Non-situational functions of demonstrative noun phrases in Lingala (Bantu)

This paper examines the non-situational (i.e., non-exophoric) pragmatic functions of the three adnominal demonstratives, oyo, wand, and yango in the Bantu language Lingala. An examination of natural language corpora reveals that, although native-speaker intuitions sanction the use of oyo as an anaphor in demonstrative NPs, this demonstrative is hardly ever used in that role. It also reveals that wand, which has both situational and discourse-referential capacities, is used more frequently than the exclusively anaphoric demonstrative yango. It is explained that wand appears in a wide range of non-coreferential expression types, in coreferential expression types involving low-salience referents, and in coreferential expression types that both involve highly salient referents and include the speaker's desire to signal a shift in the mental representation of the referent towards a pejorative reading. The use of yango, on the other hand, is only licensed in cases of coreferentiality involving highly salient referents and implying continuation of the same mental representation of the referent. A specific section is devoted to charting the possible grammaticalization paths followed by the demonstratives. Conclusions are drawn for pragmatic theory formation in terms of the relation between form (yango vs. wand) and function (coreferentiality vs. non-coreferentiality)

Away with linguists! Normativity, inequality and metascientific reflexivity in sociolinguistic fieldwork

This paper addresses the fact that in spite of the descriptive and well-intentioned ambitions of much sociolinguistic-ethnographic research, members of studied groups often continue to interpret such research as a largely vertically organized socio-political activity that communicates a prescriptive social and linguistic normativity the researcher is inevitably taken to embody. We argue that while many researchers agree that sociolinguistic fieldwork is inherently political, actual descriptions of informants' awareness of this are still rather scarce. In the process, we demonstrate how members' metascientific reflexivity can be particularly active precisely in and during fieldwork encounters and in the entire research event, complicating the idea of a pure and disinterested description and understanding

Taalstrijd in Afrika : het taalwetsartikel in het Koloniaal Charter van 1908 en de strijd van de Vlamingen en Afrikaners voor het Nederlands in Afrika tot 1960

The Colonial Charter, the organic law that regulated the Belgian state’s takeover of Congo from the private ownership of King Leopold II in 1908, contained an article about language rights in the colony. While language rights for the Congolese were mentioned therein, the article primarily dealt with language rights for the colonizing Belgian minority. The article came about on the insistence of several Flemish members of parliament during debates held in the Chamber of Representatives in the first half of 1908. In this article, these debates are discussed in order to provide a historical explanation for the semantic and language-ideology background for each section of this article of the Charter. In addition, light will be shed on how not only in 1908, but also in the following decades (and until decolonization in 1960), particularly whenever Flemish politicians complained about the spotty application of the article and the continuing dominance of French in Belgian Congo, they pointed to the Afrikaners and Afrikaans in South Africa in order to make a strong argument that Dutch was, or could become, an important language in all of sub-Saharan Africa. Notably, South African thinkers and politicians also pointed out the presence and official status of Dutch in Belgian Congo on several occasions, namely in their own struggle against the domination of English over Dutch/Afrikaans. Moreover, from 1914 onward there were direct contacts between Flemish and Afrikaner politicians concerning this matter. The conclusion of this article suggests that in the last years of Belgian colonialism, the Congolese elite reacted quite negatively to Flemish demands for a bilingual colony because they saw in such demands a colonialist hindrance on their chances for socioeconomic emancipation