Author: Sara Pacchiarotti

On November 27 2024, linguistics doctoral students Chrisnah Renaudot Mfouhou and Paulin Baraka Bose presented preliminary results of their respective fieldwork missions of 2024 at the weekly seminars of LLACAN (Langage, Langues, et Cultures d’Afrique (UMR 8135 CNRS – INALCO – EPHE). For more information see: https://llacan.cnrs.fr/blog/?p=2887

The CongUbangi team was generously given the opportunity to peruse the Centre de Documentation André-Georges Haudricourt library at LLACAN. We were able to find many “hidden” linguistic sources on Bantu, Ubangi and Central Sudanic languages spoken in the Congo-Ubangi watershed area.

 

 

 

 

On August 29^th Peter Coutros (UGent), Igor Matonda (UNIKIN), Henri Zana (UGent/Université de Bangui), Lucien Pierre Nguerede (UGent/Université de Bangui) and Sara Pacchiarotti (UGent) presented their research on “Central African archaeology of the northern Bantu borderlands: Initial Results of the CongUbangi research project” at the annual European Association of Archaeologists conference in Rome. The presentation was in The Archaeology of Ancient Borderscapes: Multiple Approaches, New Paradigms session and focused on the results from the team’s recent archaeological and ethnoarchaeological fieldwork in the Sud-Ubangi province of the DRC. The preliminary results revolved around:

1. Archaeology: The team identified 23 new sites and conducted excavations at six of these locations. These efforts have resulted in several new Early Iron Age and Late Iron Age material culture assemblages.
2. Ethnoarchaeology: The team conducted ethnographic studies of pottery production at two Ubangi-speaking communities near Gemena and Libenge, DRC. Interviews were conducted with four potters who provided descriptions and demonstrations of the pottery forming and decorating processes.

From July 6 to August 3, Prof. Jean Pierre Donzo carried out linguistic fieldwork within the framework of the CongUbangi project in areas surrounding Lisala and Bumba, two locations in the Mongala province of the DRC. He collected lexical and grammatical data on ten Bantu varieties, namely Budza-liye, Limpesa, Lingbele, Lipoto, Eliele, Elupi-Dando, Ebudza-Bondunga, Egbuta, Ebudza-yamolota, and Ndobo. Some of these are spoken by so-called gens d’eau, that is, linguistically heterogeneous small-scale groups of speakers whose main subsistence activities revolve around swamp forests in the Mongala region.

 

From July 6 to August 18, Chrisnah Renaudot Mfouhou will be conducting linguistic fieldwork on Ndunga, an enclaved Mbaic (Ubangi) variety spoken in several villages around Lisala in the Mongala province of the DRC. In this first fieldwork mission, Chrisnah will focus on phonetics, phonology as well as features and behavior of the noun phrase. Genetic data on Ndunga speakers will also be collected.