NILOMORPH
The evolution of suprasegmental morphology in West Nilotic
Workshop
The Evolution of Non-Concatenative Morphology
Workshop at the International Morphology Meeting 22, Budapest, 28-31 May 2026
PROJECT GOALS
NILOMORPH sets out to explain how linguistic evolution took a highly unexpected turn in one family of languages spoken in East Africa. The West Nilotic family have evolved a morphological system where multiple grammatical categories are expressed simultaneously within a single syllable, through subtle modulations of its phonological properties.
The aim of NILOMORPH is to reconstruct this evolution. To account for the extreme rarity of this morphological type, we not only need to explain how it occurred here, but also why it did not occur in other language families.
NILOMORPH proposes a transformative step in historical linguistics: the reconstruction not just of external features, but of the cognitive motivation behind them.
This will be achieved through the synergy of three teams, DESCRIPTION, MORPHOLOGY and RECONSTRUCTION, employing a combination of field linguistics, acoustic analysis, experimental linguistics, computational simulation, typology, and the historical-comparative method.
DESCRIPTION
The Description Team will conduct a major descriptive campaign on West Nilotic languages, concentrating on those branches of the family that are most relevant to the objective of diachronic reconstruction: Burun, Northern Lwoo, and Dinka-Nuer.
MORPHOLOGY
The Morphology Team is to provide a comprehensive account of the lexicon, morphological forms and morphosyntactic categories in West Nilotic, to explain their paradigmatic interactions, and to test our hypotheses about why this type of morphological system is so rare and yet still possible.
RECONSTRUCTION
The goal of the Reconstruction Team is to articulate the concrete reconstruction of West Nilotic lexicon and morphology, employing ground-breaking methods for identifying cognate suprasegmental morphological processes and analogical changes, as well as extrapolating from parallel processes in other language families.
MATTHEW BAERMAN
PROJECT LEADER, MORPHOLOGY TEAM PI
Matthew Baerman is Professorial Research Fellow in the Surrey Morphology Group at the University of Surrey, and Project Leader of NILOMORPH. His research into inflectional systems involves a combination of cross-linguistic surveys, fieldwork, diachronic reconstruction, and computational modelling.
BERT REMIJSEN
DESCRIPTION TEAM PI
Bert Remijsen is an expert in the suprasegmental systems of West Nilotic languages, with a particular focus on the Shilluk language of South Sudan. He is Reader in Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh.
LAMEEN SOUAG
reconstruction TEAM PI
Lameen Souag is Chargé de Recherche and former director of LACITO (Languages and Cultures of Oral Tradition), one of the laboratories of CNRS. His research focuses on language description and historical linguistics, with areal expertise in North Africa, the Sahara, and the Sahel.
