Medumba [BYV] Linguistic Fieldwork and Collaborative Language Development

Trustees Of Boston University, Boston

Investigators

Abstract

This project is a study of tone in Medumba, an Eastern Grassfields Bantu language spoken in Western Cameroon. Some description and analysis of Medumba was carried out in the 1970s, and it quickly became apparent that the tone system of the language poses significant challenges and differs in important ways from the Bantu languages found in surrounding areas. This language and its close relatives were the basis for the theoretical construct of "floating tone" and its critical role in understanding downstep. Reasoning about this phenomenon was closely linked to facts about the noun class system, which has become segmentally attenuated, resulting in very complex patterns of tone realization in a variety of constructions. This research aims to resolve a complex web of questions concerning tone, noun class, and largely undescribed verbal tone patterns. The research consists of one month of field work in Cameroon by four graduate student fieldworkers. It will provide an updated description of the language, along with answers to specific questions about the realization of tone in a variety of contexts. These data will then be used to decide between competing accounts of the tone system. The significance of this project lies in several areas. First, it will substantially increase what is known to the linguistic sciences about Medumba, a language that exemplifies one particularly complex and theoretically important type of tonal system. Scholarly work on the typology of tone is still developing and the results of this project will contribute to these efforts. Second, the project will provide training for four graduate students, all of whom are committed to becoming theoretically-informed linguistic fieldwork experts. As more languages become extinct, pressure grows on the linguistic sciences to fully understand the range of grammatical diversity in the remaining languages. As the field intensifies its efforts to describe and document these remaining languages, it is imperative to train younger scientists to conduct such work using best practices. The students will attend an international summer school on linguistic fieldwork and African tone systems prior to their visit to Cameroon. Finally, they will begin a partnership with a Cameroonian applied linguistic organization, which will contribute to efforts to sustain the language as bilingualism of colonial languages continues to encroach. One purpose of the partnership will be to develop written materials in Medumba, including a dictionary. This training and experience is co-funded by the Africa, Near East, and South Asia division in NSF's Office of International Science and Engineering. Combined with further mentoring by five senior linguists, it will prepare these young scientists to contribute to the infrastructure of the field in one of its most pressing domains: the description and documentation of under-described languages.