Projects
Word and Plants
A comparative study of the vocabulary for food-producing plants in Central and Southern Africa
Research on the names of the main food plants in bantu languages. A distinction is made between plants of long standing cultivation and plants that have been introduced more or less recently. Through its pluridisciplinary aspect (collaboration with Ethnography and Agriculture Services), this work is a contribution of linguistic studies (antiquity, shifts in meaning, paths of spreading of names…) to researches into history of food plants in Central, Eastern and Southern Africa.
Principal investigator:
Dates:
2003 2006Museum staff:
- Koen Bostoen
- Jacky Maniacky