The internal diversification within this
presumed primary branch indeed is so huge that some scholars would
argue that ‘Atlantic’ is primarily an areal grouping representing a number
of independent, early descendants of Niger-Congo; a few have challenged
this view and would go as far as saying that some of the languages
originally included in this family may not even belong to Niger-Congo.
Actual comparative evidence for Niger-Congo as a family using classical
Neogrammarian methods has come forward in particular through the
scholarly work of the late John Stewart. See the obituary by Mous (2007)
for a full list of Stewart’s publications. In his comparative endeavours,
Stewart (2002, 2007) focused on a systematic phonological comparison
between some members of this language family, in particular between
Kwa and Bantu, as a major subgroup within Benue-Congo. He further
compared his Proto-Potou-Akanic-Bantu (Proto-PAB) with languages
from Greenberg’s Atlantic branch, and argued that ‘. . . Proto-PAB has the
potential to serve as a pilot Proto-Niger-Congo in essentially the same
way as a “Proto-Germanic-Latin-Greek-Sanskrit” served the pioneers
of linguistic reconstruction as a pilot Proto-Indo-European’ (Stewart
2002: 197).
It is no coincidence that Stewart did not include two other families
assumed by Greenberg to constitute primary branches of Niger-Congo,
Mande and Ubangian, in his comparative studies. The actual comparative
evidence for a Niger-Congo affiliation is indeed rather slim, and no
convincing evidence has been added over the past decades. Consequently,
Mande and Ubangian are best treated as independent language families.
The inclusion by Greenberg of a group of languages spoken in the
Nuba Mountains of central Sudan, which have come to be known under
the name Kordofanian, into a larger family termed Niger-Kordofanian by
Greenberg (1963) and subsequently renamed Niger-Congo by Williamson
(1989), has received wide acceptance among scholars. Greenberg (1963)
assumed that the Kordofanian branch consists of five subgroups, today
usually referred to as Heiban, Talodi, Rashad, Katla and Kadu. But as
argued by Schadeberg (1981a), the Kadu(gli) group should be excised
from Kordofanian, or Niger-Congo, and that it should be considered
whether the Kadu(gli) group should be affiliated with Nilo-Saharan.
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