By EBELE ORAKPO

The need to document some languages spoken  in Adamawa that were yet to be captured and documented, led three scholars from St. Petersburg State University, Russia, to Adamawa State where they spent three years researching on the Adamawa languages of Mumuye, Yadang, Waka, and Gengle.

The team comprising Professor Alexander Zheltov, Associate Professor Anastasia Lyakhovich and a final-year student, Lora Litvinova, carried out investigation into classification of the languages in groups and on Friday, February 7, they presented their preliminary findings.

Speaking at the presentation, leader of the expedition, Professor Zheltov, described these isolated languages as belonging to a “hypothetical Adamawa language family.’  This group is called Adamawa-Ubangi and comprises  25 native tongues.

He said that the methods used in the research included, “phonetics analysis with speech analyzer, vocabulary lists of various sizes, thematic vocabularies, sociolinguistic questionnaire, and preliminary grammar questionnaire.” The team found, among other things, a “lack of grammatical descriptions and wordlists for many languages,” and that “typological comparison sometimes may contradict genetic comparison in languages, notably, in ditransitive construct in Waka, Yendang, Maya, and Nyong languages.” They found that plural forms in Nyong language, for instance, could have two suffixes, and that there existed no fixed connection for the gender of speaker in communication.

The team noted the existence of a “special social connection between the first-born son and family, and his maternal lineage” in Nyong, Maya, Gengle, and Kagama languages.
Zheltov appreciated the American University of Nigeria, AUN for its unstinting support for the expedition, saying that “AUN has continued to support us.”

Sharing her experience, Dr Anastasia Lyakhovich said: “As a member of the expedition, I work on description and analysis of African languages. And what does it mean to work with languages? It is quite complicated…thanks to AUN, our result produced good outcomes of quality.”

Speaking in the same vein, Lora Litvinova, who is visiting Africa for the first time, said she was glad to join the expedition. “The expedition gave me an opportunity to put my linguistic knowledge to practice,” and thanked AUN “for the opportunity to know, research, contribute, and open the mind.”
The team donated a book on the Russian city of St. Petersburg to the AUN library in appreciation of its support for the expedition.

Commending the team for the work on Adamawa languages, AUN’s Dean, School of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Idorenyin Akpan said the university always looked forward to the visit of their Russian colleagues, describing their work in linguistics as a great contribution to Adamawa and Nigeria.