Projects
A Comparative Linguistic Approach to the History of Culinary Practice in Bantu-Speaking Africa
The project aims at a historical-comparative study of culinary vocabulary in the Bantu languages. This will result in the reconstruction of inherited vocabulary, and the identification of loanwords and their dispersal routes. The results will contribute to a better understanding of the convergence and divergence processes in the evolution of the Bantu languages, and of the history of culinary practice in Africa.
The project is also a contribution to an important issue in African history: the Bantu expansion and the extra-linguistic factors that enabled it.
Principal investigator:
- Koen Bostoen
Dates:
2007 2011Museum staff:
- Koen Bostoen
- Birgit Ricquier