Lower Fungom linguistic diversity and its historical development: proposals from a multidisciplinary perspective

Lower Fungom, in Northwest Cameroon, is one of the most linguistically diverse areas of the Cameroonian Grassfields. Seven languages or small language clusters are spoken in its thirteen villages and five of them are not obviously closely related to each other nor to any other language spoken outside of the region. This paper discusses the non-linguistic factors that may have resulted in this surprising linguistic scenario. The region’s overall ecology is examined and found unable to fully explain the situation. Ethnographic data, collected during recent field work in the area, are considered in the perspective of assessing the degree of correlation between linguistic boundaries and cultural boundaries. The emerging patterns are reviewed in light of oral histories, early colonial documents, and archaeological evidence. The detailed historical framework thus obtained indicates not only that the area has been characterized by a number of immigration events but also that in different periods these events have had different linguistic repercussions. The paper concludes by reconstructing several phases of the linguistic prehistory of Lower Fungom that seem, on the whole, to shed light on the processes that have led to its present linguistic diversity.