Grassfields languages

Grassfields
Wide Grassfields, Grassfields Bantu, Semi-Bantu
Geographic
distribution		 Western High Plateau of Cameroon
Linguistic classification Niger–Congo
Subdivisions
  • Narrow Grassfields
  • ?Ambele
  • ?Menchum
Glottolog wide1239[1]
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Clickable map of the Grassfields languages and their subfamilies in western Cameroon

The Grassfields languages (or Wide Grassfields languages) are a branch of Benue–Congo spoken in the Western High Plateau of Cameroon and a sister group to the Bantu languages. Better known Grassfields languages include the Eastern Grassfields languages Bamun, Yamba and Bamileke and the Ring language Kom. The languages are closely related, sharing approximately half of their vocabulary.[2]

The Grassfields languages were previously known as Grassfields Bantu and Semi-Bantu. They are sometimes classified on two levels, Wide Grassfields, which includes all the languages, and Narrow Grassfields, which excludes Menchum, Ambele and sometimes the Southwest Grassfields languages. These may form a group of their own, which Nurse (2003) calls Peripheral Grassfields but rejects.

Blench (2010) notes there is little evidence for the traditional assumption that the non-Western Momo languages belong in Grassfields and that they may actually be closer to the poorly established Tivoid group; Western Momo is therefore renamed Southwest Grassfields to avoid confusion, and only Menchum and Ambele are left out of Narrow Grassfields. The classification of Amebele is unclear, though it is clearly divergent, and Menchum may be closer to the Tivoid languages (Blench 2011).[3] Blench (2012) suggests that Western Beboid may belong in Grassfields.[4]

Viti (Vötö) is unclassified Narrow Grassfields.

The Eastern Grassfields languages share nasal noun-class prefixes with the Bantu languages, which are not found in the other branches of Grassfields. However, they appear to be more closely related to the rest of Grassfields than they are to Bantu.

References

  1. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Wide Grassfields". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  2. ↑ Derek Nurse & Gérard Philippson, 2003, The Bantu Languages, p 227
  3. ↑ Blench, Roger (2011). "'The membership and internal structure of Bantoid and the border with Bantu" (PDF). Berlin: Humboldt University. pp. 28, 30.
  4. ↑ Roger Blench, Niger-Congo: an alternative view

External references

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