Volta–Niger languages

The Volta–Niger family of languages, also known as West Benue–Congo or East Kwa, is one of the branches of the Niger–Congo language family, with perhaps 70 million speakers. Among these are the most important languages of southern Nigeria, Benin, Togo, and southeast Ghana: Yoruba, Igbo, Bini, and Gbe.

These languages have variously been placed within the Kwa or Benue–Congo families or, starting in the 1970s, combined with them altogether. Williamson & Blench (2000) separate the languages here called Volta-Niger from the others. Güldemann (2018) fails to see clear criteria for dividing the languages into two or three families and maintains the broad grouping and name of Benue-Kwa for all them.

Branches

The constituent groups of the Volta–Niger family, along with the most important languages in terms of number of speakers, are as follows (with number of languages for each branch in parentheses):

The Yoruboid languages and Akoko were once linked as the Defoid branch, but more recently they, Edoid, and Igboid have been suggested to be primary branches of an as-yet unnamed group, often abbreviated . Similarly, Oko, Nupoid, and Idomoid are often grouped together under the acronym . Ukaan is an Atlantic–Congo language, but it is unclear if it belongs to the Volta–Niger family; Blench suspects it is closer to Benue–Congo.

In an automated computational analysis ( ASJP 4) by Müller et al. (2013):Müller, André, Viveka Velupillai, Søren Wichmann, Cecil H. Brown, Eric W. Holman, Sebastian Sauppe, Pamela Brown, Harald Hammarström, Oleg Belyaev, Johann-Mattis List, Dik Bakker, Dmitri Egorov, Matthias Urban, Robert Mailhammer, Matthew S. Dryer, Evgenia Korovina, David Beck, Helen Geyer, Pattie Epps, Anthony Grant, and Pilar Valenzuela. 2013.
ASJP World Language Trees of Lexical Similarity: Version 4 (October 2013)
'.
* Gbe and Yoruboid are subsumed within Kwa.
* Edoid and Cross River group together.
* Akpes and Ukaan group together.
* Oko is grouped within Idomoid.

Branches and locations

Below is a list of major Volta–Niger branches and their primary locations (centres of diversity) in Nigeria based on Blench (2019).

Comparative vocabulary

Sample basic vocabulary in different Volta–Niger branches:

Numerals

Comparison of numerals in individual languages:

See also

* Systematic graphic of the Niger–Congo languages with numbers of speakers

References

*Güldemann, Tom (2018). The Languages and Linguistics of Africa. Berlin Boston: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. ISBN 978-3-11-042166-8.
*Wolf, Paul Polydoor de (1971) ''The Noun Class System of Proto-Benue–Congo'' (Thesis, Leiden University). The Hague/Paris: Mouton.
*Williamson, Kay (1989) 'Benue–Congo Overview', pp. 248–274 in Bendor-Samuel, John & Rhonda L. Hartell (eds.) ''The Niger–Congo Languages — A classification and description of Africa's largest language family''. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America.
*Williamson & Blench (2000) 'Niger–Congo', in Heine & Nurse, ''African Languages''

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Volta–Congo languages