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Home African linguistics.
Methodology of comparative research and epistemology.
Theorization of linguistic contact and dynamics
of evolution.
Study of songhay languages and interlinguistic contacts in the sahelo-saharien area (1981).
The approach has first been phonological and dialectologic before becoming comparative when I got interested in non resolved questions about genealogical relations in this linguistic group (1984).
This led me to study mixed languages and to develop a significant lexicological database management system (cf. logiciel MARIAMA (1996) and database SAHELIA : 1990-2004).
For all this research work, I was awarded the Prix de la recherche Alexander von Humboldt in 1997. Then, I carried out a complete renewal of the hypothesis regarding songhay classification and some theoretical and methological developments concerning the approach of genealogical relations in oral languages (1990, 2003a).
When one studies oral languages, searching genealogical relations poses specific problems of classification: Using the same method as the one used for indo-european languages cannot always be satisfying, as the other approaches I have experienced lack rigour, so the results can not be convincing.
Considering songhay facts (genealogical relations thus controvertial), I undertook a methodological analysis of the methods used in this field, and I showed the danger of a non criticized approach. This led to an epistemological study about how researchers can construct representations of the evolution of languages that can not be standardized upon a empirical basis. (2000).
The results I attained, thanks to the comparative study extended to linguistic and sociolinguistic phenomena in the sahelo-saharian area, have helped me to define a new theoretical framework to broach the dynamics of the evolution of languages, integrating sociolinguistic, cognitive et structural aspects which take part in their transformation (2005).