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Diversity in African Languages contains a selection of revised papers from the 46th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, held at the University of Oregon. Most chapters focus on single languages, addressing diverse aspects of their phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, information structure, or historical development. These chapters represent nine different genera: Mande, Gur, Kwa, Edoid, Bantu, Nilotic, Gumuzic, Cushitic, and Omotic. Other chapters investigate a mix of languages and families, moving from typological issues to sociolinguistic and inter-ethnic factors that affect language and accent switching. Some chapters are primarily descriptive, while others push forward the theoretical understanding of tone, semantic problems, discourse related structures, and other linguistic systems. The papers on Bantu languages reflect something of the internal richness and continued fascination of the family for linguists, as well as maturation of research on the family. The distribution of other papers highlights the need for intensified research into all the language families of Africa, including basic documentation, in order to comprehend linguistic diversities and convergences across the continent. In this regard, the chapter on Daatsi?in (Gumuzic) stands out as the first-ever published article on this hitherto unknown and endangered language found in the Ethiopian-Sudanese border lands.
Doris L. Payne is a professor at the University of Oregon and a consultant with SIL International. She has done original field work on languages of East Africa and the Americas. As a fieldworker, she focuses on all aspects of language structure but is especially interested in morphosyntax, discourse, and the lexical-syntactic interface. Together with Maasai colleagues, she is developing a trilingual Maasai-Swahili-English dictionary.
Sara Pacchiarotti is a PhD candidate in Linguistics at the University of Oregon. She is particularly interested in syntax, historical linguistics and language change. She has worked on Bribri (Chibchan), has broad experience with Indo-European languages, and is also interested in African languages.
Mokaya Bosire studies Swahili, youth languages and urban vernaculars in the Swahili Nation including Sheng and Street Swahili. He is particularly interested in language contact, language variation and the interplay between language and power in post-colonial Africa. He teaches Swahili at the University of Oregon, Eugene.
