Lotta Aunio

Senior researcher

Researcher info

Institution

University of Helsinki

Department/faculty

Department of World Cultures/Faculty of Humanities

Contact information

lotta.aunio@helsinki.fi
0505679322

Keywords
Bantu languages language contact Language Development Linguistic variation Southern Ndebele Tanzania

Research projects

Linguistic Variation as an Indicator of Historical Relations and Language Contact: A Comparative grammar of four Mara Bantu languages (Tanzania)

  • Project date 1.1.2016–1.12.2019
  • Head of research Lotta Aunio
  • Language n/a

The project Linguistic Variation as an Indicator of Historical Relations and Language Contact: A comparative grammar of four Mara Bantu languages (Tanzania) provides a description of four minority Bantu languages spoken in the Mara region of Tanzania. The aim is especially to study the effects of language contact in the region and its implications for historical-comparative research within Bantu as well as more generally in historical linguistics.

Team

Hannah Gibson, Antti Laine, Tim Roth

Stability and Change in Language Contact: The Case of Southern Ndebele (South Africa)

  • Project date 1.9.2014–1.8.2018
  • Head of research Prof. Axel Fleisch
  • Language n/a

Compared to other official languages of South Africa, with 700,000 speakers S. Ndebele is a small language. Its speakers live close to major cities like Pretoria and Johannesburg and commonly use various other languages. Still, S. Ndebele speakers have been able to maintain their language. We want to find out how this works, and whether we can learn from this as a model for increasingly multilingual everyday lives that we live as Europeans.

Team

PhD Lotta Aunio, PhD Thera Crane, MA Stephan Schulz