Deogratias Ngonyani

ngonyani@msu.edu
517 512 8437
Wells B462

Associate Professor

Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures

Biography

An Associate Professor of Linguistics and African Languages
Obtained his PhD in Linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Teaches Linguistics and the Swahili language.
Research Interests: Language Documentation, Language Description, Morphosyntax, Comparative Bantu, Swahili Studies, Language in Africa, and Swahili language and Swahili literature
Teaching experience: University of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Pwani University (Kenya), UCLA, and Indiana University.

Works

Some publications

2025 *Ngonyani, Deo. Bantu applicative constructions. Chapter in Marten, L., Kula, N. and Zeller, J. (eds) The Oxford Guide to the Bantu Languages, Oxford University Press. pp.208-218

2024 *Ngonyani, Deo. Tibasima’s cartoon representations of the education crisis in Tanzania. Nordic Journal of African Studies 3,1: 134–156.

2022 *Ngonyani, Deo, Mganga, Yusta, Kisanji, Joachim & Royer, Omega. Intensive Summer Fulbright-Hays GPA for Advanced Swahili and Inter- cultural Development, Journal of African Language Teachers Association. 10:64-86.

2022 *Ngonyani, Deo, Ann Biersteker, Angelina Nduku Kioko & Josephat Rugemalira. Proto-Bantu reflexes in Dhaisu. In Galen Sibanda, Deo Ngonyani, Jonathan Choti & Ann Biersteker (eds.), Descriptive and theoretical approaches to African linguistics: Selected papers from the 49th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, 409–426. Berlin: Language Science Press.

2016 *Ngonyani, Deo and Ngowa, Nancy Jumwa. The productivity of the reversive extension in Swahili. In Doris L. Payne, Sara Pacchiarotti & Mokaya Bosire (eds.), Diversity in African Languages, pp. 255-271. Berlin: Language Science Press.

2016 *Ngonyani, Deo. Pairwise combinations of Applicatives with other extensions in Swahili. Nordic Journal of African Studies, 25, 1:52-71

2013 *Ngonyani, Deo. Kiswahili riddles: parallelism and function – Southern African Journal of Linguistics, 33, 1:1-10.

2006 *Ngonyani, Deo. Attract F and verbal morphology in Kiswahili. The Linguistic Review 23, 1: 35-66. DOI 10.1515/TLR.2006.002

2006 *Ngonyani, Deo and Peter Githinji. The asymmetric na- ture of Bantu applicative constructions. Lingua 116, 1: 31-63. doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2005.03.006

2001 *Ngonyani, Deo. Onomastic devices in Shaaban Robert’s narra- tives. Journal of African Cultural Studies 14, 2:125-136. DOI: 10.1080/13696810120107087

College of Arts & Letters News