Dominique Loviscach is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Linguistics. The goal of her PhD project is to write a descriptive grammar of Mararit, a Taman language of Chad and Sudan. Her research interests further include historical African linguistics and especially the past of hunter-gatherer groups in East Africa.

More information about Dominique Loviscach

Fields of interest

• descriptive linguistics
• African linguistics
• African historical linguistics
• fieldwork
• grammar writing
• differential object marking
• clusivity
• nominal number

Research

Human language fascinates me in many respects: Its diversity but also the many similarities we can find between languages, what language can tell us about our past and its close connection to culture. Analyzing language is like working on a jigsaw without knowing the cover picture – it’s confusing, fun and full of surprises!
The goal of my PhD project is to write a grammar on Mararit, a Taman language spoken on both sides of the Chadian-Sudanese border. My research involves collecting primary data during fieldtrips to Chad where I collect words, sentences and texts with the goal of analyzing and describing the different linguistic levels of Mararit.
For my master’s thesis, I conducted fieldwork in Kenya to look into factors influencing differential object marking in Kîîtharaka, a Central Kenyan Bantu language. Further, I am interested in the syntactic-pragmatics interface, such as the relationship between the pragmatic functions of the first person inclusive and its syntactic properties. During my student assistantship in the LHEAf project (“Linguistic History of East Africa”), I investigated the past of East-African hunter-gatherer groups, using an interdisciplinary angle by taking evidence from linguistics, anthropology, archaeology and genetics into account for my research.

Curriculum vitae

Publications