Our dear colleague, Prof. em. Dr. Herrmann Jungraithmayr, born May 7th, 1931, has just turned 95. On this occasion, I have updated the list of his publications (excluding book reviews written by him) which I have compiled ten years ago:

Publikationen von Herrmann Jungraithmayr bis 2026

The list has been formatted in a way that it can be printed like a brochure with two pages on one A4 sheet, front and backside. Feel free to change the layout if that doesn’t work for you.

I am sure there will be mistakes or omissions, so I will be grateful to receive your corrections.

• Chadic Lexical Database Issue V:   Velar and post-velar fricatives,
  pharyangeals, glottal stop

• Chadic Lexical Database Issue VI: Labials b, f, p

• Chadic Lexical Database Issue VII: Dentals d, t, ṭ

We wish a Happy New Year 2025 to you all! 

As a part of a new initiative in our area, we invite interested speakers to submit abstracts for a panel on Tense and Aspect (TA) in Berber and Chadic, to be held at the upcoming Afrikanist*innentag from Wednesday 18 to Friday 20 June 2025 at the University of Vienna. This panel aims to bring together experts to share insights and advancements on this topic. We are looking forward to receiving your abstracts!

All the best!

Aicha Belkadi, Guillaume Guitang, Evgeniya Gutova, Joseph Lovestrand, Henning Schreiber, Georg Ziegelmeyer 

Dates:
Call deadline: March 1, 2025
Notifications: March 25, 2025
Panel dates: June 18 – 20, 2025
Modality: hybrid 

A call for papers and other information can be found at https://afrika.univie.ac.at/en/events/afrikanistinnentag-2025/

The following additional information on a “Panel on Tense and Aspect in Berber (Amazigh) and Chadic” has been sent to us by Joseph Lovestrand:

Call for papers for the Panel on Tense and Aspect in Berber (Amazigh) and Chadic (convenors: Aicha Belkadi, Guillaume Guitang, Evgeniya Gutova, Joseph Lovestrand, Henning Schreiber, Georg Ziegelmeyer).

Call deadline: January 31, 2025

Call for abstracts
We invite interested speakers to submit abstracts for a panel on Tense and Aspect (TA) in Berber and Chadic, to be held at the upcoming Afrikanist*innentag from Wednesday 18 to Friday 20 June 2025 at the University of Vienna. This panel aims to bring together experts to share insights and advancements on this topic.
Venue: University of Vienna, Austria and online (through zoom)
Dates: 18-20 June 2025

Background
A common Tense and Aspect (TA) in Berber and Chadic is between perfective and imperfective. These categories are often complemented by a third, the aorist. Tense is generally an uncertain category both in Berber and Chadic. In Berber, there is debate on whether TA systems involve a ternary (perfective/imperfective/aorist) or a binary (perfective/imperfective) distinction (see, e.g., Belkadi 2013). In Chadic, many authors tend to adhere to Schuh’s (2017) claim that “no Chadic language marks tense, aspect, and mood as independent variables” (despite Newman’s warning note: “This statement may be slightly too strong”).

A major challenge in Berber and Chadic TA studies relates to terminology. Recurrent terms like “perfective”, “imperfective”, and “aorist” tend to be defined in very idiosyncratic ways (see e.g., Meyer & Wolff’s (2019) note on Chadic: “The terms aspect and tense are used without much precision in Chadic linguistics”). The idiosyncratic use of terminology has important consequences on our ability to carry out any serious cross-linguistic comparison: one generally runs the risk of comparing apples and oranges. And, at a more general level, the imprecise use of terminology hinders the possibility to engage with the theoretical literature on TA. Generally, in-depth semantics and pragmatics studies of the Berber and Chadic TA systems are rare. In Chadic, for example, only Hausa has attracted an in-depth semantic analysis of (see, e.g., Mucha 2013). However, Hausa is not fully representative of the entire Chadic family, known for its bewildering diversity (Wolff 2022). The consequence of this situation is that the potentially fascinating details of the Berber and Chadic TA systems still remain off the theoretical literature’s radar.

Comparing Berber and Chadic TA has also never been high on the research agenda. One reason is that many languages have not been described in a way that allows for such an enterprise. And where descriptions exist, discussions of TA tend to focus on the morphological means (e.g., identifying different conjugational patterns), to the detriment of periphrastic/analytical means (e.g., complex verb predicates, temporal particles, adverbs etc.), which many Berber and Chadic languages rely on to express the meanings associated with tense and viewpoint aspect morphology.

The aim of this panel is to a) create and/or reinforce links between scholars interested in Berber and Chadic, in general, and TA in particular. It also seeks to broaden the scope of research by a) bringing to prominence to non-morphological devices and their semantic and pragmatic properties; and b) favouring Berber-Chadic comparison at the morphological and semantic/pragmatic levels.

This panel encourages contributions that explore any aspect of TA in Berber and Chadic, including but not limited to:
• The acquisition of Tense and Aspect in Berber and Chadic
• Comparative studies: crosslinguistic comparisons that highlight similarities and differences between Berber and Chadic.
• Semantics and pragmatics accounts that engage with the theoretical literature on Tense and Aspect
• Fieldwork: reflections on field approaches to Tense and Aspect in the Berber and/or Chadic contexts
• Temporal reference in the absence of tense: accounts on “tenselessness” and the interpretation of temporal reference via viewpoint aspect or other categories
• Descriptive accounts of Tense and Aspect systems in Berber and/or Chadic
• Diachrony: reflections on the evolution of Tense and Aspect systems and the emergence of different categories and/or markers
• Language contact: Berber and Chadic contact (e.g., Tuareg and Hausa contact), influence of other languages on Chadic and Berber TA

Proposals (max. 300 words excluding references) for paper presentations should be submitted until January 31, 2025 at afrikanistinnentag2025@univie.ac.at.
Presentations: 20 min. for presentation and 10 min. for discussion
Dates:
Call deadline: January 31, 2025
Notifications: March 15, 2025
Panel dates: June 18 – 20, 2025
Modality: hybrid

References
Belkadi, Aicha. 2013. Aspect and mood in Berber and the aorist issue. SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics. SOAS University of London 16. 127–150.
Meyer, Ronny & Ekkehard H Wolff. 2019. Afroasiatic linguistic features and typologies. In Ekkehard H Wolff (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of African Linguistics, 246–325. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mucha, Anne. 2013. Temporal interpretation in Hausa. Linguistics and Philosophy. Springer Verlag 36(5). 371–415. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-013-9140-6.
Schuh, Russel Gallen. 2017. A Chadic Cornucopia. (Ed.) Paul Newman. UCLA: Department of Linguistics. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5zx6z32d.
Wolff, H. Ekkehard. 2022. A Historical Phonology of Central Chadic: Prosodies and Lexical Reconstruction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009024310.

This monograph includes a grammar, a dictionary as well as 13 texts of this language, which stands out by its complex morphology. It is a peculiarity of this study that two (three) dialects of the language are described in parallel.

The book has been published by Harrassowitz: https://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/La_langue_kwang_et_ses_dialectes_(Rpublique_du_Tchad)/title_7391.ahtml

A Table of Contents is available for Download

Zuwa ga abokai masana Hausa,

     We are pleased to inform you that the Hausa-English / English-Hausa dictionary that we published with Bayero University Press in Kano is now available outside of Nigeria. If you are interested in obtaining a copy for yourselves, or if you would like for your library to acquire a copy, the book can be purchased from African Books Collective in Oxford, see https://www.africanbookscollective.com/books/hausa-dictionary-for-everyday-use.

     This new printing is essentially the same as the Kano edition, however we were fortunate in being able to correct a few typos and other small errors that were found in the original.

Best,

Paul & Roxana

The latest JALL has two reviews of works on Chadic languages:

• Allison, Sean. 2020. A grammar of Makary Kotoko. (Grammars and Sketches of the World’s Languages, Africa 12). Leiden/Boston: Brill. XVIII+502 pages. ISBN: 978-90-04-42251-3. EUR 149. (Reviewed by: Abdoulaye, Mahamane L.). In: Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 42(2). 279–285. https://doi.org/10.1515/jall-2021-2022
• Newman, Paul & Roxana Ma Newman. 2020. Hausa Dictionary: Hausa-English/English-Hausa, Ƙamusun Hausa: Hausa-Ingilishi/Ingilishi-Hausa. Kano: Bayero University Press, Kano, Nigeria. (Reviewed by: Leben, William R.). In: Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 42(2). 287–290. https://doi.org/10.1515/jall-2021-2023

Paul Newman is pleased to announce the publication of his book A History of the Hausa Language: Reconstruction and Pathways to the Present, Cambridge University Press (2022).

The following description can be found at the CUP website:

With more than sixty million speakers across Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, and Ghana Hausa is one of the most widely spoken African languages. It is known for its rich phonology and complex morphological and verbal systems. Written by the world’s leading expert on Hausa, this ground-breaking book is a synthesis of his life’s work, and provides a lucid and comprehensive history of the language. It describes Hausa as it existed in former times and sets out subsequent changes in phonology, including tonology, morphology, grammar, and lexicon. It also contains a large loanword inventory, which highlights the history of Hausa’s interaction with other languages and peoples. It offers new insights not only on Hausa in the past, but also on the Hausa language as spoken today. This book is an invaluable resource for specialists in Hausa, Chadic, Afroasiatic, and other African languages as well as for general historical linguists and typologists.

Cambridge University Press

For information on purchasing or making a recommendation to your library, see doi.org/10.1017/9781009128070.

The 5th edition of Paul Newman‘s Comprehensive Bibliography of Chadic and Hausa Linguistics has been posted and is now available online:

Newman, Paul. 2022. Comprehensive Bibliography of Chadic and Hausa Linguistics, 5th edition. Bloomington: IUScholarWorks. 

URL:   https://hdl.handle.net/2022/27402

DOI:    https://doi.org/10.5967/5q3g-t220

It includes approximately 3,500 linguistic works written on Chadic languages, of which about 2,000 are on Hausa, by far the largest and most widely spoken member of the family. The entries date from 1790 to the present. The bibliography contains published books and articles as well as unpublished Ph.D. dissertations and master’s theses.