许国璋高研院学术讲堂 第三十五讲
Universality and variation in language: Comparing Bantu languages in the context of the world’s linguistic diversity
主讲人：Lutz Marten, Professor of General and African Linguistics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London
时间：2019年6月25日（周二）下午3:00 – 5:00
地点：北京外国语大学图书馆四层报告厅
主办：北京外国语大学亚非学院
北京外国语大学许国璋语言高等研究院
讲座内容：The talk explores the diversity and complexity of the world’s languages and some of the academic approaches to understanding it, such as the ‘tree’ and ‘wave’ models of language change, and the difference between inheritance and borrowing. It looks at some key aspects of the debate such as multilingualism, language endangerment, language history and language contact, and language typology and universals. Against this background I focus on Bantu languages – one of Africa’s largest language groups and with about 350-400 languages an ideal testing ground for the study of language relationship and micro-variation. I will draw on a recently established database of Bantu morphosyntactic variation with data from about 40 languages and explore different effects of convergence and divergence. I will discuss different examples of microvariation within the language family and how they can best be represented and explained. Through this, the talk introduces interesting features of Bantu languages and at the same time reflects on the nature of morphosyntactic variation.
讲座人简介：Lutz Marten is Professor of General and African Linguistics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, where he served as Dean of the Faculty of Languages and Cultures from 2015 to 2018. He is interested in linguistic theory, comparative and historical linguistics, and questions of language and identity. Most of his work focuses African languages and he has conducted research in Eastern and Southern Africa. He recently completed a 3-year Leverhulme-funded major research project on ‘Morphosyntactic Variation in Bantu: Typology, contact and change’ (2014-18).
His publications include At the Syntax-Pragmatics Interface (OUP 2002), A Grammatical Sketch of Herero (with Wilhelm Möhlig and JekuraKavari, Köppe 2002), The Dynamics of Language (with Ronnie Cann and Ruth Kempson, Elsevier 2005), and Colloquial Swahili (with Donovan McGrath, Routledge 2003/2012). He is also the founding chair of the International Conference on Bantu Languages.
