Finding patterns through Fieldwork in African Languages

A workshop (AG4) organized as part of the 48th Annual Meeting of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS) in Trier, 24-27 February 2026.

Organizers:

Katharina Hartmann (Frankfurt am Main)

Johannes Mursell (Frankfurt am Main)

Invited Speakers:

Mary Amaechi (Universität Bielefeld)

Imke Driemel (University of York)

Jenneke van der Wal (Leiden University)

Meeting Description:

Linguistic research and theory construction has for a long time been conducted from a very Eurocentric perspective and mainly based on intuition. This type of armchair linguistics has been rightfully criticized, but fortunately, the last decades have seen a shift to more empirically oriented methods. Naturally, these methods were initially applied to well-known languages like English and German. However, more recently, empirical methods have also been more consistently applied to understudied languages.

With his methodologically oriented workshop we want to initiate an exchange on how to elicit linguistic patterns in one of these linguistically still understudied regions, in languages from Sub-Sahara Africa. Set against the background of a rising interest in research in African languages in all linguistic disciplines, empirically oriented methods gain more and more importance. The first goal of this workshop is to create a platform for linguists to discuss and compare the broad variety of linguistic fieldwork methodologies that are used across the disciplines and the kind of data these methods serve to elicit, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of the diverse approaches. Since the languages of Sub-Sahara Africa show typologically very interesting patterns, combining rich functional morphology with properties of tonal languages, we expect to discuss a variety of approaches targeted at different types of data.

As a second goal, the workshop seeks to combine the methodological insights with potential results in theoretical linguistics, thus the question of which kind of data can be best gathered with which type of methods will be central. The more theoretically oriented aims of the workshop are first, to discuss how patterns leading to new predictions in theoretical linguistics can be elicited; second, to show how fieldwork may develop theoretical knowledge into hitherto poorly understood areas of linguistics, and third, to evaluate to which extent fieldwork may be filling gaps in the theoretical model.

The workshop will not only address classical approaches to fieldwork but also invite contributions from more recent methods, including experimental work. Thus, the workshop addresses linguists from different fields such as syntax, phonology, semantics, morphology, psycholinguistics who perform empirically oriented work on languages from Sub-Sahara Africa.

Call for Papers:

We invite submissions addressing one or several issues raised in the description. Please submit your anonymous abstracts to the following email address: fieldwork.dgfs48@gmail.com

Submission guidelines: pdf, 1 page, 11pt Times New Roman, with References and Graphics on an additional page.

Deadline for abstract submission: August 24th

Notification of acceptance: September 5th