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

喀麦隆的下芬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，人们发现至少有七种土著语言，其中五种在其他地方没有人说过。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]--几乎不知道，甚至对在喀麦隆工作的其他语言学家也是如此。这些语言显然与在撒哈拉以南非洲占主导地位的班图语有关，但它们的遗传联系的细节在很大程度上仍然不清楚。根据自2004年以来进行的田野调查结果，很明显，下芬戈姆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得以蓬勃发展。因此，除了在对任何一组研究不足的语言进行语法描述和比较工作时遇到的传统问题之外，在下芬戈姆进行田野调查时提出了第二组问题，涉及在如此小的区域内造成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关于下芬戈姆语言的语法和词汇的研究，并通过在工作中增加社会语言学和人类学部分来扩展这一研究。该项目将导致对该地区进行一次社会语言学调查，并对该地区的三种语言变体进行详细的记录和描述。

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.