Dogon Languages of Mali

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With support from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Jeffrey Heath will document six previously undescribed languages of the Dogon family in eastern Mali, West Africa. This project builds on a prior NEH-funded project on another language of this family (Jamsay). The results will appear in the form of published reference grammars, supplemented by lexical and textual documentation that will be disseminated on a comparative Dogon website. Dogon languages are verb-final and postpositional, and have an especially interesting system for "relative clauses" where the head noun is not moved, but rather drops its tones. More generally, the use of tone overlays and even "intonation" effects are central to the grammatical systems (e.g. compounding, possession, conjunction) of these languages. The Dogon are famous for their knowledge of local flora and fauna (an average villager can distinguish 15-18 types of grasshopper), and the lexicographic aspect of the project will try to do this knowledge justice. The Principal Investigator is a veteran fieldworker in Mali (Arabic, Tuareg, Songhay), and will be joined by two younger European colleagues in this project.