 2022. Expressing events of directed caused accompanied motion in Qaqet. In Anna Margetts, Birgit Hellwig & Sonja Riesberg (eds.), Caused accompanied motion: Bringing and taking events in a cross-linguistic perspective, 341–368. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Hellwig, Birgit & Dagmar Jung. 2022. Events of caused accompanied motion in Qaqet and Dëne Sųłıné child language corpora. In Anna Margetts, Sonja Riesberg & Birgit Hellwig (eds.), Caused accompanied motion: Bringing and taking events in a cross-linguistic perspective, 397–434. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Hellwig, Birgit, Anna Margetts, Sonja Riesberg & Melanie Schippling. 2022. Bringing and taking: A cross-linguistic perspective on caused accompanied motion events. In Anna Margetts, Sonja Riesberg & Birgit Hellwig (eds.), Caused accompanied motion: Bringing and taking events in a cross-linguistic perspective, 1–41. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Margetts, Anna, Sonja Riesberg & Birgit Hellwig (eds.). 2022. Caused accompanied motion: Bringing and taking events in a cross-linguistic perspective. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Mitchell, Alice & Anne Storch. 2022. The Unspoken. In Svenja Völkel & Nico Nassenstein (eds.), Approaches to language and culture, 217-236. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
- Schneider-Blum, Gertrud. 2022. On noncausal/causal alternations in Tima (Nuba Mountains, Sudan). Linguistique et Langues Africaines 8(2).
- Schneider-Blum, Gertrud, Sonja Riesberg, Birgit Hellwig & Nikolaus P. Himmelmann. 2022. On resolving prominence conflicts – exceptional case marking in Tima and Yali. In Gianollo, Chiara, Łukasz Jędrzejowski & Sofiana I. Lindemann (eds.), Paths through meaning and form, 211-215. Cologne: USB Monographs.
2021
- Compes, Isabel. 2021. The morphology of argument marking in the Wagi dialect of Beria. Studies in African Linguistics 50(2). 196–226.
- Dimmendaal, Gerrit J. 2021. The comparative method and language change in accretion zones: A view from the Nuba Mountains. In Na’ama Pat-El, Patience Epps & Danny Law (eds.), Historical linguistics and endangered languages: Exploring diversity in language change, 155–181. London: Routledge.
- Hellwig, Birgit. 2021. Children’s narratives in Papua New Guinea: A case study of Qaqet. In Christiane Bongartz & Jacopo Torregrossa (eds.), What’s in a narrative? Variation in storytelling at the interface between language and literacy, 99–120. Bern: Peter Lang.
- Mitchell, Alice. 2021. Phasal polarity in Barabaiga and Gisamjanga Datooga (Nilotic): Interactions with tense, aspect, and participant expectation. In Raija Kramer (ed.), The expression of phasal polarity in African languages, 419–441. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
- Mitchell, Alice & Fiona M. Jordan. 2021. Kinship, seniority, and rights to know in Datooga children’s every-day interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 181. 49–61.
- Mitchell, Alice & Péter Rácz. 2021. Children’s knowledge of a name-based avoidance register: A quantitative study among Datooga of Tanzania. American Anthropologist 132(2). 389–400.
2020
- Becker, Laura & Gertrud Schneider-Blum. 2020. Morphological marking of contrast in Tima. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 5(1). 125. 1–35.
- Casaretto, Antje, Gerrit J. Dimmendaal, Birgit Hellwig, Uta Reinöhl & Gertrud Schneider-Blum. 2020. Roots of ergativity in Africa (and beyond). Studies in African Linguistics 49(1). 111–140.
- Hellwig, Birgit & Dagmar Jung. 2020. Child-directed language – and how it informs the documentation and description of the adult language. Language Documentation and Conservation 14. 188–214.
- Vossen, Rainer & Gerrit J. Dimmendaal (eds.). 2020. The Handbook of African Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2019
- Dimmendaal, Gerrit J., Colleen Ahland, Angelika Jakobi & Constance Kutsch Lojenga. 2019. Linguistic features and typologies in languages commonly referred to as ‘Nilo-Saharan’. In Ekkehard Wolff (ed.), Cambridge Handbook of African Linguistics, 326-381. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Hellwig, Birgit. 2019. Linguistic diversity, language documentation and psycholinguistics: The role of stimuli. In Aimée Lahaussois & Marine Vuillermet (eds.), Methodological tools for linguistic description and typology (Language Documentation and Conservation SP 16), 5-30. Honolulu, Hawai’i: University of Hawai’i Press.
- Hellwig, Birgit. 2019. Grammatical relations in Katla. In Alena Witzlack-Makarevich & Balthasar Bickel (eds.), Argument selectors: A new perspective on grammatical relations (Typological Studies in Language), 511-531. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
2018
- Dimmendaal, Gerrit J. 2018. Historical linguistics in an African context: A brief state of the art. In Augustine Agwuele & Adams Bodomo (eds.), Routledge Handbook of African Linguistics, 33-54. London: Routledge.
- Dimmendaal, Gerrit J. 2018. On stable and unstable features in Nilo-Saharan. In Helga Schröder & Prisca Jerono (eds.), Nilo-Saharan Issues and Perspectives, 9-23. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe.
- Dimmendaal, Gerrit J. 2018. Reconstructing Katloid and deconstructing Kordofanian. In Gertrud Schneider-Blum, Birgit Hellwig & Gerrit J. Dimmendaal (eds.), Nuba Mountain Languages Studies: New Insights, 383-415. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe.
- Dimmendaal, Gerrit J. & Gertrud Schneider-Blum. 2018. Transitivity in Tima. In Rose-Juliet Anyanwu (ed.), Transitivity in African languages, Frankfurter Afrikanistische Blätter, Jahrgang 2014, Band 26, 125-146. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe.
- Hellwig, Birgit. 2018. Verbal derivation in Katla: The comitative. In Schneider-Blum, Gertrud, Birgit Hellwig & Gerrit J. Dimmendaal (eds.), Nuba Mountain Language Studies: New Insights, 209-232. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe.
- Schneider-Blum, Gertrud. 2018. Constituent focus and selective marking in Tima. In Schneider-Blum, Gertrud, Birgit Hellwig & Gerrit J. Dimmendaal (eds.). Nuba Mountain Language Studies: New Insights, 255-279. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe.
- Schneider-Blum, Gertrud & Birgit Hellwig. 2018. Reference tracking in Tima and its interplay with split ergative marking. Studies in Language 42(4). 970-993.
- Schneider-Blum, Gertrud, Birgit Hellwig & Gerrit J. Dimmendaal (eds.). 2018. Nuba Mountain Language Studies: New Insights. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe.
- Veit, Nataliya. 2018. The verbal derivational morpheme -aa in Tima. In Schneider-Blum, Gertrud, Birgit Hellwig & Gerrit J. Dimmendaal (eds.). Nuba Mountain Language Studies: New Insights, 233-254. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe.
2017
- Dimmendaal, Gerrit J. 2017. Areal contact in Nilo-Saharan. In Raymond Hickey (ed.), Cambridge Handbook of Areal Linguistics, 446-470. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Schneider-Blum, Gertrud. 2017. Once or more often? On pluractionality marking in Tima. STUF - Language Typology and Universals 70(1). 163-194. pdf