Forthcoming: Celebrating Afrikawissenschaften: Selected papers from the 24th Afrikanist*innentag

Lee J. Pratchett (ed), Axel Fanego Palat (ed)

Synopsis

This volume comprises a selection of papers from the 24th Afrikanist*innentag hosted by the Goethe University Frankfurt in 2021. Planned and subsequently cancelled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the conference was among the first in our field to be held digitally. As such, the conference and this volume is a celebration of African Studies and the tenacity and creativity of its scholarly community. After the introductory chapter, the volume includes thirteen chapters spanning descriptive and historical linguistics, African literature and translation studies, cognitive linguistics, semantics, linguistic anthropology, and cultural studies. The volume contributes to the description of African languages and their communities from across the continent, with chapters on Ngbugu (Ubangi, Niger-Congo; Central African Republic), Ugare (Tivoid, Niger-Congo; Cameroon/Nigeria), Emai (Edoid, Niger-Congo; Nigeria), Babanki (Grassfields, Niger-Congo; Cameroon), Swahili (Bantu, Niger-Congo; eastern Africa), Luguru (Bantu, Niger-Congo; Tanzania), and Nǁng (!Ui, Tuu; South Africa). One chapter is from the field of African literatures and translation studies. Two contributions perform linguistic analyses of ancient or classical written texts, one on Quranic Arabic and the other on Meroitic. There are also two chapters devoted to ceramic traditions of West Africa, with a focus on the Maninka in Mali, from the perspective of cognitive anthropological linguistics, and one chapter investigates semantic networks and convergence in the domains of colour and light perception in Ancient Egyptian, Bedouin Arabic (the ʿAzāzmih dialect), and Modern South Arabian languages. Across this diverse set of contributions several common threads emerge. Most notably, the chapters demonstrate how detailed empirical research on individual languages and communities contributes to broader questions in linguistic theory, language history, and the study of culture.

Chapters

  • Introduction
    Celebrating Afrikawissenschaften
    Axel Fanego Palat, Lee J. Pratchett
  • Definition von afrikanischer Literatur und Strategien für ihre erfolgreiche Übersetzung
    Hypolite Kembeu
  • The polyfunctional morpheme ndə́ in the Ngbugu language
    Galla Althabégoïty
  • The noncausal/causal alternation in Luguru
    Sebastian Dom, Malin Petzell, Leora Bar-el, Ponsiano Sawaka Kanijo
  • Restricting word formation by vowel prefix
    Ronald P. Schaefer, Francis O. Egbokhare
  • ‘Muscles of mussels’ and ‘hooks of bananas’
    The (incipient) numeral classifier system of Ugare (Tivoid, Cameroon/Nigeria)
    Michael Terhemen Angitso, Roland Kießling
  • ‘Bubbling belly’ and ‘bursting bile’: The linguistic expression of anger in Babanki
    Pius W. Akumbu, Roland Kießling
  • Betrachtungen zu thematischen Restriktionen bei lokaler Inversion im Swahili aus sprachvergleichender Bantu-Perspektive
    Holger Tröbs
  • Idiolectal and dialectal variation in N‖ng
    Alena Witzlack-Makarevich
  • Vom Optativ im Meroitischen
    Tamara Prischnegg
  • Cognate accusative noun phrases in the Qur’an: A contribution to the discussion about the properties of so-called cognate objects
    Csilla Kász
  • Ancient Egyptian, Bedouin Arabic, and Modern South Arabian
    Semantic and Synesthetic Convergence
    Letizia Cerqueglini
  • Cognitive Semantics and Material Culture
    Maninka ceramic taxonomies
    Henning Schreiber, Esther Morgenthal
  • Produktionsskripte, Kognition und Lexikalisierung in der Maninka Töpferei
    Esther Morgenthal

Biographies

Lee J. Pratchett

Lee J. Pratchett received a PhD in African Studies in 2018 from the Humboldt University of Berlin for describing dialectal variation across Juǀ’hoan (Ju, Kx'a; Namibia and Botswana) and stayed in Berlin as recipient of a ELDP postdoctoral fellowship for the documentation and description of Sasi (ǂ’Amkhoe, Kx'a; Botswana) and Tshwa (Kalahari Khoe, Khoe-Kwadi; Botswana). Following brief positions at the University of Porto and Goethe University Frankfurt, he was lecturer of linguistics at Kiel University from 2022 to 2026, and regularly teaches at the University of Graz. He currently serves as acting professor of African Studies at the Goethe University Frankfurt. His research focuses on the languages of the Kalahari Basin area, with a focus on microvariation, language contact, and language dynamics, and well as sociolinguistics and queer linguistics.

Axel Fanego Palat

Axel Fanego Palat studied African Studies, Linguistics, and Anthropology in Cologne and Lisbon. After completing his PhD at the University of Cologne in 2000 with a grammatical description of Lucazi (Niger-Congo, Bantu; spoken in Angola and Namibia), he held postdoctoral positions at UC Berkeley and the University of Leipzig. From 2008 to 2018, he served as Professor of African Studies at the University of Helsinki before taking up a similar role at Goethe University Frankfurt. His research focuses on Bantu languages, particularly in southern Africa. In addition to descriptive and typological work, his interests include linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics, with a recent emphasis on East Africa and African language speakers in Germany.

book cover

Published

September 3, 2026
LaTeX source on GitHub

Series

Contemporary African Linguistics

Print ISSN

2511-7726
Cite as
Pratchett, Lee J. & Fanego Palat, Axel (eds.). Forthcoming. Celebrating Afrikawissenschaften: Selected papers from the 24th Afrikanist*innentag. (Contemporary African Linguistics). Berlin: Language Science Press.
Copyright (c) 2026 Lee J. Pratchett, Axel Fanego Palat; Hypolite Kembeu , Galla Althabégoïty, Sebastian Dom, Malin Petzell, Leora Bar-el, Ponsiano Sawaka Kanijo, Ronald P. Schaefer, Francis O. Egbokhare, Michael Terhemen Angitso, Roland Kießling, Pius W. Akumbu, Holger Tröbs, Alena Witzlack-Makarevich, Tamara Prischnegg, Csilla Kász, Letizia Cerqueglini, Henning Schreiber, Esther Morgenthal

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