Volta–Congo is a major branch of the Atlantic–Congo family. It includes all the Niger-Congo languages and subfamilies except the families of the erstwhile

Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe an ...

and

Kordofanian The Kordofanian languages are a geographic grouping of five language groups spoken in the Nuba Mountains of the Kurdufan, Sudan: Talodi–Heiban languages, Lafofa languages, Rashad languages, Katla languages and Kadu languages. The first four g ...

branches, Mande,

Dogon Dogon may refer to: *Dogon people, an ethnic group living in the central plateau region of Mali, in West Africa *Dogon languages, a small, close-knit language family spoken by the Dogon people of Mali *'' Dogon A.D.'', an album by saxophonist Juliu ...

, and Ijo. It thus only differs from Atlantic–Congo in that it excludes the Atlantic languages and, in some conceptions,

Kru KRU was a Malaysian pop boy band formed in 1992. The group comprises three brothers, namely Datuk Norman Abdul Halim, Datuk Yusry Abdul Halim and Edry Abdul Halim'. Apart from revolutionising the Malaysian music scene with their blend of pop ...

and Senufo. In the infobox at the right, the languages which appear to be the most divergent (including the dubious Senufo and

, which may not be Volta–Congo at all) are placed at the top, whereas those closer to the core (the similar "Benue–Kwa" branches of Kwa, Volta–Niger and Benue–Congo) are near the bottom.Roger Blench
Niger-Congo: an alternative view
/ref> If the Kwa or Savannas branches prove to be invalid, the tree will be even more crowded.

Classification

Comparative linguistic research by John M. Stewart in the sixties and seventies helped establish the genetic unity of Volta–Congo and shed light on its internal structure, but the results remain tentative. Williamson and Blench (2000) note that in many cases it is difficult to draw clear lines between the branches of Volta–Congo and suggest that this might indicate the diversification of a

dialect continuum A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of Variety (linguistics), language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulat ...

rather than a clear separation of families. This had been suggested before by Bennet (1983 as cited in Williamson and Blench 2000:17) in the case of the Gur and

Adamawa–Ubangi languages The Adamawa–Ubangi languages are a geographic grouping and formerly postulated family of languages spoken in Nigeria, Chad, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Gabon, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sou ...

, which apart from

Ubangian The Ubangian languages form a diverse linkage of some seventy languages centered on the Central African Republic. They are the predominant languages of the CAR, spoken by 2–3 million people, and include the national language, Sango. They ar ...

are now linked together as

Savannas A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland-grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground to ...

. Other branches are

, Senufo, Kwa, and Benue–Congo, which includes the well-known and particularly numerous

Bantu Bantu may refer to: *Bantu languages, constitute the largest sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages *Bantu peoples, over 400 peoples of Africa speaking a Bantu language * Bantu knots, a type of African hairstyle *Black Association for National ...

group. The relationship of Kwa to Benue–Congo (named ''Benue–Kwa''), and the eastern and western branches of Benue–Congo to each other, remain obscure. The vowel systems of Volta–Congo languages have been the subject of much historical comparative linguistic debate. Casali (1995) defends the hypothesis that Proto-Volta–Congo had a nine- or ten-vowel system employing

vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is an Assimilation (linguistics), assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is t ...

and that this set has been reduced to a seven vowel-system in many Volta–Congo languages. The

Ghana–Togo Mountain languages The Ghana–Togo Mountain languages, formerly called Togorestsprachen (''Togo Remnant languages'') and Central Togo languages, form a grouping of about fourteen languages spoken in the mountains of the Ghana–Togo borderland. They are part of t ...

are examples of languages where nine- or ten-vowel systems are still found.

Footnotes

References

* Casali, Roderic F. (1995) 'On the Reduction of Vowel Systems in Volta–Congo', ''African Languages and Cultures'', 8, 2, Dec, 109–121. * Stewart, John M. (1976) ''Towards Volta–Congo reconstruction: a comparative study of some languages of Black-Africa''. (Inaugural speech, Leiden University) Leiden: Universitaire Pers Leiden. * Stewart, John M. (1985) 'Nasality patterns in the Volta–Congo foot.' Paper presented at the Colloquium on African Linguistics, Leiden, Sept. 1985. * 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. {{DEFAULTSORT:Volta-Congo languages Atlantic–Congo languages

Classification

See also

Footnotes

References