Fieldwork

I've been traveling to Burkina Faso since 2018 to document and describe the Toussian languages. Much of my research concerns these languages, and my dissertation is a grammar of the variety of Northern Toussian spoken at the village Djigouera. I approach documentation from a holistic perspective, working with the Toussian community to make diverse recordings and films of many aspects about Toussian culture: fables, oral history, interviews, descriptions of cultural practices, and various musical practices.

Tone

I'm interested in tone, particularly grammatical tone and the interaction of tone with syntax and intonation. The Toussian languages have complex tonal systems, where syntactic and prosodic units are demarcated by floating tones and phenomena like downstep. I am currently studying these tonal processes, exploring what they can teach us about how tone functions cross-linguistically.

Musical Surrogate Languages

Musical surrogate langauges are encodings of speech using musical instruments. They abound in southwest Burkina Faso, where they are usually played on a marimba-like instrument called the balafon. Talented Toussian musicians can communicate with the balafon by mapping the tones and aspects of the prosody of speech onto the bars of the balafons. Because the tone system is complex and has a high functional load, complex ideas can be conveyed with the surrogate language. They use this surrogate language during certain cultural practices and events, such as marriages, funerals, and harvest to call out messages and communicate with attendants.

For linguists, these surrogate languages have both practical and theoretical value. They are invaluable tools for tonal analysis, as they cut through the slight phonetic variations present in speech, allowing the linguist to more quickly see the tonal contrasts. Moreover, they can shed light on how speakers conceptualize and represent their language.