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"

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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.