Microvariation in Bantu languages of South Africa: building theories from typology data

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The second year of the project had multiple subparts: (a) remote data collection, (b) two field data collection, and (c) a two-day workshop of the grant members. The main aim of AY2022 was to collect a comparable baseline data across 9 Bantu languages in the project. Data sets were constructed from nouns, verbs and adjectives obtained from the Swadesh list. Production of these words in high tone and low tone contexts was recorded. The remote data collection was conducted with two Southern Ndebele speakers who joined the online sessions. Assistants were able to experience remote fieldwork by actively interacting with the speakers. The fieldwork in December 2022 was conducted in Thohoyandou for Xitsonga and Tshivenda, and Lenyenye for Northern Sotho. Each participant read more than 700 sentences for the project. Data from 30 speakers were processed within two months. In March 2023, fieldwork in Mbombela for Southern Ndebele, and Thohoyandou for Siswati was conducted. IsiXhosa and isiZulu data was also collected, which is being processed. At the workshop in March 2023, all the members were present in a face-to-face meeting in Johannesburg. During the 2-day workshop, research topics were shared and plan for data processing as well as project planning was made. In AY2022, 3 conference presentations and 1 invited talk were delivered.