Project/Area Number |
21KK0005
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Research Category |
Fund for the Promotion of Joint International Research (Fostering Joint International Research (B))
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Allocation Type | Multi-year Fund |
Review Section |
Medium-sized Section 2:Literature, linguistics, and related fields
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Research Institution | International Christian University |
Principal Investigator |
李 勝勲 国際基督教大学, 教養学部, 上級准教授 (20770134)
|
Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
古本 真 東京外国語大学, アジア・アフリカ言語文化研究所, 研究員 (20796354)
品川 大輔 東京外国語大学, アジア・アフリカ言語文化研究所, 准教授 (80513712)
|
Project Period (FY) |
2021-10-07 – 2027-03-31
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Project Status |
Granted (Fiscal Year 2022)
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Budget Amount *help |
¥18,850,000 (Direct Cost: ¥14,500,000、Indirect Cost: ¥4,350,000)
Fiscal Year 2026: ¥2,860,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,200,000、Indirect Cost: ¥660,000)
Fiscal Year 2025: ¥3,380,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,600,000、Indirect Cost: ¥780,000)
Fiscal Year 2024: ¥3,380,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,600,000、Indirect Cost: ¥780,000)
Fiscal Year 2023: ¥3,380,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,600,000、Indirect Cost: ¥780,000)
Fiscal Year 2022: ¥4,810,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,700,000、Indirect Cost: ¥1,110,000)
Fiscal Year 2021: ¥1,040,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000、Indirect Cost: ¥240,000)
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Keywords | Southern Bantu languages / Tone / Fieldwork / Acoustics / Bantu languages / prosody / syntax / variation / dialects / バントゥ諸語 / 音声音韻論 / 形態統語論 / 方言論 / 類型論 |
Outline of Research at the Start |
This 6-year international collaborative project investigates the inter- and intra-language variation in Bantu languages as a collaboration between researchers in Japan (ICU and AA-ken) and South Africa (U of Venda and U of Free State). This project has four specific goals: (1) documenting inter- and intra-language variations at the interface between the prosody and sentence structures, (2) documenting narratives for the discourse and dialect level variations, (3) collecting archive-quality materials, and (4) updating existing theories or proposing theories based on a new set of data.
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Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
The second year of the project had multiple subparts: (a) remote data collection, (b) two field data collection, and (c) a two-day workshop of the grant members. The main aim of AY2022 was to collect a comparable baseline data across 9 Bantu languages in the project. Data sets were constructed from nouns, verbs and adjectives obtained from the Swadesh list. Production of these words in high tone and low tone contexts was recorded. The remote data collection was conducted with two Southern Ndebele speakers who joined the online sessions. Assistants were able to experience remote fieldwork by actively interacting with the speakers. The fieldwork in December 2022 was conducted in Thohoyandou for Xitsonga and Tshivenda, and Lenyenye for Northern Sotho. Each participant read more than 700 sentences for the project. Data from 30 speakers were processed within two months. In March 2023, fieldwork in Mbombela for Southern Ndebele, and Thohoyandou for Siswati was conducted. IsiXhosa and isiZulu data was also collected, which is being processed. At the workshop in March 2023, all the members were present in a face-to-face meeting in Johannesburg. During the 2-day workshop, research topics were shared and plan for data processing as well as project planning was made. In AY2022, 3 conference presentations and 1 invited talk were delivered.
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Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
In the beginning of AY2022, the project was moving a bit slow, but at the onset of the end of the pandemic, fieldwork became possible, so the project was able to pick-up speed in data collection. The data collection is moving on smoothly so we expect to have data for further analysis during the summer months.
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Strategy for Future Research Activity |
In AY2023, continuing activities are planned: (a) data processing using a forced alignment system, (b) data collection, (c) conferences and article writing, and (d) workshops among members. Currently, we are developing a forced alignment model of all the official South African Bantu languages to facilitate data processing. Data collection will be conducted in Lesotho for Sesotho, in Grahamstown for isiXhosa. After collecting isiZulu and Tswana data, the project will have baseline data for all the 9 Southern Bantu languages. Analyses of the data will be disseminated at domestic and international conferences, and we plan to submit analyses of the data to journals to be considered for publication. Grant workshops are planned online in September 2023, and face-to-face in March 2024.
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