Introduction

This chapter offers insights into the background of the book&s;s history: it emerged from a critical examination of a field of study in linguistics that is largely concerned with the “loss of grammar”, as a phenomenon that is given much attention to in reconstruction and classification work. In reversing this and thus turning it into a “grammar of loss”, a different perspective becomes possible. Instead of considering structures as isolated information as the central aspect of the investigation, those who created and offered this information, in the form of storytelling and the co-creative transmission of knowledge, are given a voice. The old people who once spoke Hone, a now largely defunct language of Nigeria, and who are no longer alive, are once more asked to tell their stories. The liminal spaces in which this can happen are spaces of wonder and amazement. The idea that language and storytelling are connected to a particular site, such as a specific area on a map, a town or a street, is put into question here. The voices of the specters, speaking a lost language, hover over uncharted terrain.