Low-Carb in West Africa: A Paradox?

The other night I was sitting around at night with my sister-in-law and my consultant. I had just listed to the Radio Lome news broadcast, so it was around 7:15pm. My sister-in-law prepared a meal of corn porridge (pate in French, akple in Ewe) for everybody. Given my Wegovy regime, I am not usually hungry at night, so I did not eat any. But everybody else had a huge plate of corn porridge with some sauce on the side. I estimated that the plates had three or four heaping cups of corn porridge.

Capturing a Lexical Item (Kpelegbe)

In this blog post, I walk through the steps that I have been following in capturing lexical items for the Kpelegbe dictionary.

Kpelegbe: First Full Week (June 2026)

Here is a summary (by the numbers) of my first two weeks of being in the field doing work on the Kpelegbe dictionary.

Eating Low-Carb in West Africa

In this blog post, I outline what I am learning through trial-and-error about eating low-carb in West Africa.

Togo Diary (June July 2026)

This diary is the record of my stay in Togo during June and July of 2026.

Aspects of Tone in Cua (Zachary Wellstood)

Zachary Wellstood's doctoral dissertation (Berkeley) on Cua tone. Below is the eScholarship link to the thesis:

Aspects of Tone in Cua

Abstract (abridged):

This dissertation constitutes the first description and analysis of the tone system of Cua, a highly endangered and underdocumented Kalahari Khoe language of the Tshwa subgroup spoken in southeastern Botswana. This dissertation includes (i) an updated phonological sketch of Cua, including evidence of segmental contrasts and phonotactic constraints, (ii) an empirical overview of Cua’s tonal inventory, tonal phenomena, and tonal morphophonology, (iii) the results of a phonetic study on lexical tone in Cua conducted with 6 Cua speakers, and (iv) a phonological analysis of Cua tone which proposes phonological representations of Cua’s lexical tonal categories and derivations of tonal phenomena noted throughout the preceding chapters.

Conversations with Noam Chomsky (2021-2022)

Here are two lengthy conversations that I had with Noam Chomsky on the topics of language, thought and formal semantics. I was very honored to have been able to have these conversations with Noam, who has been a guiding light for me throughout my career.

A Conversation with Noam Chomsky about Formal Semantics (June 25, 2021)

A Conversation with Noam Chomsky about Language and Thought (March 27, 2022)