I am a full professor of Linguistics, in the Department of Linguistics at Rutgers University, USA. I have been teaching at Rutgers University since August 1989, when I became one of the three foundation members of the Linguistics Department, and I later served as chair of the Department from 1998-2001. I was inducted as a Fellow of the Nigerian Academy Letters (FNAL) in August 2023.

 

I was elected President of the World Congress of African Linguistics (WOCAL), and served from 2009-2015. In addition, I was President of the Association for Contemporary African Linguistics (ACAL) and served from 2017-2021. Finally, I have served as a Council member of the West African Languages Society (WALS) since 2004.

 

In 2008, I co-founded the African Linguistics School (ALS) (with Professors Enoch Aboh (Amsterdam), Chris Collins and John Singler (NYU)), a two-week Institute that brings the latest work in the core areas of Linguistics to graduate students from all over Africa, free of charge. 

 

The motivation for the founding and ongoing development of the ALS is to contribute to the strengthening of African universities through the nurturing of new generations of linguistic scholars in Africa in a culture of excellence. From the outset, our specific objectives of the ALS have included the strengthening of the postgraduate curricula in Linguistics at African universities and the mentoring of young linguistics scholars in Africa as well as the development and/or strengthening of relations between (a) African academics in the Diaspora and the institutions where they are based and (b) students, postdoctoral scholars, and faculty members from African universities. 

 

With regard to the curricula of linguistics in African universities: some areas of linguistics are not widely taught in Africa, most notably formal semantics. In such areas of the field, the goal of the ALS is to acquaint students with basic principles. In other areas, the goal of the ALS is to provide students with knowledge of the latest theoretical developments. Both in introducing new areas and in presenting the advances in theory in other areas, the ALS seeks to bolster existing postgraduate programs.

 

The school has been held in Ghana (2009), Benin Republic (2011), Nigeria (2013), Côte D’Ivoire (2016), South Africa (2019), and in Benin Republic (2022). In each of the ALS institutes held so far, Nigerian graduate students have consistently been the largest in number, as a country.

 

The ALS has been funded three times by the US National Science Foundation (2009, 2016, 2022), the Carnegie Corporation of New York (2013), and the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) (2016). Finally, the ALS received the endorsement of UNESCO to use its name and logo in our fundraising efforts for the school, in February 2016.

 

I was inducted into the membership of the Nigerian Academy of Letters on August 11, 2022.
In addition, on May 5, 2014, I was honored with the Ivorian national title "Officier de l'Ordre du Mérite Ivoirien" (Officer of the Ivorian Order of Merit) for my contribution to, and leadership role in, African Linguistics.