Events

Abstract

“Continuum con addensamenti”, ‘continuum with agglomerations’: this is how Berruto once described the Italian linguistic repertoire. Much has been discussed about the extremes of this continuum; however, little do we know about those intermediate “agglomerations”. How many are there? How are they organized? Do they share features? To address these questions, we adopt a phonetic perspective and borrow a technique typically used in commercial profiling. Examining established Neapolitan phonetic features alongside new prosodic parameters, we identify possible speaker profiles and features agglomerations, shedding a new light on the intermediate varieties of the Italian standard-dialect continuum. In this talk, I will discuss preliminary studies and findings, applying this innovative methodology to offer new insights into the nature of the concept of variety.

Dr. Louis Champion (Goethe Universität Frankfurt): "Domestication of Pearl Millet in Africa: Potential Origins and Diffusion".

On November 21 we have the honour to welcome Dr. Louis Champion (Goethe Universität Frankfurt) with a talk on the "Domestication of Pearl Millet in Africa: Potential Origins and Diffusion". His talk will be followed by a BantuFirst research pitch on "Bananas in Early Bantu Speech Communities: Reconsidering Linguistic Evidence" by Sifra Van Acker. More info can be found here.