Ph.D., Leiden University

Areas of Interest

My research interests include the description and documentation of endangered languages, syntax-semantics interface, the varieties of English spoken by people of African descent, and the influence of African languages on creoles. I work on the Kwa languages of West Africa, especially Gbe (i.e. Ewe, Gen, Aja and Fon), Akan, and Ghana-Togo Mountain (GTM) languages (Nyangbo and Animere). I also investigate the influence of the Gbe languages on Suriname creoles.

Recent Publications

• 2024 Towards a unified account of na in Akan. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 9(1)(with Galia Hatav) https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.10082
• 2024 Predication in African languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins (with Enoch O. Aboh).
• 2024 From greeting to injecting: the case of dó in Ewe. In Essegbey, James and Aboh, Enoch O. (eds.), Predication in African languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins
• 2024 Moving from verbs to prepositions in Gbe. In Essegbey, James and Aboh, Enoch O. (eds.), Predication in African languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (With Aboh, Enoch O. and Ameka, Felix)
• 2024 Catching and classifying fishes among the Dwang. In Nassenstein, Nico, Alice Mitchell and Andrea Hollington (eds.), Anthropological Linguistics: Perspectives from Africa. Amsterdam: John Benjamins
• 2021 Documenting oral genres. In Akintunde Akinyemi & Toyin Falola (eds.), The Palgrave handbook of African oral traditions and folklore, (Chapter 8). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
• 2021 Celebrating 50 years of ACAL: Selected Papers from the 50th Annual Conference for African Linguistics. Berlin: Language Science Press. (With Akin Akinlabi, Laura J. Downing, Laura McPherson, Katie Franich, Lee Bickmore, Sharon Rose, Michael Cahill & Michael Diercks)
• 2020 Initial prominence and progressive vowel harmony in Tutrugbu. Phonological Data & Analysis (with Adam McCollum) https://phondata.org/index.php/pda/article/view/14
• 2020 Moving into and out of Sranan: multiple effects of contacts. In Norval Smith, Tonjes Veenstra & Enoch O. Aboh (eds.) Aspects of contact. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins (with Adrienne Bruyn)
• 2019 The grammar of verbs and their arguments: a cross-linguistic perspective Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe. (with Dalina Kallulli & Adam Bodomo).
• 2019 Cutting across the Gbe divide. In Essegbey, James & Kallulli Dalina & Bodomo, Adams (eds.), The grammar of verbs and their arguments: a cross-linguistic perspective, 85-114. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe

Courses Taught

• AKA 1130 Beginning Akan 1
• AKA 1131 Beginning Akan 2
• AKA 2200 Intermediate Akan 1
• AKA 2201 Intermediate Akan 2
• SST 2501 African Elements in the Americas
• SSA 4903 Africanisms in the Americas
• SSA 4930 Black Englishes
• SSA 4930 Methods of Language Documentation