Ron Simango

Associate Professor
BA (Malawi), Dip TESOL (Manchester), MSc (Edinburgh), PhD (S Carolina)
Email address: r.simango@ru.ac.za

I obtained a BA from the University of Malawi, a Postgraduate Diploma in TESOL from the University of Manchester, a Master of Science in Applied Linguistics from the University of Edinburgh, and a PhD in Linguistics from the University of South Carolina. Prior to taking up the position at Rhodes I taught at the University of Limpopo and the University of Malawi. In my free time (if I get it) I like travelling, meeting diverse groups of people, and listening to music.

Research interests:

The syntax of complex predicates
Bantu language morphosyntax
Language contact phenomena
Language in education

Courses taught:

Linguistics 1 Syntax
Linguistics 1 Morphology and Semantics
Linguistics 2 Syntax
Linguistics 3 Applied Syntax
Postgraduate Survey of Linguistics
Postgraduate Acquisition of Grammar
Postgraduate Contact Linguistics

Publications:

1995: Chichewa stative constructions and the autonomy of syntax. In Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Meeting of the Formal Linguistic Society of Mid-America.; Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Linguistics Club. (With Stanley Dubinsky).
1996: Passive and stative in Chichewa: evidence for modular distinctions in grammar. Language, 72:749-781. (With Stanley Dubinsky).
1999: Lexical and syntactic causatives in Bantu. Linguistic Analysis, 29: 69-86.
1999: Linguistic borrowing and structural adaptation: Evidence from Chichewa-English codeswitching. In Languages and the new democracy: participation, rights and responsibilities, edited by L.A. Kasanga, pp. 230-253. Sovenga, South Africa: University of the North Press.
2000: 'My madam is fine': The adaptation of English loans in Chichewa. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 21 (6): 487-507.
2001: A Unified Standard Orthography for South-Central African Languages: Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia. Cape Town: Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (co-authored with eight colleagues).
2001: The case against the use of the character ? in the orthography of ciCewa / ciNyanja. In Language Across Borders, edited by F. Banda, Cape Town: Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society.
2002: The possibility of harmonizing Bantu orthographies. In Speaking in Unison, edited. by. Kwesi K. Prah, Cape Town: Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society.
2002: Miyambo yathu ndi ufulu wa amayi. CASAS Monograph 14. Cape Town: Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society.
2003: Kodi demokalase ingamele mizu muAfilika. CASAS Occasional Paper 18. Cape Town: Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society.
2003: Bantu complex predicates, grammatical functions and the thematic hierarchy. In Trends in African Linguistics 5, edited by C. Githiora, H. Littlefield & V. Manfredi, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.
2003: Reanalysing past tense categories in Bantu. Malilime: Malawian Journal of Linguistics 3: 67- 84.
2003: Do we dare harmonise orthographies?. In Unifying Southern African Languages: Harmonization and Standardization, pp 33 – 38, edited by A. Chebanne, M. Jokweni, M. Mokotimi; S. Ngubane, Cape Town: Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society.
2004: World Lexicon of Grammaticalisation. Book Review. Southern African Journal of Linguistics & Applied Language Studies 22: 97-98.
2005: Kupililana kumamanga dziko. CASAS Monograph 34. Cape Town: Center for Advanced Studies of African Society.
2006: East Africa / Ostafrika. In Sociolinguistics / Soziolinguistik, Edited by U. Ammon, N. Dittmar, K. Mattheier, & P. Trudgill, pp.1964-1971. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
2006: Verb agreement and the syntax of ciNsenga relative clauses. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 24(3): 277-290.
2006: V. de Klerk, R. Adendorff, M. de Vos, S. Hunt, T. Niesler, S.R. Simango and L. Todd. Educated mother-tongue South African English: a corpus approach. Language Matters 37(1) pp. 85-105
2007: Enlarged arguments in Bantu: Evidence from Chichewa. Lingua 117 (6):928--949.
2009: Weaning Africa from Europe: towards a mother-tongue education policy in Southern Africa. In Brock-Utne, B. and I. Skattum (eds.), Languages and Education in Africa: a comparative and transdisciplinary analysis, pp. 201--212. Bristol, UK: Symposium Books.
2009: Causative disguised as stative: the affix -ik/-ek in ciCewa. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies. 27(2): 121--133.
2009: Awakening "sleeping" languages: Language practices in Southern Africa. In Multilingualism: an African advantage. Edited by K. Prah and B. Brock-Utne, pp237--249. Cape Town: Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society.

Current research projects:

The causative construction in ciNsenga
The semantics of locative clitics in ciCewa
isiXhosa-English codeswitching and the emergence of bilingual grammars
Aspects of ciNsenga syntax (book project)
A dictionary of ciNsenga
Urban varieties in South Africa