Editing Niger–Congo languages (section)

== Classification history ==
=== Early classifications ===
Niger–Congo as it is known today was only gradually recognized as a linguistic unit. In early classifications of the [[languages of Africa]], one of the principal criteria used to distinguish different groupings was the languages' use of prefixes to classify nouns, or the lack thereof. A major advance came with the work of [[Sigismund Wilhelm Koelle]], who in his 1854 ''[[Polyglotta Africana]]'' attempted a careful classification, the groupings of which in quite a number of cases correspond to modern groupings. An early sketch of the extent of Niger–Congo as one language family can be found in Koelle's observation, echoed in [[Wilhelm Bleek|Bleek]] (1856), that the Atlantic languages used prefixes just like many Southern African languages. Subsequent work of Bleek, and some decades later the comparative work of [[Carl Meinhof|Meinhof]], solidly established [[Bantu languages|Bantu]] as a linguistic unit.

In many cases, wider classifications employed a blend of typological and racial criteria. Thus, [[Friedrich Müller (linguist)|Friedrich Müller]], in his ambitious classification (1876–88), separated the 'Negro' and Bantu languages. Likewise, the Africanist [[Karl Richard Lepsius]] considered Bantu to be of African origin, and many 'Mixed Negro languages' as products of an encounter between Bantu and intruding Asiatic languages.

In this period a relation between Bantu and languages with Bantu-like (but less complete) noun class systems began to emerge. Some authors saw the latter as languages which had not yet completely evolved to full Bantu status, whereas others regarded them as languages which had partly lost original features still found in Bantu. The Bantuist Meinhof made a major distinction between Bantu and a 'Semi-Bantu' group which according to him was originally of the unrelated Sudanic stock.

=== Westermann, Greenberg, and others ===
[[File:Westermann 1911 Sudansprachen cover.jpg|right|thumb|200px|Westermann's 1911 ''Die Sudansprachen: Eine sprachvergleichende Studie'' laid much of the basis for the understanding of Niger–Congo.]]
[[Diedrich Hermann Westermann|Westermann]], a pupil of Meinhof, set out to establish the internal classification of the then [[Sudanic languages]]. In a 1911 work he established a basic division between 'East' and 'West'. A historical reconstruction of West Sudanic was published in 1927, and in his 1935 'Charakter und Einteilung der Sudansprachen' he conclusively established the relationship between Bantu and West Sudanic.

[[Joseph Greenberg]] took Westermann's work as a starting-point for his own classification. In a series of articles published between 1949 and 1954, he argued that Westermann's 'West Sudanic' and Bantu formed a single genetic family, which he named Niger–Congo; that Bantu constituted a subgroup of the Benue–Congo branch; that Adamawa-Eastern, previously not considered to be related, was another member of this family; and that Fula belonged to the West Atlantic languages. Just before these articles were collected in final book form (''[[The Languages of Africa]]'') in 1963, he amended his classification by adding [[Kordofanian]] as a branch co-ordinate with Niger–Congo as a whole; consequently, he renamed the family ''Congo-Kordofanian'', later ''Niger–Kordofanian''. Greenberg's work on African languages, though initially greeted with scepticism, became the prevailing view among scholars.<ref name="Williamson2000">{{cite book|last1=Williamson|first1=Kay|last2=Blench|first2=Roger|chapter=Niger-Congo|title=African Languages: An Introduction|editor=Bernd Heine|editor2=Derek Nurse|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2000|pages=11–12}}</ref>

Bennet and Sterk (1977) presented an internal reclassification based on lexicostatistics that laid the foundation for the regrouping in [[John Bendor-Samuel|Bendor-Samuel]] (1989). Kordofanian was presented as one of several primary branches rather than being coordinate to the family as a whole, prompting re-introduction of the term ''Niger–Congo'', which is in current use among linguists. Many classifications continue to place Kordofanian as the most distant branch, but mainly due to negative evidence (fewer lexical correspondences), rather than positive evidence that the other languages form a valid genealogical group. Likewise, Mande is often assumed to be the second-most distant branch based on its lack of the noun-class system prototypical of the Niger–Congo family. Other branches lacking any trace of the noun-class system are Dogon and Ijaw, whereas the Talodi branch of Kordofanian does have cognate noun classes, suggesting that Kordofanian is also not a unitary group.

[[Konstantin Pozdniakov|Pozdniakov]] (2012) stated: "The hypothesis of kinship between Niger–Congo languages didn't appear as a result of discovery of numerous related forms, for example, in Mande and Adamawa. It appeared as a result of comparison between the Bantu languages, for which the classical [[comparative method]] was possible to be applied and which were reliably reconstructed, with other African languages. Niger–Congo does not exist without Bantu. We need to say clearly that if we establish a [[Genetic relationship (linguistics)|genetic relationship]] between a form in Bantu and in Atlantic languages, or between Bantu and Mande, we have all grounds to trace this form back to Niger–Congo. If we establish such a relationship between Mel and Kru or between Mande and Dogon, we don't have enough reason to claim it Niger–Congo. In other words, all Niger–Congo languages are equal, but [[Bantu languages]] are "more equal" than the others."<ref name="Pozdniakov">{{cite journal |last1=Pozdniakov |first1=Konstantin |title=From Atlantic to Niger-Congo: three, two, one ... |journal=Towards Proto-Niger-Congo: Comparison and Reconstruction International Congress |date=September 18–21, 2012 |page=2 |url=https://llacan.cnrs.fr/fichiers/nigercongo/fichiers/Pozdniakov_NC_numbers.pdf}}</ref>

''[[Glottolog]]'' (2013) accepts the core with noun-class systems, the [[Atlantic–Congo languages]], apart from the recent inclusion of some of the Kordofanian groups, but not Niger–Congo as a whole. They list the following as separate families: Atlantic–Congo, Mande, Dogon, Ijoid, Lafofa, Katla-Tima, Heiban, Talodi, and Rashad.

Babaev (2013) stated: "The truth here is that almost no attempts in fact have been made to verify Greenberg's Niger–Congo hypothesis. This might seem strange but the path laid by Joseph Greenberg to Proto–Niger–Congo was not followed by much research. Most scholars have focused on individual families or groups, and classifications as well as reconstructions were made on lower levels. Compared with the volume of literature on Atlantic or Mande languages, the list of papers considering the aspects of Niger–Congo reconstruction per se is quite scarce."<ref name="Babaev">{{cite journal |last1=Babaev |first1=Kirill |title=Joseph Greenberg and the Current State of Niger-Congo |journal=Journal of the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory |date=2013 |issue=18 |page=19 |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313725739}}</ref>

''Oxford Handbooks Online'' (2016) has indicated that the continuing reassessment of Niger–Congo's "internal structure is due largely to the preliminary nature of Greenberg's classification, explicitly based as it was on a methodology that doesn't produce proofs for genetic affiliations between languages but rather aims at identifying "likely candidates."...The ongoing descriptive and documentary work on individual languages and their varieties, greatly expanding our knowledge on formerly little-known linguistic regions, is helping to identify clusters and units that allow for the application of the historical-comparative method. Only the reconstruction of lower-level units, instead of "big picture" contributions based on mass comparison, can help to verify (or disprove) our present concept of Niger–Congo as a genetic grouping consisting of Benue–Congo plus Volta–Niger, Kwa, Adamawa plus Gur, Kru, the so-called Kordofanian languages, and probably the language groups traditionally classified as Atlantic."<ref>{{cite book|chapter-url=https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935345.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199935345-e-3|chapter=Niger-Congo|first1=Anne|last1=Storch|first2=Gerrit J.|last2=Dimmendaal|title=Oxford Handbook Topics in Linguistics |date=11 February 2016|via=www.oxfordhandbooks.com|doi=10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935345.013.3|isbn=978-0-19-993534-5}}</ref>

The coherence of Niger–Congo as a language phylum is supported by Grollemund, et al. (2016), using [[computational phylogenetic]] methods.<ref>Rebecca Grollemund, Simon Branford, Jean-Marie Hombert & Mark Pagel. 2016. [http://llacan.vjf.cnrs.fr/nigercongo2/abstracts/Grollemund_Hombert_Pagel-Genetic%20Unity%20of%20the%20Niger-Congo%20family.pdf Genetic unity of the Niger-Congo family]. Towards Proto-Niger-Congo: comparison and reconstruction (2nd International Congress)</ref> The East/West Volta–Congo division, West/East Benue–Congo division, and North/South Bantoid division are not supported, whereas a [[Bantoid languages|Bantoid]] group consisting of Ekoid, Bendi, Dakoid, Jukunoid, Tivoid, Mambiloid, Beboid, Mamfe, Tikar, Grassfields, and Bantu is supported.

The [[Automated Similarity Judgment Program]] (ASJP) also groups many Niger–Congo branches together.

[[Gerrit Dimmendaal|Dimmendaal]], Crevels, and Muysken (2020) stated: "Greenberg's hypothesis of Niger–Congo phylum has sometimes been taken as an established fact rather than a hypothesis awaiting further proof, but there have also been attempts to look at his argumentation in more detail. Much of the discussion concerning Niger–Congo after Greenberg's seminal contribution in fact centered around the inclusion or exclusion of specific languages or language groups."<ref name="Dimmendaal">{{cite book |last1=Dimmendaal |first1=Gerrit J. |last2=Crevels |first2=Mily |last3=Muysken |first3=Pieter |title=Language Dispersal, Diversification, and Contact |date=2020 |publisher=Oxford University Press |page=201 |isbn=978-0-19-872381-3 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xbryDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA201 |chapter=Patterns of dispersal and diversification in Africa}}</ref>

Good (2020) stated: "First proposed by Greenberg (1949), Niger–Congo (NC) has for decades been treated as one of the four major phyla of [[African languages]]. The term, as presently used, however, is not without its difficulties. On the one hand, it is employed as a referential label for a group of over 1,500 languages, putting it among the largest commonly cited language groups in the world. On the other hand, the term is also intended to embody a [[hypothesis]] of genealogical relationship between the referential NC languages that has not been proven."<ref name="Good">{{cite book |last1=Good |first1=Jeff |title=The Oxford Handbook of African Languages |date=Mar 19, 2020 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-960989-5 |page=139 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-8fXDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA139 |chapter=Niger-Congo, With A Special Focus On Benue Congo}}</ref>

=== Reconstruction ===
{{main|Proto-Niger–Congo language}}
The lexicon of [[Proto-Niger–Congo|Proto–Niger–Congo]] (or Proto-Atlantic–Congo) has not been comprehensively reconstructed, although [[Konstantin Pozdniakov]] reconstructed the [[numeral system]] of Proto–Niger–Congo in 2018.<ref name="pozdniakov">{{Cite book
| last = Pozdniakov
| first = Konstantin
| author-link = Konstantin Pozdniakov
| title = The numeral system of Proto-Niger-Congo: A step-by-step reconstruction 
| series = Niger-Congo Comparative Studies 
| place = Berlin
| publisher = Language Science Press
| date = 2018
| format = pdf
| url = http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/191
| doi = 10.5281/zenodo.1311704 
| doi-access=free
| isbn = 978-3-96110-098-9
}}</ref> The most extensive reconstructions of lower-order Niger–Congo branches include several reconstructions of [[Proto-Bantu]], which has consequently had a disproportionate influence on conceptions of what Proto–Niger–Congo may have been like. The only stage higher than Proto-Bantu that has been reconstructed is a pilot project by Stewart, who since the 1970s has reconstructed the common ancestor of the [[Potou–Tano languages|Potou-Tano]] and Bantu languages, without so far considering the hundreds of other languages which presumably descend from that same ancestor.<ref>Tom Gueldemann (2018) ''Historical linguistics and genealogical language classification in Africa'', p. 146.</ref>

=== Niger–Congo and Nilo-Saharan{{anchor|Kongo–Saharan}} ===
{{see also|Nilo-Saharan languages#Blench 2006}}
Over the years, several linguists have suggested a link between Niger–Congo and [[Nilo-Saharan languages|Nilo-Saharan]], probably starting with Westermann's comparative work on the "[[Sudanic languages|Sudanic]]" family in which '[[Eastern Sudanic languages|Eastern Sudanic]]' (now classified as Nilo-Saharan) and '[[Western Sudanic languages|Western Sudanic]]' (now classified as Niger–Congo) were united. Gregersen (1972) proposed that Niger–Congo and Nilo-Saharan be united into a larger phylum, which he termed ''Kongo-Saharan''. His evidence was mainly based on the uncertainty in the classification of [[Songhay languages|Songhay]], morphological resemblances, and lexical similarities. A more recent proponent was [[Roger Blench]] (1995), who puts forward phonological, morphological and lexical evidence for uniting Niger–Congo and Nilo-Saharan in a ''Niger–Saharan'' phylum, with special affinity between Niger–Congo and [[Central Sudanic languages|Central Sudanic]]. However, fifteen years later his views had changed, with Blench (2011) proposing instead that the [[noun-classifier]] system of Central Sudanic, commonly reflected in a tripartite [[general number|general]]-[[singulative]]-[[plurative]] number system, triggered the development or elaboration of the [[noun-class]] system of the [[Atlantic–Congo languages]], with tripartite number marking surviving in the [[Plateau languages|Plateau]] and [[Gur languages]] of Niger–Congo, and the lexical similarities being due to loans.