Salikoko Mufwene is a linguist born in Mbaya-Lareme in the

Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...

. He is the Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor of

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

. Mufwene was elected to the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

in 2022.

Education and career

Mufwene received his Ph.D. in linguistics from the

in 1979. He has worked extensively on the development of

creole language A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable natural language that develops from the simplifying and mixing of different languages into a new one within a fairly brief period of time: often, a pidgin evolved into a full-fledged language. ...

s, especially

Gullah The Gullah () are an African Americans, African American ethnic group who predominantly live in the South Carolina Lowcountry, Lowcountry region of the U.S. states of Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina, within the coastal plain ...

and

Jamaican Creole Jamaican Patois (; locally rendered Patwah and called Jamaican Creole by linguists) is an English-based creole language with West African influences, spoken primarily in Jamaica and among the Jamaican diaspora. A majority of the non-English wo ...

, on the

morphosyntax In linguistics, morphology () is the study of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words in the same language. It analyzes the structure of words and parts of words such as stems, root words, prefixes, and suffixes. Morph ...

Bantu languages The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀) are a large family of languages spoken by the Bantu people of Central, Southern, Eastern africa and Southeast Africa. They form the largest branch of the Southern Bantoid languages. The t ...

, especially Kituba,

Lingala Lingala (Ngala) (Lingala: ''Lingála'') is a Bantu language spoken in the northwest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the northern half of the Republic of the Congo, in their capitals, Kinshasa and Brazzaville, and to a lesser degree in ...

, and Kiyansi (the last of which he speaks natively), and on

African American Vernacular English African-American Vernacular English (AAVE, ), also referred to as Black (Vernacular) English, Black English Vernacular, or occasionally Ebonics (a colloquial, controversial term), is the variety of English natively spoken, particularly in urban ...

. He has also published several articles and chapters about

language evolution Evolutionary linguistics or Darwinian linguistics is a sociobiological approach to the study of language. Evolutionary linguists consider linguistics as a subfield of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. The approach is also closely linked ...

. He is one of the leading figures in research pertaining to the ecology of language, a school of thought that encourages a holistic approach of language studies and combines linguistics with different research fields such as sociology, history, cognitive sciences and biology. One of his main claims (Mufwene 2008) is that languages behave to a certain extent like viruses, and that many analogies can be drawn between the ways they both come to existence, reproduce, evolve, and eventually may go extinct.

Honors and distinctions

In 2003, Mufwene was awarded a Médaille du Collège de France In 2018, Mufwene was inducted as a

Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

of the

Linguistic Society of America The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a learned society for the field of linguistics. Founded in New York City in 1924, the LSA works to promote the scientific study of language. The society publishes three scholarly journals: ''Language'', ...

. In 2022, Mufwene was elected as a fellow to the American Philosophical Society Mufwene is the editor of the book series Cambridge Approaches to Language Contact, an interdisciplinary series covering diverse perspectives on languages in contact, pidgins, creoles, language evolution, language change, and bilingualism.

Books

* * * *

References

External links

Mufwene's University of Chicago web page

Cambridge Approaches to Language Contact
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mufwene, Salikoko University of Chicago faculty Linguists Living people Democratic Republic of the Congo emigrants to the United States Linguists from the Democratic Republic of the Congo Linguists of pidgins and creoles Year of birth missing (living people) Members of the American Philosophical Society Fellows of the Linguistic Society of America