On 21 April, Dr Mark Van de Velde, linguist at the CNRS and currently based at IFRA-Nigeria, will join us for our April methodological seminar, where he will delve into the specific methods of linguistic research. To do so, he will use the example of his current project on the languages of the Jarawan family, of which only about a dozen still survive today.
Although these languages have fascinated linguists and historians since the beginning of the 20th century, none of them has been properly studied. The reason for this fascination is the oft-repeated claim that the Jarawan languages may belong to the Narrow Bantu family, despite their location in Northern Nigeria and the important differences between their grammatical structures and those of the Bantu languages.
The goals of the JARAWA project are (i) to thoroughly analyse the grammatical structures of the Jarawan languages of Nigeria, (ii) to achieve a reliable external genealogical classification, (iii) to elaborate a partial reconstruction of Proto-Jarawan; and (iv) to create a rich, publicly accessible linguistic documentation.
Practical information:
Date & time: 21 April 2026, 10am to 12pm
Location: IFRA-Nigeria Resource Centre, Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan
Sign-up here before 17/04/2026: https://forms.gle/5fqvFVYm5AifGMqH6