We are happy to announce a talk by Janika Kunzmann in the Phonology Colloquium.
Room: IG 4.301
Date: Wednesday November 5th
Time: 17-18 st.
Title: On the tonal system of Mbum – Insights from fieldwork in Cameroon
Abstract:
This talk presents preliminary insights from an ongoing study of the tonal system of Mbum, a Cameroon- Ubangian language spoken in Cameroon. Drawing on data collected through both on-site and remote fieldwork conducted as part of a doctoral project in descriptive linguistics, the presentation examines key features of Mbum’s tonal system, including a two-level tonal contrast, the presence of various toneless elements, polarity rules, and instances of grammatical tone, as well as how these phenomena are approached in this study. The talk further discusses the challenges and strategies involved in preparing and organizing fieldwork data from scratch for tonal analysis. Overall, it aims to offer a window into the methods, approaches, and preliminary findings that shape a fieldwork-based tonal study of a little-documented and hardly accessible minority language.