The Afranaph Project: Anaphora in the African Languages

The main goal of the Afranaph Project, as it is presently constituted, is to develop rich descriptions of a wide range of African languages in order to serve the interests of linguistic research into the nature and distribution of empirical patterns in natural language. The first project of our website, and still the one that is the mainstay of our research, has been to explore the distribution of anaphoric morphology and interpretation, but recent initiatives to expand the role of our empirical investigations to other sorts of linguistic phenomena will soon result in sister projects, autonomous, but linked to Afranaph in spirit, by infrastructure, and with respect to a common database.

 

 

 

 

 

Home Best Display Static Content Homepage Feature Afranaph Project funded for 2023
Last Updated on Monday, 21 February 2022 13:38

Afranaph Project funded for 2023

As the last three-year NSF grant comes to a close in August, 2022, surplus funding will still make possible additional support through August 2023. If there is no new funding at that time, Afranaph will continue its online presence indefinitely, but operations and new ventures will be contingent on additional monies. The basic assets of Afranaph will be unaffected regardless, since the website and the database are on commercial servers for a relatively small sum per year that is easily obtained. That means that everything on the site will still be available for new research and individual researchers can still seek to develop new data and collaborations with those consultants who are willing to be involved.

Board of Directors expands 

Four new members have joined the Board of Directors in the last two years. They are Mark Baker, Philip Ngessimo Mutaka, Patricia Schneider-Zioga and Harold Torrence. The Board will be charting the future of the Afranaph Project for the next several years.

New resources now online or soon to be

In 2021, a number of new data resources were developed by Afranaph despite a variety of obstacles special to the pandemic and specific to the PI. Several data sets were completed with enough follow-up to have been entered into the database including Oromo (from the DPPQR, Tamam Youssef, consultant) and data from Muyang AQR (Theodore Bebey, consultant). New versions of the Makaa AQR and CCQR were posted this year. The OMQR was designed by Michael Diercks was completed and posted this year on our “Become a Consultant” page. A new Case file was opened for Setswana with new data entered this year pursuant to joint work on complementizer agreement in Setswana and Ikalanga by Ken Safir and Rose Letsholo. Metadata in the database for a number of files was entered for the new data and some of it was revised by the Project Director.

A number of new resources developed in 2021 are soon to appear on our site. These include the first OMQR which was completed for Changana (David Langa, consultant) and which will soon be posted. A new case file will be opened for Tupuri, an AQR completed (in French) by our consultant Djakode Noumga will be posted as a .pdf and the data from the AQR will be entered into the database soon. A 100 page Grammar Sketch of Muyang by Theodore Bebey is undergoing final editing and will appear in the Muyang case file. A new case file has been opened for Baatonum (AQR underway, Deen Mamadou-Yacoubou, consultant). New data for existing case files for Kinande, Ibibio and Setswana have been collected and await final editing. These data will be posted this year.