At an Afroasiatic languages conference (AfAf 2) held in Paris this month, one fifth of the talks given were by members of our Linguistics Department: Prof. Emerita Hagit Borer, Prof. Daniel Harbour, Dr Coppe van Urk, and our recent MA graduate, Coleman Sokol. The spanning of speakers across four generations is a testament to the transmission of research specialisms in this major but under-researched language family.
A key part of this transmission is our BA and MA modules covering Understudied Languages and Linguistic Theory. These modules, which involve work with native speakers, are unique to Linguistics at Queen Mary. In recent years, they have focused on Tigrinya (an Afroasiatic language of Eritrea) and two of the conference presentations discussed ideas that had emerged from our BA and MA teaching.