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Malin Petzell

Professor

Department of Languages and Literatures
Telephone
+46 31-786 19 47
Mail
malin.petzell@sprak.gu.se
Visiting address
Renströmsgatan 6
41255 Göteborg
Postal address
Box 200
40530 Göteborg

About Malin Petzell

Background

I am a linguist and Professor of African languages. My research primarily focuses on verbs in Tanzanian Bantu languages, but I am also interested in under-described languages in general and Bantu languages in particular. My research interests include language description (documentation and analysis), nominal and verbal morphosyntax, aspectual classification of verbs, and field methods. I have previously served as the Coordinator for the Teacher Education Programme (2014-2018), Assistant Head of department for Doctoral studies (2018-2020), and Assistant Dean responsible for research (2021-2022).

My current research project deals with valency in the Greater East Ruvu languages which are a group of Bantu languages spoken in Tanzania (see description below).

My newly awarded project Eating, praying, but not "loving"? builds on the current project by looking into actionality. The goals of the new project are to (i) document and analyse how events unfold in time (“actionality”) in Kutu and Kwere, two closely related under-documented and endangered Bantu language varieties spoken in central Tanzania, (ii) assess the extent to which theories of actionality account for the range of systems in these and other Bantu languages, and (iii) develop a data collection tool that can be used to conduct comparative research on actionality not only in Bantu languages, but in languages across the world.

Research

Current research project

I am the PI of a research project (funded by VR) called To break or be broken ‒ A study of valency-decreasing alternations in East Ruvu Bantu languages. In this project are also (University of Montana) and (MUCE, Tanzania), and former postdoc Sebastian Dom. The project investigates diachronic, semantic, and syntactic aspects of Bantu valency-decreasing verbal morphology, as well as its relation to and effect on verbal semantics in the East Ruvu languages, a genealogical group of six under-analysed Bantu languages spoken in Tanzania. Despite their close genetic relationship, there is a significant degree of grammatical diversity among these languages which makes them ideal for a comparative study. The project will be the first comprehensive documentation and analysis of valency-decreasing morphology in these languages, and will involve data collection through linguistic fieldwork in the Morogoro region of central Tanzania.

/en/research/a-study-of-valency-decreasing-alternations-in-east-ruvu-bantu-languages

Earlier research

My previous research projects:

  • The semantics of verbal morphology in central Tanzanian Bantu languages: a comparative study (RJ)
  • An analysis of an endangered language - the Kami in Tanzania (RJ)
  • Untangling the dialect continuum in the Morogoro region, Tanzania (VR)