Hilde Gunnink
Lecturer
- Name
- Dr. H. Gunnink
- Telephone
- +31 71 527 2727
- h.gunnink@hum.leidenuniv.nl
- ORCID iD
- 0000-0002-5508-8156
Hilde Gunnink is a linguist specialized in the languages of Southern Africa. Her research focuses on documenting the synchronic structures of African languages, how these developed and changed over time, and what this can tell us about the human past.
More information about Hilde Gunnink
Fields of interest
- Bantu languages
- Khoisan languages
- Southern Africa
- African historical linguistics
- Prehistoric language contact
- Click languages
Research
The indigenous societies of Southern Africa have a fascinating, but little understood history. Written records in this region only go back a few centuries. Moreover, European colonial impact on indigenous groups has been enormous and often destructive. To get around these limitations, my research makes use of one of the few reliable tools we have to uncover Southern Africa's past: linguistics. I collect and analyse novel language data and integrate them with findings from genetics and archaeology. This sheds new light on how and when different speech communities arose, interacted with each other, and changed over time.
Grants and awards
- Senior postdoctoral project (FWO - Research Foundation Flanders), "Language contact and linguistic reconstruction: (pre)historic Bantu-Khoisan interactions in Southern Africa in a historical linguistic perspective", 2022-2026
- Postdoctoral project (FWO - Research Foundation Flanders), "Language contact between migrating Bantu speakers and resident Khoisan speakers in southern Africa", 2018-2022
Curriculum Vitae
Education
2018: Ghent University, PhD in African languages and cultures
Dissertation title: "A grammar of Fwe. A Bantu language of Zambia and Namibia"
2012: Leiden University, Research MA in Linguistics
Employment
2019-2020, 2021-2022, 2024-now: Leiden University, lecturer in linguistics
2018-now: Ghent University, Postdoctoral researcher (funded by FWO - Flanders Research Organization)
2012-2018: Ghent University, PhD student/teaching assistant
Lecturer
- Faculty of Humanities
- Leiden Univ Centre for Linguistics
- LUCL T&C van Afrika
- Fortes-Lima C.A., Burgarella C, Hammarén R., Eriksson A., Vicente M., Jolly C., Semo A., Gunnink H., Pacchiarotti S., Mundeke L., Matonda I. Muluwa J.K., Coutros P., Nyambe T.S., Cikomola J.C., Coetzee V. Castro M. de, Ebbesen P. Delanghe J., Stoneking M., Barham L., Lombard M., Meyer A., Steyn M., Malmström H., Rocha J., Soodyall H., Pakendorf B., Bostoen K. & Schlebusch C.M. (2024), The genetic legacy of the expansion of Bantu-speaking peoples in Africa, Nature 625: 540-547.
- Gunnink H., Chousou-Polydouri N. & Bostoen K. (2023), Divergence and contact in Southern Bantu language and population history, Language Dynamics and Change 13(1): 74-131.
- Gunnink H. (2022), The early history of clicks in Nguni, Diachronica 39(3): 311-368.
- Gunnink H. (2022), A grammar sketch of the Shetjhauba variety of Shekgalagadi, Studies in African Linguistics 51(1): 29--55.
- Bostoen K. & Gunnink H. (2022), The Impact of Autochthonous Languages on Bantu Language Variation: A Comparative View on Southern and Central Africa. In: Mufwene S.S. & Escobar A.M. (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact: Volume 1: Population Movement and Language Change. Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 152-186.
- Sengupta D., Choudhury A., Fortes-Lima C., Aron S., Whitelaw G., Bostoen K., Gunnink H., Chousou-Polydouri N., Delius P., Tollman S., Gómez-Olivé F.X., Norris S., Mashinya F., Alberts M., Study A., Consortium H., Hazelhurst S., Schlebusch C.M. & Ramsay M. (2021), Genetic substructure and complex demographic history of South African Bantu speakers, Nature Communications 12(1): 2080.
- Gunnink H. (2020), Click loss and click Insertion in Fwe. In: Sands B. (Ed.), Click consonants. Empirical Approaches to Linguistic Theory no. 15. Leiden: Brill. 156-178.
- Gunnink H. (2020), Language contact between Khoisan and Bantu languages: The case of Setswana, Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 38(1): 27-45.
- Gunnink H. (2019), The fronted-infinitive construction in Fwe, Africana Linguistica 25: 65-88.
- Sands B. & Gunnink H. (2019), Clicks on the fringes of the Kalahari Basin Area. In: Clem E., Jenks P. & Sande H. (Eds.), Theory and description in African Linguistics: Selected papers from the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics. Berlin: Language Science Press. 703-724.
- Sands B. & Gunnink H. (2019), Languages of Africa. In: Damico J.S. & Ball M.J. (Eds.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Human Communication Sciences and Disorders. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publishers. 1020-1024.
- Gunnink H. (2017), Locative Clitics in Fwe, Africana Linguistica 23: 119-136.
- Pakendorf B., Gunnink H., Sands B. & Bostoen K. (2017), Prehistoric Bantu-Khoisan language contact: A cross-disciplinary approach, Language Dynamics and Change 7(1): 1-46.
- Gunnink H., Sands B., Pakendorf B. & Bostoen K. (2015), Prehistoric language contact in the Kavango-Zambezi transfrontier area: Khoisan influence on southwestern Bantu languages, Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 36(2): 193--232.
- Gunnink H. (2014), The grammatical structure of Sowetan tsotsitaal, Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 32(2): 161-171.
- Sava Graziano (10 October 2005), A Grammar of Ts'amakko (Dissertatie, Leiden University). Supervisor(s): Mous Maarten, Schadeberg T.C. & Kossmann M.G.
- Postdoctoraal onderzoeker