This website was initiated with support of NSF grant BCS 0303447 and is currently supported by NSF BCS 0523102, Ken Safir, Principal Investigator

The main goal of the African Anaphora (Afranaph) Project, as it is presently constituted, is to develop rich descriptions of a wide range of African languages in order to serve the interests of linguistic research into the nature and distribution of anaphoric effects in natural language. Anaphoric readings, in the sense intended here, are those readings where one linguistic form, such as a pronoun, reflexive or reciprocal, refers back to a previously mentioned form in the sentence or in the discourse. It appears that every human language has at least some specialized forms that achieve such effects. This website explores those forms and effects for every African language that native speaker linguist consultants are willing to help us with.

Although our project is informed specifically by the research goals of generative grammar, it is our intention to make the data we collect as accessible as possible to any linguist with an interest in these languages or more general issues in crosslinguistic comparison. The data we present is collected on the basis of complex and comprehensive questionnaires that are to be filled out by native speaker linguist consultants. This project has become more feasible at this point in history not only because there are an unprecedented number of trained African linguists who are potential participants in our project, but also because the resources of the web and the internet make it possible for more efficient remote participation. Our method begins with a questionnaire which has been developed to explore every domain in which at least some language has been known to use specialized forms to achieve anaphoric readings.

We hope and anticipate that our website will also attract the participation of otherwise isolated scholars who have much to offer, while providing useful training for our interns and graduate assistants who help to run the site (see Staff). In the course of our operations, we hope that the network of consultants and researchers our project brings together will make it possible to explore other areas of grammar (outside anaphora) by the same means and with the same network, creating, in effect, a community space for research into African languages.

The languages for which we have collected data are arranged on separate pages in this site called "case files". The case file for each language in our study has the data elicited by our standard questionnaire, supplemented by follow-up elicitations designed to explore areas that are richer in the language in question than the same area may be in some other language. In addition, each case file has a short grammar sketch of the language, a bibliography, and a sketch of the anaphora system (highlighting aspects of anaphora in the language that appear to raise interesting theoretical or analytic issues). For further information about what is in completed case files and how best to use them, see About the Case Files or go directly to our Case Files page to view the case files we have so far.

Another major feature of our site is the online Afranaph Database which permits sophisticated search and manipulation of the data we have collected. More information can be found in About the Database and a tutorial is available in How to use the Database.

Those expect that those who intend to use any information on our site should read our Fair Use and Citation page for appropriate guidelines.

Interested users can access our Anaphora Questionnaire (AQ) to see our basic field elicitation document. Information about our Elicitation of Primary Data, about how to Contact Us, about how to Become a Consultant, and our Plans for the Future of the site, as well as Our History and Prospects are all available with a click on the topics listed on the lefthand side of your screen.