African language dynamics between Macro-Sudan Belt and Niger-Congo

Tom Güldemann; Jakob Lesage; Frederik Hartmann; Johanna Nichols; Florian Lionnet; Nicholas Rolle; Karee Garvin; Anna Macknick; Katherine Russell; Hannah Sande; Gregory D. S. Anderson; Tjerk Hagemeijer; Roland Kießling; Jeff Good; Ines Fiedler; John T. M. Merrill; Valentin Vydrin

Forthcoming: African language dynamics between Macro-Sudan Belt and Niger-Congo: In commemoration of Diedrich Westermann’s legacy

Tom Güldemann (ed), Jakob Lesage (ed)

Synopsis

A central problem in the linguistic history of Africa is how to distinguish patterns inherited genealogically from those that result from language contact and areal convergence. This question is particularly pertinent to West and Central Africa south of the Sahara, especially in relation to the Macro-Sudan Belt and the Niger-Congo family. This collection of articles approaches this problem across a variety of linguistic features, methods, and language groups, including Niger-Congo as a whole, Mande, Chadic, Central Sudanic, and the Gulf-of-Guinea creoles. The contributions range from phonological and morphosyntactic typology to historical reconstruction and genealogical classification. The volume features chapters that refine areal patterns, zoom in on smaller contact zones, reconstruct features to proto-languages, suggest mechanisms of contact-induced change, and in some cases introduce new methodologies for language classification and areal typology. The volume grew out of a workshop held in 2021 at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, which marked the centennial of Diedrich Westermann’s Berlin professorship, thereby linking a central concern of his oeuvre with the question at the heart of this volume – how to distinguish contact from inheritance.

Chapters

The Euro-African Transition Zone
Findings from geospatial phonology

Frederik Hartmann, Johanna Nichols
Phonological profile changes in the Macro-Sudan Belt
Antagonism between ATR and interior vowels

Florian Lionnet, Nicholas Rolle
STAMP morphs and non-pronominal STAMP in West Africa
Typology and areal distributions

Karee Garvin, Anna Macknick, Katherine Russell, Hannah Sande
Auxiliary verb constructions, STAMP morphs and related phenomena in the Chadic languages

Gregory D. S. Anderson
How to become a Macro-Sudan Belt language
The case of the Gulf-of-Guinea creoles

Tom Güldemann, Tjerk Hagemeijer
Areal features in Wide Grassfields and beyond

Roland Kießling
Areal micro-dynamics as a window onto Niger-Congo prehistory

Jeff Good
The synchronic and diachronic diversity of adnominal gender-number marking in Niger-Congo

Tom Güldemann, Ines Fiedler
Lexical evidence for Northern Atlantic groups as primary branches of Niger-Congo

John T. M. Merrill
Alienability contrast in Mande
Innovation or retention?

Valentin Vydrin

Published

September 14, 2026

LaTeX source on GitHub

Series

Niger-Congo Comparative Studies

Print ISSN

2627-0048

Cite as

Güldemann, Tom & Lesage, Jakob (eds.). Forthcoming. African language dynamics between Macro-Sudan Belt and Niger-Congo: In commemoration of Diedrich Westermann’s legacy . (Niger-Congo Comparative Studies). Berlin: Language Science Press.

Copyright (c) 2026 Tom Güldemann, Jakob Lesage; Frederik Hartmann, Johanna Nichols, Florian Lionnet, Nicholas Rolle, Karee Garvin, Anna Macknick, Katherine Russell, Hannah Sande, Gregory D. S. Anderson, Tjerk Hagemeijer, Roland Kießling, Jeff Good, Ines Fiedler, John T. M. Merrill, Valentin Vydrin