Atlantic Languages - Classification

Classification

The Atlantic family was first identified by Sigismund Koelle in 1854. In the early 20th century, Carl Meinhof claimed that Fula was a Hamitic language, but August von Klingenhaben and Joseph Greenberg's work conclusively established Fula's close relationship with Wolof and Serer. W. A. A. Wilson notes that the validity of the family as a whole rests on much weaker evidence, though it is clear that the languages are part of the Niger–Congo family, based on evidence such as a shared noun-class system. However, comparative work on Niger–Congo is in its infancy. Classifications of Niger–Congo, usually based on lexicostatistics, generally propose that the various Atlantic languages are rather divergent, but less so than Mande and other languages that lack noun classes.

David Sapir (1971) proposed a classification of Atlantic into three branches, a northern group (Senegambian and Bak), a southern group (Mel, Limba, and Gola), and the divergent Bijago language of the Bissagos Islands off the coast of Guinea-Bissau (Wilson 1989). However, Segerer (2010), the only classification since Sapir, ties Bijago to the Bak languages, based on previously unrecognized sound correspondences, and separates Bak, the rest of Northern (Senegambian, defined by consonant mutation), and Mel as independent branches, and Gola and Limba as Niger–Congo isolates.