Moja ya vipimo kuwa unaitumia vema mitandao ya kijamii ni idadi na aina ya marafiki unaotengeza kupitia mitandao hiyo. Binafsi, nimetengeneza marafiki wengi mno, wanaotoka kada mbalimbali za maisha: wanasiasa, wanataaluma, wasanii, wajasiamali, wakulima, wanafunzi/wanavyuo, na takriban kila kada ya watu.
Ni kwa sababu hiyo ndio maana sio tu ninaiheshimu sana mitandao ya kijamii lakini pia huwa makini kulinda 'hadhi' yangu mtandaoni. Kadri unavyotengeneza marafiki wengi ndivyo unavyokuwa katika nafasi kupata madhara makubwa zaidi iwapo mtu atakuchafua.
Mmmoja ya watu nilofahamiana kupitia mitandao ya jamii ni Mhadhiri wa chuo kikuu cha London (University of London), katika Shule ya Stadi za Asia na Afrika (School or Oriental and African Studies - SOAS).
Nilifahamiana na Dkt Hannah mwishoni mwa mwaka jana huko kwenye mtandao wa kijamii wa Twitter. Na kilichotufanya tufahamiane ni kuvutiwa na mapenzi yake kwa Kiswahili. Kila siku, Dokta Hannah hutwiti 'neno la siku' (word of the day) la Kiswahili, kisha kulielezea kwa Kiingereza.
Awali nilidhani ana asili ya Tanzania au nchi inayoongea Kiswahili, kwa sababu Kiswahili chake ni fasaha kabisa. Ikabidi nimdadisi. Kwa mshangao mkubwa, kumbe mhadhiri huyu ni Mwingereza wa asili, na wala Kiswahili sio lugha yake ya asili. Alijifunza tu wakati anafanya tafiti zake huko Tanzania na katika nchi nyingine za Afrika Mashariki.
Licha ya kuwa mhadhiri, Dkt Hannah ni 'postdoctoral research fellow' (huu utakuwa mtihani wangu na wake kutafuta neno stahili la Kiswahili). Kwa kifupi, mtu anayefanya 'postdoctoral fellowship' ni mhitimu wa shahada ya uzamifu anayeendelea na tafiti za kitaaluma.
Eneo lake kuu la utafiti ni jinsi lugha zinavyokutana na zinavyobadilika, mkazo wake ukiwa kwenye lugha za Kibantu katika eneo la Afrika Mashariki.
Kwa sasa anafanya utafiti kuhusu mabadiliko ya kisarufi katika lugha za makabila ya Tanzania na Kenya, yaani Kirangi, ki-Mbugwe, ki-Gusii, Kikurya, ki-Ngoreme, ki-Suba Simbiti.
Habari njema zaidi ni kwamba Dkt Hannah amekubali kushiriki jitihada za kuenzi, kudumisha, kuboresha na kukitangaza Kiswahili kupitia kampeni maarufu ya #ElimikaWikiendi. Taarifa zaidi kuhusu ushiriki wake zitatolewa wakati mwafaka.
Tovuti binafsi ya Dkt Hannah ipo HAPA na unaweza kum-follow Twitter anatumia @itsthegibson
Orodha ya machapisho yake ya kitaaluma:
Book Chapters
Gibson, Hannah and Koumbarou, Andriana and Marten, Lutz and van der Wal, Jenneke (2017) 'Locating the Bantu conjoint/disjoint alternation in a typology of focus marking.' In: van der Wal, Jenneke and Hyman, Larry M., (eds.), The conjoint/disjoint alternation in Bantu. Mouton de Gruyter . (Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs) (Forthcoming)
Gibson, Hannah and Marten, Lutz (2016) 'Variation and grammaticalisation in Bantu complex verbal constructions: The dynamics of information growth in Swahili, Rangi and siSwati.' In: Nash, Léa and Samvelian, Pollet, (eds.), Approaches to Complex Predicates.Leiden: Brill, pp. 70-109. (Syntax and Semantics)
Journal Articles
Chatzikyriakidis, Stergios and Gibson, Hannah (2016) 'The Bantu-Romance-Greek connection revisited: processing constraints in auxiliary and clitic placement from a cross-linguistic perspective.' Glossa. (Forthcoming)
Gibson, Hannah (2016) 'A unified dynamic account of auxiliary placement in Rangi.' Lingua, 184. pp. 79-103.
Seraku, Tohru and Gibson, Hannah (2016) 'A Dynamic Syntax modelling of Japanese and Rangi clefts: Parsing incrementality and the growth of interpretation.' Language Sciences , 56 (2016). pp. 45-67.
Gibson, Hannah and Wilhelmsen, Vera (2015) 'Cycles of negation in Rangi and Mbugwe.' Africana Linguistica, 21. pp. 233-257.
Marten, Lutz and Gibson, Hannah (2015) 'Structure building and thematic constraints in Bantu inversion constructions.' Journal of Linguistics, 52 (3). pp. 565-607.
Gibson, Hannah (2015) 'The dynamics of structure building in Rangi: At the Syntax-Semantics interface.' Cambridge Occasional Papers in Linguistics, 8. pp. 41-55.
Gibson, Hannah (2013) 'Auxiliary placement in Rangi: A case of contact-induced change?' SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics, 16. pp. 153-166.
Book Reviews
Gibson, Hannah (2016) 'A review of Klaus Zimmerman & Birte Kellemeier-Rehbein (eds.), Colonialism and missionary linguistics (Colonial and Postcolonial Linguistics 5). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2015. pp. x+266.' Journal of Linguistics, 52 (1). pp. 236-241.