Quincy Amoah

I am using phenomenology of language, grounded in ethnographic participant observation, to attempt to resolve Nilotic "problems of apparently irrational beliefs" such as "twins are birds" or "a cucumber is an ox." My current hypothesis is Nilotic propositions appear perennially incoherent because utterances have two simultaneous denotations: an ordinary sense-for-sense signification and a categorical signification. Niolitic categorical meanings, most apparent in Ngakarimojong, are emergent of obscured "phono(semantic)-categories" and propositions are reasoned and framed with iconicity.
Supervisors: Abdellah Hamoudi and Carol Greenhouse