Hantgan-Sonko Lab

National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS)

Ile-de-France (FR1) · France

ERC-funded
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ERC Consolidator Grant · 2021

The Mysterious Bang: A Language and Population Isolate Unlocks the Secrets of Interior West Africa's Lost Ethnolinguistic Diversity

Species are often the most diverse at their origins, and all modern humans can trace their origins back to Africa. Our ability to communicate through language defines us; every human being speaks (or signs) at least one language. We may never know when our current forms of language were first spoken, or what speakers sounded like, but we can be assured that primordial languages were spoken in Africa. Yet, a paradox presents itself with respect to the apparent lack of linguistic heterogeneity in Africa: the languages comprise only four of the world’s more than 150 families. Isolates, languages with no known living relatives, represent the missing links between today’s homogeneity and the…

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