Southern Bantoid languages
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| Southern Bantoid | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution: |
Subsaharan Africa, but not further west than Nigeria |
| Genetic classification: |
Niger-Congo Atlantic-Congo Benue-Congo Bantoid Southern Bantoid |
| Subdivisions: |
Mamfe (Nyang)
? Mbam
|
In the classification of African languages, Southern Bantoid (or South Bantoid) is one of the two branches of the Bantoid subfamily of the Niger-Congo phylum. Southern Bantoid, home to the well known and numerous Bantu subfamily, comprises 643 languages according to the Ethnologue, making it one of the largest subfamilies in terms of number of languages.
Southern Bantoid was first introduced in Williamson (1989, based on work presented in Blench [1987]) in a proposal that divided Bantoid in North and South Bantoid. The uniformity of the North Bantoid group was called into question subsequently, but the work did establish Southern Bantoid as a valid genetic unit.
According to Williamson and Blench (2000:34–5), Southern Bantoid is divided into the Narrow Bantu, Jarawan, Tivoid, Beboid, Mamfe (Nyang), Grassfields, and Ekoid families.
[edit] References
- Blench, Roger [1987] 'A new classification of Bantoid languages.' Unpublished paper presented at 17th Colloquium on African Languages and Linguistics, Leiden.
- Williamson, Kay (1989) 'Niger-Congo Overview'. In: The Niger-Congo languages, ed. by John Bendor-Samuel, 3–45. University Press of America.
- Williamson, Kay & Blench, Roger (2000) 'Niger-Congo', in Heine, Bernd and Nurse, Derek (eds) African Languages - An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University press, pp. 11—42.
