CBOLD

Comparative
Bantu
OnLine
Dictionary

Located at the
University of California in Berkeley.
Based at the		Administered by the
Department of Linguistics		Institute of Cognitive Studies

The CBOLD project was started in 1994 by Larry Hyman and John Lowe to produce in Berkeley a lexicographic database to support and enhance the theoretical, descriptive, and historical linguistic study of the languages in the important Bantu family. The database includes a substantial list of reconstructed Proto-Bantu roots (based on Guthrie and Meeussen's reconstructions), several thousand additional reconstructed regional roots (called BLR 2 based on the current work of scholars in Tervuren and elsewhere), and reflexes of these roots for a substantial subset of the 500+ daughter languages. Published and unpublished dictionaries of selected Bantu languages have been scanned, converted to test, and entered into the database. Working with colleagues and students from the United States, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Cameroon, Tanzania and other countries, organized into the Bantu Working Group (BWG), the projects primary goals are to:

• set up a collaborative, accessible database for the use of researchers in Bantu languages;
• establish a unified format for computational lexicographic work in the Bantu languages; and
• input extensive (annotated) dictionaries and wordlists of Bantu languages.