Axel Fleisch
My area of interest is the intersection of culture, language and history in Africa, as well as the intricate cultural history of contact between Africans and Europeans. For me, language constitutes the paramount repository of culture, and affords the crucial cultural repertoires that people draw on. For that reason, I am following linguistic debates (mostly concerning Bantu and Amazigh/Berber varieties). I use these to access cultural topics and conceputal history among speakers of African languages, relying mostly on cognitive semantic theoretical foundations.
In practice, these experiences have led me to a broad anthropological approach. The themes that interest me include (1) aesthetics, art and the body, (2) socio-cultural identity formations especially with regard to LGBTI and same-sex attraction in Africa, and (3) cognitive, cultural and biographic determinants in the experience of migrants navigating novel cultural and linguistic environments.
Trying not to leave other parts of Africa totally out of my focus, I am particularly interested in the southern sub-continent and the Portuguese-using countries in Africa. In addition to this, I try to work as much as possible with people originally from Africa, but now living in different parts of Europe.
Phone: +358 (0)9 191-22677
Address: Department of World Cultures
P.O. Box 59
FI - 00014 University of Helsinki
Finland
In practice, these experiences have led me to a broad anthropological approach. The themes that interest me include (1) aesthetics, art and the body, (2) socio-cultural identity formations especially with regard to LGBTI and same-sex attraction in Africa, and (3) cognitive, cultural and biographic determinants in the experience of migrants navigating novel cultural and linguistic environments.
Trying not to leave other parts of Africa totally out of my focus, I am particularly interested in the southern sub-continent and the Portuguese-using countries in Africa. In addition to this, I try to work as much as possible with people originally from Africa, but now living in different parts of Europe.
Phone: +358 (0)9 191-22677
Address: Department of World Cultures
P.O. Box 59
FI - 00014 University of Helsinki
Finland
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Berber. We show that pragmatics trigger the emergence of (relatively stable) discourse-confi gurationality, without giving rise to a VSO>SVO shift. We compare Taqbaylit and Tashelhit in terms of information structure and word order variation, and come to the conclusion that, while there is good reason to classify Taqbaylit as discourseconfigurational, Tashelhit is somewhat more restrictive in terms of word order fl exibility. We link those characteristics with case-marking: the distinction between free state and annexation state is more clearly a dependency-oriented phenomenon in Taqbaylit, while it corresponds more closely to a subject (or marked nominative) versus absolute case system in Tashelhit.
is presented here: the detailed cognitive-semantic analysis of synchronic polysemy and historical semantic changes of the spatial terms under study.
The aims pursued with a study on verbal semantics in Lucazi grammar can thus be divided into two areas: One is the particular interest in Lucazi as a specific language seen in its own local, scientific and typological context; the other centres around the interaction of semantics and grammar in the realm of the verb phrase.
One of the main conclusions is that we have to assume a linguistic situation in SE Angola that has continuously been recreating itself on the basis of preceding linguistic constellations that were similarly diverse, but in different ways
than the actual situation. The most likely factor to be responsible for such a situation are low population density in a fairly large area, considerable small-scale movement of speakers, and thus frequently shifting earlier communicative networks.
despite their “mixed status”, it is not deemed an adequate
solution to simply view Berber varieties as equipollently-framing languages.
Berber. We show that pragmatics trigger the emergence of (relatively stable) discourse-confi gurationality, without giving rise to a VSO>SVO shift. We compare Taqbaylit and Tashelhit in terms of information structure and word order variation, and come to the conclusion that, while there is good reason to classify Taqbaylit as discourseconfigurational, Tashelhit is somewhat more restrictive in terms of word order fl exibility. We link those characteristics with case-marking: the distinction between free state and annexation state is more clearly a dependency-oriented phenomenon in Taqbaylit, while it corresponds more closely to a subject (or marked nominative) versus absolute case system in Tashelhit.
is presented here: the detailed cognitive-semantic analysis of synchronic polysemy and historical semantic changes of the spatial terms under study.
The aims pursued with a study on verbal semantics in Lucazi grammar can thus be divided into two areas: One is the particular interest in Lucazi as a specific language seen in its own local, scientific and typological context; the other centres around the interaction of semantics and grammar in the realm of the verb phrase.
One of the main conclusions is that we have to assume a linguistic situation in SE Angola that has continuously been recreating itself on the basis of preceding linguistic constellations that were similarly diverse, but in different ways
than the actual situation. The most likely factor to be responsible for such a situation are low population density in a fairly large area, considerable small-scale movement of speakers, and thus frequently shifting earlier communicative networks.
despite their “mixed status”, it is not deemed an adequate
solution to simply view Berber varieties as equipollently-framing languages.