Crisófia Langa da Câmara is a PhD student at Centre for Linguistics. She is Mozambican and has been working on Mozambican Bantu languages description; minority and endangered languages documentation, Linguistic Landscape, Indigenous Ecological Knowledge Preservation and Morphology and Syntax of the Bantu languages. Her research work also involves the development of teaching manuals for bilingual education schools in Mozambique and Bilingual education teachers training contents. She has publications in Descriptive Linguistic and Applied Linguistic. She has published one book and edited two books.

More information about Crisófia Langa da Câmara

Fields of interest

• Syntax
• Semantics
• Pragmatics
• Bilingual education
• Multilingualism

Research

When people communicate, they not only exchange information, but they also indicate how the speaker’s and addressee’s knowledge relate to that information. What is the source of the information, how certain is the speaker of it, is it unexpected for the speaker or addressee? Interestingly, the linguistic strategies to express these aspects are typically multifunctional, indicating fuzzy boundaries between the concepts of source, certainty etc. For example, saying ‘They DID eat it’ can indicate a contrast with the addressee thinking they didn’t, but also that this is surprising, and that the speaker is certain. All the concepts related to the speaker’s and addressee’s knowledge are thus interconnected in our mind: together they form one conceptual space. How is that space organised? And is it the same for speakers of all languages?
The project aims at discussing epistemicity in Cinyungwe trying to understand how the languages encode the speaker’s and addressee’s knowledge in relation to the exchanged information.

Curriculum Vitae

Selected publications

• Langa da Câmara, Crisófia. 2018. A selecção de VPcause em Nyungwe: Uma análise à luz de Pylkkänen. Linguistique et Langues Africaines (LLA), 4 :11–30. A Selecção do vCause em Nyungwe: Uma análise à luz de Pylkkänen (2002, 2008)
• Langa da Câmara, Crisófia. 2024. The Passive Extensions in Cinyungwe. In Duarte, Fábio; Valias, Tânia; Clauâne & Langa, David (Org.). 2024. Morfossintaxe de Línguas Indígenas, de Línguas Bantu e do Português Dialectal. Campinas: Pontes Editores, p. 113- 138.
• Langa da Câmara, Crisófia. 2025. Linguistic rights in Multilingual Contexts: The case of Mozambique. In Mhute, Isaac; Mtumane, Zilibele & Matiza, Vimbai (eds.). 2025. Resuscitation of African Languages: Theorising the Battle Against Sociocultural Genocide. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 285- 310. ISBN 978-3-031-81715-1 ISBN 978-3-031-81716-8 (eBook) https:⁠/⁠/doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-81716-8
• Langa da Câmara, Crisófia and Lusekelo, Amani. 2025. Mozambican Languages and their Role in Indigenous Ecological Knowledge Preservation: The Case of Medicinal Plants in Anyungwe Community. Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, Volume 14 No. 2, article 7, pp. 100- 120. Available at: https:⁠/⁠/commons.udsm.ac.tz/jhss/vol14/iss2/7
• Langa da Câmara, Crisófia Michael Diercks, Madelyn Colantes, Brendan Ly, Jackson Kuzmik & Hannah Lippard. An initial look at object marking in Cinyungwe. In James Essegbey, Brent Henderson, Fiona McLaughlin & Michael Diercks (eds.). 2024. Pushing the boundaries: Selected papers from the 51–52 Annual Conference on African Linguistics. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.14038755, p. 269–295.