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Sudanic languages

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Languages

   In early twentieth century classification of African languages, Sudanic
   languages was a generic term for African languages spoken in the Sahel
   belt from Ethiopia in the east to Senegal in the west. The grouping was
   based on geographic and loose typological grounds, and included many
   languages now classified as Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo. One of its
   proponents was the German linguist Carl Meinhof. Meinhof had been
   working on the Bantu languages, which have an elaborate noun class
   system, and he labeled all languages that lacked such a noun class
   system Sudansprachen.

   Westermann, pupil of Carl Meinhof, carried out comparative linguistic
   research on the then Sudanic languages during the first half of the
   twentieth century. In his 1911 study he established a basic division
   between 'East' and 'West' Sudanic, roughly comparable to today's
   distinction of Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan. His 1927 collaboration
   with Hermann Baumann was devoted to the historical reconstruction of
   the West Sudanic branch. He compared his results with Meinhof's
   Proto-Bantu reconstructions but did not state the obvious conclusion
   that they were related, perhaps out of respect for his teacher. French
   linguists like Delafosse and Homburger, not hindered by such concerns,
   were quite explicit about the unity of Sudanic and Bantu, mainly on the
   basis of synchronic lexicostatistical data^ . In his 1935 'Character
   und Einteilung der Sudansprachen', Westermann conclusively established
   the relationship between Bantu and West Sudanic.

   Joseph Greenberg incorporated West Sudanic in his Niger-Congo and
   renamed it Volta-Congo. He treated East Sudanic as a different language
   family called Nilo-Saharan. The term 'Sudanic languages' is obsolete as
   of today.

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