Bangime: secret language, language isolate, or language island? A computer‐assisted case study

Bangime is a language isolate, which has not been proven to be genealogically related to any other language family, spoken in Central-Eastern Mali. Its speakers, the Bangande, claim affiliation with the Dogon languages and speakers that surround them throughout a cliff range known as the Bandiagara Escarpment. However, recent genetic research has shown that the Bangande are genetically distant from the Dogon and other groups. Furthermore, the Bangande people represent a genetic isolate. Despite the geographic isolation of the Bangande people, evidence of language contact is apparent in the Bangime language. We find a plethora of shared vocabulary with neighboring Atlantic, Dogon, Mande, and Songhai language groups. To address the problem of when and whence this vocabulary emerged in the language, we use a computer-assisted, multidisciplinary approach to investigate layers of contact and inheritance in Bangime. We start from an automated comparison of lexical data from languages belonging to different language families in order to obtain a first account on potential loanword candidates in our sample. In a second step, we use specific interfaces to refine and correct the computational findings. The revised sample is then investigated quantitatively and qualitatively by focusing on vocabularies shared exclusively between specific languages. We couch our results within archeological and historical research from Central-Eastern Mali more generally and propose a scenario in which the Bangande formed part of the expansive Mali Empire that encompassed most of West Africa from the 13th to the 16th centuries. We consider our methods to represent a novel approach to the investigation of a language and population isolate from multiple perspectives using innovative computer-assisted technologies.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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First steps towards the detection of contact layers in Bangime: a multi-disciplinary, computer-assisted approach

Hantgan¹,

Babiker²,

List³

2022

“…These methods treat phonetically transcribed words in spoken languages as sound sequences and then seek to identify similar sequences by using techniques originally designed for computer science and evolutionary biology ( List, 2014 ). Since sequence comparison techniques are primarily applied to identify cognate words (words shared by common inheritance), most methods that make use of them can only identify borrowings between genetically unrelated languages ( van der Ark et al , 2007 ; Mennecier et al , 2016 ; Zhang et al , 2021 ) and only a few attempts have been made to identify borrowings in genetically related languages ( Hantgan & List, forthcoming ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automated identification of borrowings in multilingual wordlists

List¹,

Forkel²

2022

Although lexical borrowing is an important aspect of language evolution, there have been few attempts to automate the identification of borrowings in lexical datasets. Moreover, none of the solutions which have been proposed so far identify borrowings across multiple languages. This study proposes a new method for the task and tests it on a newly compiled large comparative dataset of 48 South-East Asian languages from Southern China. The method yields very promising results, while it is conceptually straightforward and easy to apply. This makes the approach a perfect candidate for computer-assisted exploratory studies on lexical borrowing in contact areas.

First steps towards the detection of contact layers in Bangime: a multi-disciplinary, computer-assisted approach

Hantgan¹,

Babiker²,

List³

2022

Bangime is a language isolate, which has not been proven to be genealogically related to any other language family, spoken in Central-Eastern Mali. Its speakers, the Bangande, claim affiliation with the Dogon languages and speakers that surround them throughout a cliff range known as the Bandiagara Escarpment. However, recent genetic research has shown that the Bangande are genetically distant from the Dogon and other groups. Furthermore, the Bangande people represent a genetic isolate. Despite the geographic isolation of the Bangande people, evidence of language contact is apparent in the Bangime language. We find a plethora of shared vocabulary with neighboring Atlantic, Dogon, Mande, and Songhai language groups. To address the problem of when and whence this vocabulary emerged in the language, we use a computer-assisted, multidisciplinary approach to investigate layers of contact and inheritance in Bangime. We start from an automated comparison of lexical data from languages belonging to different language families in order to obtain a first account on potential borrowing candidates in our sample. In a second step, we use specific interfaces to refine and correct the computational findings. The revised sample is then investigated quantitatively and qualitatively by focusing on vocabularies shared exclusively between specific languages. We couch our results within archeological and historical research from Central-Eastern Mali more generally and propose a scenario in which the Bangande formed part of the expansive Mali Empire that encompassed most of West Africa from the 13th to the 16th centuries. We consider our methods to represent a novel approach to the investigation of a language and population isolate from multiple perspectives using innovative computer-assisted technologies.