Ethnobotanical Surveys and Morphological Analysis of Medicinal Plant Names in Lɔmɔngo (Lomongo) C60 at the Elandisha Mavaolo Protected Area in Northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo

The aim of this research is to contribute to the documentation of Lomongo, a Bantu language spoken in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In this study, we focused on two morphological aspects of medicinal plant names in Lomongo: nominal morphology and morpho-syntax. To collect data, we engaged with two categories of informants: primary informants (traditional healers) and secondary informants (native Lomongo speakers). Ethnobotanical and ethnolinguistic surveys were conducted in the “Elandisha” Mavaolo area through participant observation, semi-structured interview guides, audio recordings, and photographs. The plants identified were documented in situ with the assistance of botanists from "Matiti-Lisanga," an interdisciplinary ethnobiology research platform. Herbarium samples were deposited at the herbarium of the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Kisangani. From these surveys, we identified 23 plant occurrences. In terms of nominal morphology, we found that pairing 3/4 (43.5% of occurrences) was predominant. Our results indicate that the Lomongo class system aligns with Proto-Bantu semantics. For morpho-syntactic structures, 10 plant names (43.5%) exhibited simple or morphosemantic structures, followed by simple compositions with 7 occurrences (30.4%). This study highlights the importance of ethnobotanical data in documenting Lomongo. However, a larger set of lexical items and a broader pool of informants would further enhance the role of ethnobotanical data in describing this language.