Nilotic Research
 Network Goals
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To date the number of Nilotic scholars is relatively small.  Researchers are widely scattered around the world, and are working in relative isolation.  There is a long-standing history of work by German scholars on Nilotic languages, but researchers are much sparser in other areas of the world.

While some languages of the family have been reasonably well documented, others have received essentially no documentation.  Attempts to further understand the family, migration patterns, and preh-history are hampered by lack of adequate modern data.

In this context, goals of the network include:

• Enabling Nilotic scholars to learn of each other's work and, in so doing, increase the quality and quantity of research results beyond what individuals working in isolation have achieved.
  
  
• Reduce expensive reduplication of efforts.
  
  
• Addressing standardization issues in the creation and further development of lexicographic and text data bases for Nilotic languages, which will also enrich materials for future historical work.
  
  
• Bringing to light typological phenomena salient across the family, including issues in word structure, syntax, lexical semantics, and aspects of sound structure.
  
  
• Highlighting the intellectual and cultural achievements of the Nilotic peoples.

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This page last modified September 2001, by Doris L. Payne