Project Details
Projekt
Historische Stratifizierung des Mande-Gurunsi-Sprachkontakts; Untersuchung soziolinguistischer Muster und normativer Kräfte in den sozialen Netzwerken von Pana und Samo
Subject Area
Asian Studies
Term
from 2004 to 2010
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 5444409
[...] The German contribution will consist in a fine-grained study of a presumably longstanding language contact situation within a restricted geographical area in the northwest of Burkina Faso and adjacent areas in Mali. This region harbours several non-related languages which co-exist in close contact. The two language communities forming the core of the proposal, Pana (Gur family) and Samo (East Mande family), share a long-lasting history of cultural and economic exchange that has left behind traces on the language level, too. The apprehension of the processes involved in this contact situation is twofold: on the historical linguistic level the group will look for salient features of each language variety within the two language communities. Comparing these with the genetic features of the respective language group will lead to establishing the areally conditioned, non-genetic characteristics of each variety. On the anthropological linguistic level the group shall investigate how these areal features have spread in different sociological contexts. They have, therefore, decided to adopt the Milroy model of social networks to eventually find out whether and how linguistic innovation can be related to different social types.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
