Niger-Congo

Abstract This contribution provides an overview of the research history and contested classification of Niger-Congo, one of the world’s largest phyla. Despite convincing evidence for the genetic coherence of core families, some groupings traditionally seen as Niger-Congo need to be considered as independent families. Recent comparative research on individual families shows systematic correspondences between many grammatical morphemes and suggests that the phylum’s typological heterogeneity is based largely on regional diversification. Although features such as ATR-based vowel harmony, noun classes, verb extensions, serial verb constructions, and constituent order variation are very characteristic of many Niger-Congo languages, their original shape cannot yet be convincingly reconstructed. To better understand the processes that led to the present picture, Niger-Congo studies will have to rely largely on bottom-up approaches such as reconstruction of lower-level units, research on the sociolinguistic history of single languages or clusters, and interdisciplinary approaches to individual linguistic regions and expansion areas.