Editing Joseph Greenberg (section)

====Languages of Africa====
Greenberg is known widely for his development of a classification system for the [[languages of Africa]], which he published as a series of articles in the ''Southwestern Journal of Anthropology'' from 1949 to 1954 (reprinted together as a book, ''[[The Languages of Africa]]'', in 1955). He revised the book and published it again during 1963, followed by a nearly identical edition of 1966 (reprinted without change during 1970). A few more changes of the classification were made by Greenberg in an article during 1981.

Greenberg grouped the hundreds of African languages into four families, which he dubbed [[Afroasiatic languages|Afroasiatic]], [[Nilo-Saharan languages|Nilo-Saharan]], [[Niger–Congo languages|Niger–Congo]], and [[Khoisan languages|Khoisan]]. During the course of his work, Greenberg invented the term "Afroasiatic" to replace the earlier term "Hamito-Semitic", after showing that the [[Hamitic]] group, accepted widely since the 19th century, is not a valid language family. Another major feature of his work was to establish the classification of the [[Bantu languages]], which occupy much of Central and Southern Africa, as a part of the Niger–Congo family, rather than as an independent family as many Bantuists had maintained.

Greenberg's classification rested largely in evaluating competing earlier classifications. For a time, his classification was considered bold and speculative, especially the proposal of a Nilo-Saharan language family. Now, apart from Khoisan, it is generally accepted by African specialists and has been used as a basis for further work by other scholars.

Greenberg's work on African languages has been criticised by [[Lyle Campbell]] and Donald Ringe, who do not believe that his classification is justified by his data and request a re-examination of his macro-phyla by "reliable methods" (Ringe 1993:104). [[Harold C. Fleming|Harold Fleming]] and [[Lionel Bender (linguist)|Lionel Bender]], who were sympathetic to Greenberg's classification, acknowledged that at least some of his macrofamilies (particularly the Nilo-Saharan and the Khoisan macrofamilies) are not accepted completely by most linguists and may need to be divided (Campbell 1997). Their objection was [[methodology|methodological]]: if mass comparison is not a valid method, it cannot be expected to have brought order successfully out of the confusion of African languages.

By contrast, some linguists have sought to combine Greenberg's four African families into larger units. In particular, Edgar Gregersen (1972) proposed joining Niger–Congo and Nilo-Saharan into a larger family, which he termed [[Niger–Congo languages#Niger–Congo and Nilo-Saharan|Kongo-Saharan]]. [[Roger Blench]] (1995) suggests Niger–Congo is a subfamily of Nilo-Saharan.