Research done within the department of African Languages is multifaceted, ranging from lexicography and terminology to research on the literatures and linguistics of the four languages currently on offer. With the advent and availability of machine-readable language corpora, exciting new research possibilities have come to the fore. In line with international trends, almost all lexicographical and terminological research done within the Department is corpus-based.

A number of studies on corpus linguistics have also been completed and published on. Research into the literatures of the African Languages also has an important place within the Department. A significant number of postgraduate students specialise in the study of literature and opt for research themes related to literature studies when doing research for their Masters or Doctoral degrees.

General electronic corpora for all eleven official South African languages have been compiled at UP. These corpora are solely utilised for student training and academic research, specifically in the fields of lexicography, terminology, linguistics, translation practice and corpus-based translation studies (CTS). For controlled access to these corpora, which involves on-site computer processing of the corpus and downloading only the results of the analyses, Prof DJ Prinsloo ([email protected]) can be contacted.

Staff members regularly attend national and international conferences to present their research results. Their research results are published in accredited national and international journals. The department currently has 3 NRF rated researchers. Prof Danie Prinsloo has been a recipient of the prestigious Exceptional Achiever’s Award since 2000 up to 2014. This award is conferred based on the quality of research output and national and international scholarly standing.