Speaker: Adeyemi Awomodu

A final year BA English Language and Linguistics student of the University of Essex. I am interested in syntax, semantics, and their interface, with a special interest in describing the relationship between semantics and core areas of the syntax of the Yoruba language.

I changed to the BA English Language and Linguistics course in my second year of undergraduate study so I could focus particular attention on Yoruba. As a Yoruba person who has had firsthand experience of the dominance status of the English language in the multilingual linguistic landscape as well as the language-in-education policy of Nigeria, I have always been interested in exploring the discrepancy in the description, documentation, and development between Yoruba and English. I aim to find out the properties exhibited by different features of the English language and see how they interact to make it more dominant and better described than my beloved Yoruba.

The Department of Language and Linguistics at the University of Essex encourages me and provides me with the necessary guidance and supports to explore my passion for Yoruba. My final year project involves interrogating the linguistic phenomena that are the product of interactions between principles of syntactic organisation and principles of semantic interpretation in Yoruba. The ongoing project is under the supervision of Dr. Hannah Gibson, Lecturer at the Department of Language and Linguistics, University of Essex, and a linguist working in the field of morphosyntax with a specialisation in East African Bantu languages and Africa languages in general.