In the summer of 2024, I joined Katherine Russell, Rebecca Jarvis, and Lindsay Hatch for language documentation fieldwork in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. We worked with native speakers of Atchan [ISO: ebr] and Nghlwa [ISO: gwa], two Poutou languages within the Kwa language family.

My focus was on phonetic documentation, and in particular, examining implosive variation between and within these two related languages. I worked with speakers to collect a variety of phonetic data, including acoustic, electroglottograph, and aerodynamic signals (oral airflow, oral air pressure, and nasal airflow). With Hatch and Russell, I presented preliminary findings on Nghlwa implosives at the LSA’s Illustrating African Phonologies special session. We are further working on two invited book chapters which will hopefully appear in 2026.

This research was supported by an Oswalt Endangered Language Grant from the California Language Archive. All materials from this project will further be publicly available through the CLA.

From left to right: Lindsay Hatch, Katherine Russell, Atchan speaker Koutouan Evelyne Natacha, Rebecca Jarvis, and me, in Anono, Abidjan.