April 29, 2024

Fallon Presents at African Linguistics Conference

Associate Professor of Linguistics Paul Fallon at the 54th Annual Conference on African Linguistics

Associate Professor of Linguistics Paul Fallon at the 54th annual Conference on African Linguistics

Associate Professor of Linguistics Paul D. Fallon presented on June 12, 2023, at the 54th annual Conference on African Linguistics. His talk, titled “Three views of Proto-Cushitic: Theory, Heuristics, and Validity,” analyzed and compared three historical-comparative reconstructions of the Cushitic language family: the one by Aron Dolgopol’skij in 1973, one by Christopher Ehret in 1987, and one by M. Lionel Bender in 2020, each varying in scope, methodology and reconstructions, from a low of 15 consonants to a high of 87. The 46 Cushitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic phylum spoken in and around the Horn of Africa.