Angolan Language Ecologies: Contexts of Contact, Change and Normalization
From 09 Oct 2025 until 11 Oct 2025 - BIOPOLIS-CIBIO, Vairão, Portugal
Research in the settlement and contact history of Southern Africa has been an important activity within the TwinLab cooperation between BIOPOLIS-CIBIO and our partner institutions in Angola. In this workshop, entitled Angolan Language Ecologies: Contexts of Contact, Change and Normalization (Vairão, 9–11 October 2025), researchers from eight countries explore how linguistic, historical, and ecological perspectives can be integrated to better understand language contact and change in Angola. The event marks Angola’s 50th anniversary of independence and takes this milestone as an opportunity to reflect on the country’s remarkable linguistic dynamics, where Portuguese – an erstwhile colonial language – has developed in close interaction with numerous Bantu and Khoisan languages.
The workshop brings together 20 scholars from fields such as Romance and African linguistics to examine how these languages mutually influence each other and to investigate processes of contact, convergence, and normalization in postcolonial Angola. It is co-organized by the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and Goethe University Frankfurt (Germany) together with BIOPOLIS-CIBIO (University of Porto, Portugal), and generously supported by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation.
At its core, the initiative aims to establish a sustainable, interdisciplinary research network involving partners from the Global South, in particular Angola. The meeting also serves as a platform for preparing an open-access publication and for forming smaller thematic working groups that will coordinate multinational research proposals. By hosting the event, BIOPOLIS-CIBIO provides an ideal interdisciplinary framework linking linguistic, evolutionary, and biocultural research perspectives.
Through this collaboration, the emerging research group seeks to shed new light on Angola’s unique linguistic ecologies – spanning from contact-induced change in Bantu and Khoisan languages to the rapid evolution of Angolan Portuguese – and to foster long-term partnerships between African and European institutions.
PROGRAM
Day 1
9:45 Welcome - The organizers
PANEL 1 – THE BANTU-ROMANCE AND INTER-BANTU CONNECTIONS: YESTERDAY – TODAY – TOMORROW
10:00 Angolan Portuguese and the 'Romania Bantu' - Miguel Gutiérrez Maté (Freiburg)
10:00 Angolan Portuguese and the 'Romania Bantu' - Miguel Gutiérrez Maté (Freiburg)
10:30 Grammatical and sociolinguistic sketch of a double contact-language: the case of Ngoya - Alexander Cobbinah (São Paulo) & José Lucas Antunes (Bahia)
11:00 Coffee break
11:30 South Atlantic Portuguese: Structural continuities between West Africa and Northeastern Brazil - Uli Reich (Berlin)
12:00 Contacts in Northeastern Angola: in search of the Minungu language - Jacky Maniacky (Tervueren)
PANEL 2 – PORTUGUESE & BANTU IN ANGOLA: EVOLVING MORPHOSYNTAX I
12:30 Tense and aspect categories across Angolan languages - Axel Fanego (Frankfurt)
13:00 Negation in Angola's linguistic mosaic: A study of form, function, and variation - Rozenn Guérois (Paris-Villejuif)
13:30 "... e o você angolano?"– Morphosyntax and pragmatics of address with você in the context of Afro-Portuguese language contact - Sebastião Iken (Köln)
13:30 "... e o você angolano?"– Morphosyntax and pragmatics of address with você in the context of Afro-Portuguese language contact - Sebastião Iken (Köln)
14:00 Lunch
16:00–17:30 Think tank session 1: Micro-working groups i – iv
20:00 Conference dinner at the restaurant Saura Cool, Vila do Conde
Day 2
9:15 Welcome back - The organizers
9:30 From Genes to Graduates: Biodiversity Science and Education via CIBIO's TwinLab Network - Fernando Sequeira & Marion Tafani (CIBIO–Biopolis, Porto)
PANEL 2 – PORTUGUESE & BANTU IN ANGOLA: EVOLVING MORPHOSYNTAX II
10:00 Angolan Portuguese: (some) morphosyntactic and pragmatic peculiarities - Paulo Osório (Lissabon)
10:30 O dativo com a preposição em: Uma marca do Português Angolano? - Jeremias Pessela (Bié)
11:00 Coffee break
PANEL 3 – PORTUGUESE & BANTU IN ANGOLA: LEXICON & PHONETICS AT THE CROSSROADS
12:00 Fenómenos fonéticos no português popular de Angola: da norma às manifestações de variação e provável mudança linguística - Paulino Soma (Lubango)
12:30 Dinâmicas lexicais no Português de Angola: neologismos morfológicos e semânticos - Márcio Undolo (Benguela)
13:00 Nature and evolution of Portuguese loanwords in South West Kikongo language varieties - Heidi Goes (Gent)
13:30 O aportuguesamento dos topónimos em Angola, particularmente em Cabinda - Abel Massiala (Cabinda)
14:00 Lunch
16:00–17:30 Think tank session 2: Micro-working groups i – iv
Day 3
9:45 Welcome back again - The organizers
PANEL 4 – ANGOLA: DYNAMICS OF STANDARDIZATION AND LINGUA(E) FRANCA(E)
10:00 Towards a standard variety of Angolan Portuguese - Maria do Céu (Évora)
10:30 More than Zero: Subject expression and standardization in Angolan Portuguese - David Paul Gerards & Leon Gomoll (Mainz)
11:00 Coffee break
11:30 Lingala in Angola: An initial assessment of its role as a lingua franca and home language - Kofi Yakpo (Hong Kong)
12:00 A language on the move: Research perspectives on Lingala in Cabinda - Nico Nassenstein & Antónia Fendt (Mainz)
PANEL 5 – ANGOLAN LANGUAGE ECOLOGIES: INTERDISCIPLINARY DIALOGUES
12:30 Southern Angola as a contact zone: Insights from linguistics and genetics - Anne-Maria Fehn & Jorge Rocha (CIBIO–Biopolis, Porto)
13:00 Segmentos consonânticos do !khun (Khoisan) de Angola: implicações na aprendizagem fonológica do português L2 - José Kondja (Ondjiva/Lubango)
13:30 Lunch
15:30–17:00 Think tank session 3: From micro to macro – multinational project proposal speed-dating (flashlight presentations on existing initiatives and identification of further ideas for proposals)
17:00 Farewell - The organizers
