Dr Friederike Lüpke

Lecturer in Language Documentation and Description

Friederike Lüpke studied African Linguistics, General Linguistics and Phonetics at the University of Köln (Germany) and Manding (Bambara) at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales in Paris (France). In 1999, she received her MA in African Linguistics with first honours from the University of Köln. She was then offered a PhD scholarship at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen (The Netherlands). Her PhD thesis on verbal argument structure in Jalonke, a previously undocumented Mande language of Guinea, received a cum laude (distinction for special achievements) from the Radboud University Nijmegen. In September 2003, Friederike became a Research Fellow in the Endangered Languages Academic Programme. Currently, she is working as a Lecturer in Language Documentation and Description in ELAP.

Friederike’s theoretical research interests lie in the domain of argument structure and the syntax-semantics interface. Within Mande linguistics, she has worked so far on the Central Mande languages Bambara (Manding) and Jalonke and has started work on contact phenomena between Mande and Atlantic languages. She is concerned with the role of theory in description and documentation and has a strong interest in multidisciplinary aspects of language documentation and description. Recently, she became fascinated with the role of Arabic-based scripts for the writing of African languages and with the ongoing informal use of these scripts.

A complete list of publications and a CV can be found on her SOAS staff page:

http://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staff31356.php