| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
MIYAMOTO Ritsuko Univ. of Akita, Associate Professor, 教育文科学部, 助教授 (30200215)
KAJI Shigeki Tokyo Univ. of Foreign Studies, Research Institute of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Professor, アジア・アフリカ言語文化研究所, 教授 (10134751)
YUKAWA Yasutoshi Univ. of Kumamoto, Professor, 文学部, 教授 (20011299)
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| Research Abstract |
During the term of this research project ( 1999-2001 ) we have done linguistic research on Bantu languages in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda. The number of languages we researched was 30 and it is over our expectation before. Our research is to gather whole information on a language in question precisely, that is, for each language we collected words over 2000, recorded and analyzed phones and phonemes, and analyzed precisely the grammar of the language in question.
The research during these three years was almost as successful as we planned this project. some of results, we could derive the new general linguistic information from the tonological research of Bantu languages. We also succeeded in descriptive study of endangered languages and linguistic changes of vernacular languages. However, there are so many endangered languages in Africa, and if we miss the present days it may become difficult to describe and record them. Furthermore, languages in Africa are changing in the speed that we do not have experienced so far. From these facts, we think that our research on Ban languages is very fruitful and we should continue to conduct this linguistic research more extensively. We can say that Africa is a large "linguistic laboratory " and we need to research languages in a "fixed point observation way " to understand real processes of a language change.
We have published many results in academic meetings and journals. Furthermore we are planning to publish many papers and a book on this project in near future.
The following people joined in this research project as research cooperators : Prof. R.Besha (Univ. of Dar es Salaam), Prof. K.Kahigi (Univ. of Dar es Salaam), Ms.K.Komori (Ohsaka Univ, of Foreign Studies), Mr. T. Kamiya (graduate student, Tokyo Univ. of Foreign Studies), Ms, Y. Abe (graduate student, Tokyo Univ. "of Foreign Studies). ,
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