The Kalahari Basin area: a 'Sprachbund' on the verge of extinction - "The Central Kalahari area with a focus on Hoan (Ju-Hoan family): language contact and population genetics"

这一单独项目的目的是将分子人类学和语言学研究结合起来，以了解卡拉哈里盆地成为语言区所涉及的因素。语言领域的出现所涉及的过程仍然没有得到充分的理解，时间深度越深，就越难解开它们。鉴于南非所说的霍伊桑语可能有非常深厚的历史(参见。Traill&Nakagawa 2000：1-2)，单靠语言研究可能不足以提供对共同特征出现起作用的社会文化因素的洞察。要了解语言接触和语言特征的区域扩散过程，显然需要多学科的方法。

This Individual Project aims at combining both molecular anthropological and linguistic investigations to gain an understanding of the factors involved in the emergence of the Kalahari Basin as a linguistic area. The processes involved in the emergence of linguistic areas are still not fully understood, and the deeper the time depth the more difficult it is to unravel them. Given the fact that the Khoisan languages spoken in South Africa may have a very deep history (cf. Traill & Nakagawa 2000: 1-2), linguistic investigations alone may not be sufficient to provide insights into the sociocultural factors that played a role in the emergence of shared traits. A multidisciplinary approach is clearly needed to gain an understanding of processes involved in language contact and areal diffusion of linguistic features.