Towards an Areal grammar of Lower Fungom (Abar [mij], Fang [fak], Koshin [kid], Kung [kfl], Mbu' [muc], Mundabli [boe], and Naki [mff])

喀麦隆的下丰戈姆地区是地球上语言最多样化的国家之一的语言最分散的地区之一。在一个面积约为芝加哥一半的地区，人们发现了至少七种土著语言，其中五种在其他地方没有使用。该地区的语言没有得到很好的研究，他们的名字-Abar [mij]，Fang [fak]，Koshin [kid]，Kung [kfl]，Mbu' [muc]，Mundabli [boe]和Naki [mff]-甚至在喀麦隆工作的其他语言学家也几乎不知道。这些语言显然与撒哈拉以南非洲的班图语有关，但它们的遗传关系的细节在很大程度上仍不清楚。根据自2004年以来进行的实地调查结果，很明显，下丰贡地区的一个重要特征是其13个村庄之间的交流网络的性质，这使得如此广泛的语言多样性蓬勃发展。因此，除了在对任何一组未充分研究的语言进行语法描述和比较工作时遇到的传统问题外，在下丰贡进行实地考察时提出了第二组问题，即在如此小的区域内创造如此极端多样性的社会语言和历史力量。因此，该项目将继续已经开始的对下丰戈姆语言的语法和词汇的研究，并通过在这项工作中增加社会语言学和人类学的组成部分来扩大这项研究，该项目将导致对该地区进行社会语言学调查，并详细记录和描述其三种语言变体，这些语言变体只得到最低限度的描述。

The Lower Fungom region of Cameroon is one of the most linguistically fragmented areas of one of the most linguistically diverse countries on the planet. In an area around half the size of Chicago, one finds at least seven indigenous languages, five of which are not spoken elsewhere. The region's languages are not well studied, and their names--Abar [mij], Fang [fak], Koshin [kid], Kung [kfl], Mbu' [muc], Mundabli [boe], and Naki [mff]--are virtually unknown, even to other linguists working in Cameroon. These languages are clearly related to the Bantu languages that dominate Subsaharan Africa, but the details of their genetic affiliations otherwise remain largely obscure.Based on the results of fieldwork conducted since 2004, it has become clear that an important feature of the Lower Fungom region is the nature of the communicative network holding among its thirteen villages that has allowed such extensive linguistic diversity to flourish. Thus, in addition to the traditional issues encountered when doing grammatical description and comparative work on any group of understudied languages, a second set of questions is raised when conducting fieldwork in Lower Fungom regarding the sociolinguistic and historical forces that have created such extreme diversity within such a small area. This project will, therefore, continue the research already begun on the grammar and lexicon of the languages of Lower Fungom and extend it by adding a sociolinguistic and anthropological component to the work.The project will result in the creation of a sociolinguistic survey of the region as well as detailed documentation and description of three of its speech varieties that are only minimally described.