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
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Alice Mitchell
Project Leader B02
Office: Afrikanistik, Meister-Ekkehart-Straße 9E-Mail: alice.mitchell(at)uni-koeln.dePhone: (+49) 221 470-6936
Dr. Gertrud Schneider-Blum
Associated Postdoc B02
Office: SFB, Luxemburger Str. 299, room 2.10E-Mail: schneider_blum(at)yahoo.dePhone: (+49) 221 470-89906
Mandy Lorenzen
Representative Doctoral students, Doctoral student B02
Office: SFB, Luxemburger Str. 299, room 2.10E-Mail: mandy.lorenzen(at)uni-koeln.dePhone: (+49) 221 470-89906
Elisabeth Clages
Student assistant B02
Office: SFB, Luxemburger Str. 299, room 2.12E-Mail: e.clages(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.
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