82.

PROJECT REPORTS

CONFERENCE  REPORT

The Seventh West African  Languages  Congress was

held  in Lagos, Nigeria, from March  27 through March 31,
1967.  The  Congress was attended by three  Research
Fellows of the  Institute  of African Studies, all of
whom presented papers:

Dr. G. Ansre

Miss M.E. Kropp

Dr. J.M.  Stewart

Two Views of Noun Sub-classifi-
cation  in Two Languages  (Altan
and Ewe)  (with Dr. L. Boadi)

An Analysis of the  Consonant
System  of Ga

A Deep Phonology of the Akan
Monosyllabic Stem '

The Linguistics  Department  of the University of Ghana
was also represented by  five members, three of whom pre-
sented papers:

Dr. L. Boadi

(1) paper presented with  Dr. Ansre

above.

(2) Some Aspects of Akan Deep Syntax

Dr. F. Dolphyne

Dr. A.S. Duthie

Notes on the phonology of Ewe

Mr. H. Trutenau

Notes  on the makeup of the Nomi-
nal  in the Ga noun phras"e

*•

PROJECT  REPORTS

83.

A set  of the papers presented  at the Congress has been
deposited  in the library of the  Institute  of African
Studies.

Besides  the opening  session, there were  four
plenary sessions, held  in the mornings, of which two
were  devoted  to papers  on phonology, one to papers on
grammar  and one to other topics.  A highlight  of the
Congress was  an address by the president  of the West
African Linguistic Society, Professor Joseph Green-
berg  of Stanford  University, on Language  Universals.

There were three working parties  , on Oral

Literature, the teaching of English  and French, and
on Benue-Congo  languages.  All of these were  continua-
tions of the working parties  set up at last year's Con-
gress.  The' present  reporter  attended  the Benue-Congo ..
group.  This group is engaged  in attempting  a systematic
comparison  and definition  of a large  group of  languages
in the Eastern Nigeria-Camerouns  area.  Since  last year,
a great  deal of work has been done  in the collection  of
word  lists and basic  grammatical  data.  The  collection
was  centred  at the University  of Ibadan where  the data
was  correlated by Dr. Kay Williamson.  This year the
working party was engaged  in trying to define what  is
uniquely  characteristic  of the Benue-Congo  languages,
on the basis  of this data.  Although these  languages are
not  closely  related to the  languages of Ghana and its
neighbours, it was  felt  that  the method  followed by the
working party might be of interest  in the  future.  From
this point  of view, the discussion  on how to compare the
noun  class  and concord  systems was of particular  interest,
since eventually  the  comparison  of the languages of this
area will have  to take account  of the class  and concord
systems present  in the Togo  languages, and the traces
of them  that  are  found  in most of the other  languages of
Ghana.

M.B. Kropp.