Southern Bantoid languages
In the classification of
African languages,
Southern Bantoid (or South Bantoid) is one of the two branches of the
Bantoid subfamily of the
Niger-Congo phylum. Southern Bantoid, home to the well known and numerous
Bantu subfamily, is comprised of 643 languages according to the
Ethnologue, making it one of the largest subfamilies in terms of number of languages.
Southern Bantoid was first introduced in Williamson (1989, based on work presented in Blench [1987]) in a proposal that divided Bantoid in North and South Bantoid. The uniformity of the North Bantoid group was called into question subsequently, but the work did establish Southern Bantoid as a valid genetic unit.
According to Williamson and Blench (2000:34–5), Southern Bantoid is divided into
(Narrow) Bantu and the
Jarawan,
Tivoid,
Beboid, and
Wide Grassfields-Ekoid-Mbe-Nyang subfamilies.
* Blench, Roger [1987] 'A new classification of Bantoid languages.' Unpublished paper presented at 17
th Colloquium on African Languages and Linguistics, Leiden.
* Williamson, Kay (1989) 'Niger-Congo Overview'. In:
The Niger-Congo languages, ed. by John Bendor-Samuel, 3–45. University Press of America.
* Williamson, Kay & Blench, Roger (2000) 'Niger-Congo', in Heine, Bernd and Nurse, Derek (eds)
African Languages - An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University press, pp. 11—42.
*
Southern Bantoid on the Ethnologue
