Editing Niger–Congo languages (section)

== Origin==
{{further|Linguistic homeland#Niger–Congo|Sub-Saharan Africa#Genetic history|Bantu expansion}}

The language family most likely originated in or near the area where these languages were spoken prior to [[Bantu expansion]] (i.e. West Africa or Central Africa). Its expansion may have been associated with the expansion of [[Sahel]] agriculture in the African Neolithic period, following the [[African humid period#End|desiccation of the Sahara in c. 3500 BCE]].<ref>{{cite journal|doi=10.1016/j.quascirev.2014.07.003|title=The demographic response to Holocene climate change in the Sahara|journal=Quaternary Science Reviews|volume=101|pages=28–35|year=2014|last1=Manning|first1=Katie|last2=Timpson|first2=Adrian|bibcode=2014QSRv..101...28M|doi-access=free}}</ref><ref>Igor Kopytoff, ''The African Frontier: The Reproduction of Traditional African Societies'' (1989), 9–10 (cited after [http://amightytree.org/niger-congo-languages-and-history/ Igbo Language Roots and (Pre)-History] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190717224506/http://amightytree.org/niger-congo-languages-and-history/ |date=2019-07-17 }}, ''A Mighty Tree'', 2011).</ref>

Similar classifications to Niger–Congo have been made ever since [[Diedrich Westermann]] in 1922.<ref>Westermann, D. 1922a. ''Die Sprache der Guang''. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer.</ref> [[Joseph Greenberg]] continued that tradition, making it the starting point for modern linguistic classification in Africa, with some of his publications going to press starting in the 1960s.<ref>Greenberg, J. H. 1964. ''Historical inferences from linguistic research in sub-Saharan Africa''. Boston University Papers in African History, 1:1–15.</ref> However, there has been active debate for many decades over the appropriate subclassifications of the languages in this language family, which is a key tool used in localising a language's place of origin.<ref name="rogerblench.info2">{{cite web|last=Blench|first= Roger|title= Unpublished Working Draft |url=http://www.rogerblench.info/Language/Niger-Congo/BC/General/Benue-Congo%20classification%20latest.pdf|website=www.rogerblench.info}}</ref> No definitive "[[Proto-Niger–Congo language|Proto-Niger–Congo]]" lexicon or grammar has been developed for the language family as a whole.

An important unresolved issue in determining the time and place where the Niger–Congo languages originated and their range prior to recorded history is this language family's relationship to the [[Kordofanian languages]], now spoken in the [[Nuba Mountains]] of [[Sudan]], which is not contiguous with the remainder of the Niger–Congo-language-speaking region and is at the northeasternmost extent of the current Niger–Congo linguistic region. The current prevailing linguistic view is that Kordofanian languages are part of the Niger–Congo language family and that these may be the first of the many languages still spoken in that region to have been spoken in the region.<ref>Herman Bell. 1995. ''The Nuba Mountains: Who Spoke What in 1976?'' (the published results from a major project of the Institute of African and Asian Studies: the Language Survey of the Nuba Mountains.)</ref> The evidence is insufficient to determine if this outlier group of Niger–Congo language speakers represents a prehistoric range of a Niger–Congo linguistic region that has since contracted as other languages have intruded, or if instead, this represents a group of Niger–Congo language speakers who migrated to the area at some point in prehistory where they were an isolated linguistic community from the beginning.

There is more agreement regarding the place of origin of [[Benue–Congo]], the largest subfamily of the group. Within Benue–Congo, the place of origin of the [[Bantu languages]] as well as time at which it started to expand is known with great specificity. Blench (2004), relying particularly on prior work by [[Kay Williamson]] and P. De Wolf, argued that Benue–Congo probably originated at the confluence of the [[Benue River|Benue]] and [[Niger River]]s in central [[Nigeria]].<ref name="rogerblench.info">Blench, Roger, [http://www.rogerblench.info/Language/Niger-Congo/BC/General/Benue-Congo%20classification%20latest.pdf "The Benue-Congo languages: a proposed internal classification"].{{unreliable source?|date=May 2018}}<!--come on, he even asks in ALLCAPS that this should not be cited. -->
"No comprehensive reconstruction has yet been done for the phylum as a whole, and it is sometimes suggested (e.g. by Dixon 1997) that Niger-Congo is merely a typological and not a genetic unity. This view is not held by any specialists in the phylum, and reasons for thinking Niger-Congo is a true genetic unity will be given in this chapter. It is, however, true that the subclassification of the phylum has been continuously modified in recent years and cannot be presented as an agreed scheme. The factors which have delayed reconstruction are the large number of languages, the inaccessibility of much of the data, and the paucity of able researchers committed to this field. Emphasis will be placed on three characteristics of Niger-Congo; noun-class systems, verbal extensions, and basic lexicon."
See also: Bendor-Samuel, J. ed. 1989. ''The Niger–Congo Languages''. Lanham: University Press of America.</ref><ref>Williamson, K. 1971. "The Benue–Congo languages and Ijo" ''Current Trends in Linguistics'', 7. ed. T. Sebeok 245–306. The Hague: Mouton.</ref><ref>Williamson, K. 1988. "Linguistic evidence for the prehistory of the Niger Delta". ''The early history of the Niger Delta'', edited by E. J. Alagoa, F. N. Anozie and N. Nzewunwa. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag.</ref><ref>Williamson, K. 1989. "Benue–Congo Overview" in ''The Niger–Congo Languages''. J. Bendor-Samuel ed. Lanham: University Press of America.</ref><ref>De Wolf, P. 1971. ''The noun class system of Proto-Benue–Congo''. The Hague: Mouton.</ref><ref>Blench, R. M. 1989. "A proposed new classification of Benue–Congo languages". ''Afrikanische Arbeitspapiere'',
Köln, 17:115–147.</ref> These estimates of the place of origin of the Benue–Congo language family do not fix a date for the start of that expansion, other than that it must have been sufficiently prior to the [[Bantu expansion]] to allow for the diversification of the languages within this language family that includes Bantu.

The classification of the relatively divergent family of the [[Ubangian languages]], centred in the [[Central African Republic]], as part of the Niger–Congo language family is disputed. Ubangian was grouped with Niger–Congo by Greenberg (1963), and later authorities concurred,<ref name="Williamson2000"/> but it was questioned by Dimmendaal (2008).<ref>[[Gerrit Dimmendaal]] (2008) "Language Ecology and Linguistic Diversity on the African Continent", ''Language and Linguistics Compass'' 2/5:841.</ref>

The [[Bantu expansion]], beginning around 1000 BC, swept across much of Central and [[Southern Africa]], leading to the assimilation and extinction of many of the indigenous [[Pygmy]] and [[Bushmen]] ([[Khoisan]]) populations there.<ref>Martin H. Steinberg, ''Disorders of Hemoglobin: Genetics, Pathophysiology, and Clinical Management'', Cambridge University Press, 2001, [https://books.google.com/books?id=PM0zzm7wbvsC&pg=PA717 p. 717].</ref>