Reconstructing proto-Bantu grammar

THEME OF THE CONFERENCE

The birth of Bantu linguistics as a scientific discipline is commonly attributed to Wilhelm Heinrich Bleek (1827-1875), who established Bantu as a family and gave it the name it still has today. Carl Meinhof (1857-1944) defined Bantu as a genealogical unity, i.e. a family of languages that descend from a common ancestor, which can be reconstructed through the establishment of regular sound correspondences among modern-day languages. He laid the foundations for the reconstruction of Ur-Bantu, known today as Proto-Bantu (PB), the putative common ancestor (Meinhof 1899). Benefiting from a classical training in comparative Indo-European philology, Meinhof primarily relied on the Comparative Method, as did his successors in Bantu reconstruction studies, such as Meeussen (1967, 1980), Guthrie (1967, 1970a, b, 1971), Coupez et al. (1998), and Bastin et al. (2002). Proto-Bantu with its estimated time depth of 4000 to 5000 years (Vansina 1995, Blench 2006) has been reconstructed from language data that are younger than 150 years. The most recent reference works in Bantu lexical and grammatical reconstruction are 15 years (Bastin et al. 2002) and 50 years old (Meeussen 1967) respectively. Over the past decades, cumulative descriptive research has added to the documentation of variation among Bantu languages and allows for even more effective applications of the Comparative Method. A systematic update of research in both Bantu lexical and grammatical reconstruction is urgently needed. Last year, Bantu Grammatical Reconstructions (1967) of the Belgian linguist A.E. Meeussen celebrated its 50th anniversary. In order to mark this important milestone in the history of Bantu linguistics and to start with an update of Proto-Bantu grammar reconstruction, we will organize a five-day international conference on “Reconstructing Proto-Bantu Grammar” in Belgium (Gent + Tervuren) from November 19 to November 23, 2018.

OBJECTIVE OF THE CONFERENCE

The international conference intends to gather today’s junior and senior scholars with the most relevant expertise in comparative Bantu studies in order to reflect together on how to realize a state-of-the-art update of Bantu Grammatical Reconstructions by Meeussen (1967). Given the large amount of Bantu language data that have become available since 1967, the vastness of the Bantu language family and the wide array of grammatical topics to be addressed, such an update can no longer be a one-man-project in 2018. It necessarily is a collaborative project building on the expertise of several scholars. Given the way in which the field developed over the past 50 years and the variability of approaches and theoretical frameworks it entails, such an update cannot simply be resumed where it was left by Meeussen in 1967. Underlying assumptions, principles and methods need to be discussed and established, which is one of the objectives of this international conference, along with assessing the implications of the huge mass of newly available data for reconstructing different aspects of Proto-Bantu grammar.

SCIENTIFIC IMPORTANCE

Bantu, which is part of the larger Niger-Congo language phylum, is Africa’s main language family. Bantu languages are spoken between Cameroon’s South-West region (4°8’N and 9°14’E) in the North-West, southern Somalia’s Barawe area (1°6’N and 44°1’E) in the North-East and Cape Agulhas (34°48’S and 20°E), the continent’s southernmost tip in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Their distribution area spans twenty-three countries on the African mainland. As for the number of Bantu speakers, Patin et al. (2017) estimate them at around 310 million, i.e. about one African in four. Consequently, reconstructing Proto-Bantu is not only a major contribution to the field of Bantu linguistics, but potentially also to the cultural history of a large portion of present-day Africans both in Africa and the diaspora.

SCIENTIFIC GUIDELINES FOR CONTRIBUTORS

Our workshop wishes to further first and foremost the reconstruction of grammatical features of Proto-Bantu, the putative most recent common ancestor of the (Narrow) Bantu languages. So even if you are not used to adopt this specific historical-linguistic approach in your comparative Bantu research, we ask you to do so for your contribution to our workshop. We invite you to revisit the comparative evidence on which you have worked or on which you will work with the special aim of identifying shared retentions that have a current-day distribution across the family's subgroups which is significant enough to allow for reconstruction into Proto-Bantu. In this quest, following Meeussen (1967) himself, one should attempt to establish, as much as possible, specific associations of form and function/meaning that are likely to go back to Proto-Bantu. Those of you who would wish to familiarize themselves more with Meeussen's reconstruction methodology could consult his 1973 article on "Comparative Bantu - Test cases for method". Be aware though that his understanding of the internal classification of Bantu was not necessarily the same as ours today.

With regard to the most recent phylogenetic classification by Grollemund et al. (2015) (see Fig. 1), we tend to situate Proto-Bantu at the level of either node 1 (excluding the Grassfields Bantu languages) or node 0 (including the Grassfields Bantu languages). For the time being, we leave this question open to your personal preference, though be conscious that we do not really aim at reconstructions at any lower nodes in the tree. In this regard, a feature occurring in North-Western and Eastern Bantu, for instance, has more relevance for Proto-Bantu reconstruction than one only attested in West-Western and South-Western Bantu or even in South-Western and Eastern Bantu. If we agree that Eastern Bantu is indeed the latest offshoot in the Bantu family tree (to be discussed), a feature attested in North-Western Bantu and one or more of the other Western subgroups but not in Eastern Bantu could also be considered for reconstruction into Proto-Bantu. One could also look sideways at related phenomena in wider Niger-Congo as Bantu-external cognates tend to be good evidence for retention.

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE

The scientific committee consists of Maud Devos (RMCA, Tervuren), Larry Hyman (University of California, Berkeley), Jacky Maniacky (RMCA, Tervuren), Derek Nurse (Memorial University of Newfoundland; emeritus), Gérard Philippson (DDL, Lyon; emeritus), Thilo Schadeberg (Leiden University; emeritus), Jenneke van der Wal (Leiden University), Mark Van de Velde (LLACAN, Paris) and Koen Bostoen (Ghent University).

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

The organizing committee consists of Gilles-Maurice de Schryver (BantUGent), Maud Devos (RMCA/BantUGent), Sebastian Dom (BantUGent), Rozenn Guérois (BantUGent), Hilde Gunnink (BantUGent), Jacky Maniacky (RMCA), Sara Pacchiarotti (BantUGent) and Koen Bostoen (BantUGent).

This international conference is a collaborative project between the Culture & Society Section of the Royal Museum for Central Africa, which used to host the “Lolemi” research program in comparative Bantu studies led by A.E. Meeussen, and the UGent Centre for Bantu Studies (BantUGent), founded in 2016 to promote a transdisciplinary approach to the past and present of Bantu languages, Bantu speech communities and their material worlds. This UGent-RMCA collaboration is firmly rooted in a shared history and existing partnerships within the field of Bantu linguistics.