31.3092, Featured Linguist: Amani Lusekelo

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LINGUIST List: Vol-31-3092. Mon Oct 12 2020. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 31.3092, Featured Linguist: Amani Lusekelo

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Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2020 23:22:04
From: LINGUIST List [linguist at linguistlist.org]
Subject: Featured Linguist: Amani Lusekelo

 
For this week's Featured Linguist we are pleased to present Professor Amani
Lusekelo!

Associate Professor of Linguistics, University of Dar es Salaam

--

I cannot recall anytime that I had inspirations of becoming a linguist. That I
shall never claim. But I cannot ignore the fact that I became a linguist by
effort, mainly in search of full-time scholarship.

I was born in an administrative district called Rungwe in Southern Highlands
of Tanzania in East Africa. Both parents of mine, Bernard Lusekelo and Janeth
Ndambo, were born in the families of the Moravian church clergy-men Undule and
Mwandambo, respectively. I am the seventh-born child in the family of ten
children.

My father worked first as a primary school teacher and later as an office
administrator in many parts of Tanzania but came to retire in the office of
Rungwe District Council. My mother, remained home to care for us, her precious
children. By 1983, when I joined Lupale Primary School, my father had already
retired and moved to Nkunga village, some 25 kilometres from the district
headquarters at Tukuyu. The village of Nkunga is the first landmark for me to
acquire Nyakyusa Bantu (Guthrie’s group M31), the language of the majority in
the village, and my future tongue of research specialisation. Swahili Bantu
became my second language, as it was and has remained the language of primary
schooling in Tanzania.

I learned much of spoken Swahili at Kipoke and Kantalamba schools where I
attended secondary education in Tanzania. In the late 1990s, I trained for
teacher education in Tanzania and I was stationed at Saba Secondary School in
Tanzania, teaching Geography and English Language. Perhaps both, my college
training and blood lineage allowed me to be passionate about teaching. Both my
grandfathers were teachers in the church. My father was a teacher in a school.
I, too, remained a teacher for more than two decades now! And I shall continue
teaching and researching about African languages.

During my undergraduate programme at the University of Dar es Salaam (between
2001 and 2005), I double majored Geography and English Linguistics. I minored
in education (pedagogy) studies. My best scores and interests were skewed
towards Geography, perhaps having taught more Geography sessions in secondary
schools in Tanzania. And I was training further as a secondary school teacher
of Geography. At the end of my four-year bachelor degree programme in the
mid-2005, I was awarded a full-time scholarship to undertake a master's degree
in linguistics, majoring in Bantu languages (Bantuistics). Now my life turned
from that of a teacher of Geography to a student of advanced linguistics.

With regard to Bantuistics, my favourite specialisation, I received
inspirations from my lecturers, specifically, Abel Mreta, Henry Muzale,
Josephat Rugemalira, and David Massamba. In fact, Bantuistics became funny and
enjoyable at the master’s level! The enjoyment continued when writing my
thesis on the tense and aspect system of my mother-tongue Nyakyusa as both my
late teacher, Abel Mreta, became the best supervisor, and my late mother,
Janeth Ndambo, became the best informant! The funnier part was that I am a
mother-tongue speaker of Nyakyusa, thus, I personally produced several useful
datasets, which I then personally analysed! As I pointed out in my current
publication (“Why did you choose Runyambo instead of Ruhaya for your research
project? By the way, why not choose Kiswahili, the national language? ‘Forces’
acting upon the choice of language of research in Tanzania” Journal of
Linguistics and Language in Education (2019)), I believe that research in
mother-tongue language should be encouraged.

In between my studies for master's degree programme, in 2006, I assumed a
position in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature (Incorporating
Communication Skills unit) at the Dar es Salaam University College of
Education, the Constituent College of the University of Dar es Salaam. Then, I
became a (formal) linguistics teacher (perhaps a linguist on training post as
well). Today, I still teach linguistics at Dar es Salaam University College of
Education!

The University of Cape Town in South Africa awarded me a two-year doctoral
fellowship under the auspices of USHEPiA. By 2010, I was writing my doctoral
thesis under the supervision of Herman Batibo, the distinguished scholar in
African languages
(https://linguistlist.org/studentportal/linguists/batibo.cfm). By December
2012, I graduated from the University of Botswana and returned to my working
station, Dar es Salaam University College of Education in Tanzania. At that
time, I became one amongst a handful of academics holding doctoral degrees at
the university college.

As a teaching linguist at the university college, I generally teach three
undergraduate courses: Introduction to Linguistics, Linguistic Morphology, and
Syntactic Theory. I also teach four graduate courses: Contact Linguistics,
Sociolinguistics of International Languages, Research Methods in Language
Studies, and Advanced Morphology. To support my teaching of undergraduate
students, I have written and published locally two course-books which include
illustrative cases from Swahili and English, namely, “A coursebook of
syntactic theories” and “Linguistic morphology”. A course-book on Introduction
to General Linguistics remains a challenge that I have not realised. Perhaps a
collaboration with my graduate students should be the target now because my
focus has been on contact and anthropological linguistics.

Inspired by a paper produced by Josephat Rugemalira in 2007 (i.e. “The
structure of Bantu noun phrase” SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics), I
concentrated much attention on the structure of noun phrases of eastern and
southern Bantu languages, but particularly my mother-tongue Nyakyusa. In this
line, my earlier publications were really skewed towards Bantuistics, e.g.
“The structure of the Nyakyusa noun phrase” Nordic Journal of African Studies
(2009), “Criteria for identification of determiners in Bantu noun phrases”
Journal of the Linguistics Association of Southern African Development
Community Universities (2013), and “Distribution of ɸ-features in Bantu DPs
and vPs: The case of concord and agree in Kiswahili and Kinyakyusa” Journal of
Linguistics and Language in Education (2015).

My journey to the University of Botswana was very fruitful not only on my
doctoral studies but also interests on Khoisan linguistics. Besides Herman
Batibo, both Andy Chebanne (an African linguist from Botswana) and Chris
Collins (an American syntactician and Khoisanist) invited me to field trips in
the Khoisan villages in Botswana. Apart from enjoying the countryside in that
country, I learned a lot on how to gather data from smaller communities. It
was very fascinating to learn the intricate issues related to clicks, tone
patterns, syllable structure, and sound systems of the Khoisan languages of
Botswana. But being a new comer to Khoisan linguistics, I feared sound
patterns of Khoisan languages. But I, too, got inspired to write a small-grant
application and got funding from Endangered Language Fund. I had to undertake
an investigation of personal names amongst the Hadzabe society of Tanzania.

The experience with the Hadzabe people in Mang’ola area (Karatu district) and
Yaeda Chini village (Mbulu district) in northern Tanzania turned out to be
very influential in my interests in sociolinguistics, onomastics, and
linguistic anthropology. I submitted another application to African Humanities
Program in order to continue the study of the culture of the Hadzabe. By 2015,
after a fellowship stay at University of Ibadan in Nigeria, I published a book
on the Hadzabe culture titled “The Hadzabe Society of Tanzania”.

With Hadzabe datasets, I could articulate a lot of issues related with contact
linguistics in other publications of mine (see “Language contact in Lake Eyasi
area in north-western Tanzania” Journal of Historical Society of Nigeria
(2013) and “The consequences of the contacts between Bantu and non-Bantu
languages around Lake Eyasi in northern Tanzania International Journal of
Society, Culture & Language (2015).

The exposure to the Hadzabe culture had shaped a lot my teaching of research
methods to graduate students. This happens because Nyakyusa, my first research
experience, had been associated with moving into villages where I was fully
known. Gathering rapport with villagers is always smooth. But with the
Hadzabe, I had to establish and maintain contacts, and use these contact
personnel to recruit more informants. And this is not always an easy task!

My concentration on the Hadzabe slowed down in between 2005 and 2018. With
funding obtained from the collaboration of the University of Dar es Salaam and
Michigan State University, I shifted my attention to conducting research
amongst school children in Maasai villages in Monduli district I northern
Tanzania. Issues of language contact between Swahili Bantu and Nilotic Maasai
became the centre of attention for my research (see “Education-induced
borrowing in Tanzania: Penetration of Swahili nouns into Maa (Maasai) and
Hadzane (Hadzabe). Language Matters 2017). Although I did not produce much on
the Maasai, I still reserve some energy so that in future I shall return back
to the Maasai people and conduct research on issues related to the spread of
the Maasai in Tanzania and the linguistic and social outcome of their contacts
with speakers of other languages.

In addition, in 2012, when I returned home from the University of Botswana, I
was assigned to the position of Associate Chief Editor of the only journal
available at Dar es Salaam University College of Education. Since all Chief
Editors held administrative positions in the University of Dar es Salaam, I
remained the key personnel to handle all matters arising from the submissions,
reviews, acceptances, major corrections, and rejections! And from this
exercise, I grew up exponentially, as regards journal article authorship.

Furthermore, in 2013, I participated fully in revamping the Journal of
Linguistics and Languages in Education (Department of Foreign Languages and
Linguistics at the University of Dar es Salaam) as a co-editor, assisting the
Chief Editor, by then my former teacher and supervisor, Abel Mreta. Besides
the editorial tasks and review requests, I contribute articles to this
journal, e.g. “DP-internal and V-external agreement patterns in eastern Bantu:
Re-statement of the facts in eastern Bantu” Journal of Linguistics and
Language in Education (2013).

Swahili, as the official language and medium of instruction in schools in the
country, has tremendous impact on languages of East Africa. Since I teach
contact linguistics, borrowing is one of my areas of interest. For the past
ten years, I have researched on the impact of Swahili on Bantu languages (see
“The spread of Kiswahili lexis into the interior Bantu: The case of names of
New World cereals and tubers in Tanzanian Bantu” Kioo cha Lugha 2016) and
non-Bantu languages of Tanzania (see “The incorporation of the Kiswahili names
of cereals and tubers in the non-Bantu languages in Tanzania” Utafiti Journal
of African Perspectives 2019). Some of the data is obtained from the assistant
of undergraduate students, while a bulky of datasets had been elicited from
graduate students in the University of Dar es Salaam. To me, my university
college is both, the point of work where I teach linguistics, and the language
laboratory where I gather a lot of data for my scholarship. In the way, I
teach some of my students, with whom some I co-author (see “The linguistic
landscape in urban Tanzania: An account of the language of billboards and
shop-signs in district headquarters” Journal of Language, Technology and
Entrepreneurship in Africa 2018).

Since 2018, Roland Kiessling and I (together with our graduate students) are
engaged in the research project about the Nilotic Datooga, spoken in
north-western Tanzania. In the first phase of the project (year 2018 through
2021), we focus on the speakers of Datooga dialect called Gisamjanga in Mbulu
district and Taturu in Igunga district within the country. Since I am a new
comer to the Nilo-Saharan family, I work with the peripheral topics associated
with languages in contact in Tanzania. I personally visited other Datooga
group called Rotigenga who settled in Bunda district in northern Tanzania.

So far the project has strengthened my knowledge of fieldwork practices
because I have learned a lot from the exposure that Rolland Kiessling offers.
Consequently, under the auspices of the Datooga project in the University of
Dar es Salaam, I have worked on the impact of the Sukuma Bantu on Nilotic
Datooga in Igunga district. I came up with the paper “Adaptation of Sukuma
loanwords in the western dialects of Datooga (Taturu) and its dialectological
implications” (Ethnologia Actualis 2019). 

I have gained a number of new techniques towards establishing tools for data
collection. I shall share an exemplary case here. Roland Kiessling and I
wanted to investigate the internal structure of the noun phrase of Nilotic
Datooga. I was assigned a task to come up with a research tool. I extracted a
questionnaire developed by Language of Tanzania Project in the University of
Dar es Salaam. Unfortunately it turned out that the questionnaire was designed
to capture data for the noun phrases of Bantu languages. It did not fit the
patterns of noun phrases in Nilotic languages. During the course of
elicitation session, Roland Kiessling, had to construct question-items to suit
the Datooga patterns. Had I been alone in the field, I would have abandoned
this task!     

Notice that I have not moved out of Khoisan linguistics. Currently, I am also
engaged in a project sponsored by the University of Dar es Salaam that focuses
on plants and crops amongst the Hadzabe people. It is my expectation that at
the end of 24 months, I will be able to gather names and utilities of more
than 250 plants and crops in this community. In collaboration with natural
scientists (chemist Ebert Mbukwa and botanist Halima Amir) and a specialist of
African literature (Micky Mgeja), we will be in the position to write some
three articles. Currently, Micky Mgeja and I have this accepted article:
“Linguistic and social outcomes of interactions of Hadzabe and Sukuma in
north-western Tanzania” Utafiti Journal of African Perspectives (2020). I,
too, focus on writing this monograph (it reached 180 pages): “Plant
nomenclature and ethnobotany of the Hadzabe society of Tanzania”. 

With both Datooga and Hadzabe datasets at hand, I have managed to revisit a
number of claims which I previously made particularly as regards lexical
borrowing as a result of contact of speakers of different languages. I will
urge African universities to continue funding researches as they keep building
the knowledge of the academics.  

In the course of building my career through supervision of master and doctoral
students, who are more than 30 now, I must confess that I learn a lot from
them! For instance, one of my doctoral student wrote about the noun phrase
structure of Iraqw, the Cushitic language of Tanzania. The patterns within the
noun phrase are quite distinct from the patterns I was aware of from Bantu
noun phrases. Another doctoral student is applying the framework propagated by
Harald Baayen on transparency, frequency and productivity of deverbalising
suffixes in Bantu languages. Previously, I had not paid much attention to this
framework. Her choice of this framework sparkled my interest in it. Also, one
master’s candidate wrote about semantic extension of the body parts, a subject
matter which I have not mastered fully, even for the paper we co-authored: “An
analysis of metaphoric use of names of body parts in the Bantu language
Kifipa” International Journal of Society, Culture & Language (2014). But some
students of mine have researched about the subject matter which I am very
aware of, for instance, categorial properties of adjectives, adverbs and nouns
(see “Properties of the adjective category in Runyambo” South African Journal
of African Languages 2020).

--

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