Dr. Ponsiano Sawaka Kanijo
College
Department
Email Address
I am a linguist with a PhD obtained from the University of Gothenburg (Sweden) under Laura Downing, Malin Petzell and Thera Crane’s supervision. My research interests focus on Bantu verbal morphology, lexical aspect, tense aspect, and mood systems. I am currently employed as a lecturer in linguistics at Mkwawa University College of Education (MUCE). During my PhD, I was involved in developing and teaching an introductory course to Swahili at the University of Gothenburg. Outside academics, I serve as Head of the Communication and Marketing Unit.
2018 Code-Switching and code-mixing errors among Swahili-Bilinguals in Tanzania. Kiswahili: Journal of the Institute of Kiswahili Studies, Vol. 80, 90-99. DSM: UDSM.
2019 The interactions of -ø-…-íle with aspectual classes in Nyamwezi. Selected papers from the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics. 281–308.
2018 Evidential strategies in Nyamwezi. The semantics of verbal morphology in under-described languages, ed. by Malin Petzell, Leora Bar-el, & Aunio Lotta (Eds.), Studia Orientalia Electronica.
2020 Kanijo, Ponsiano Sawaka & Mreta, Abel. The adaptation of Swahili-borrowed nouns into Nyamwezi. Kiswahili: Journal of the Institute of Kiswahili Studies, vol. 83, no. 1, pp. 147–174.
2021 The robustness of Botne and Kershner aspectual classes in Nyamwezi: STUF - Language Typology and Universals, vol. 74, no. 3-4, pp. 507-532.
2021 Limits of standard diagnostic tests for aspectual classes in Nyamwezi. Kiswahili: Journal of the Institute of Kiswahili Studies, vol. 84, no. 2, pp. 287–308.
In my career as a researcher, I have published a number of articles, attended various tutorial workshops, carried out various linguistic fieldwork and attended many international conferences. I am involved in three research projects. The first one investigates diachronic, semantic, and syntactic aspects of Bantu valency- decreasing verbal morphology and its relation to and effect on verbal semantics in the East Ruvu languages, a genealogical group of six under-analysed Bantu languages spoken in Tanzania. In this project, I am with Leora Bar-el (University of Montana), Malin Petzell (University of Gothenburg) and Sebastian Dom (University of Gothenburg). The second project investigates the enhancement of the communicative language teaching approach among primary school teachers in teaching English subject in Tanzania: A case of Iringa. The last one investigates the enhancement of the teaching and learning of Swahili as a foreign language through the Open and Distance Learning (ODL) platform. In the last two projects, I am working with my co-workers in the Department of Languages and Literature at MUCE, and the University of Dar es Salaam, Mwalimu Nyerere Campus.