Talk:Proto-Niger–Congo language

NC not generally accepted

Speak to people who work on these languages, and they'll tell you there is no pNC. Mande is excluded from reconstructions to any significant extent; the reconstructions there are are for proto-Atlantic-Congo. Once pAC and proto-Mande are reconstructed, we may be able to evaluate whether there is anything to NC, but we're not there yet. — kwami (talk) 12:14, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

The edits I reverted were all substantial and uncited. I have no meaningful knowledge on this specific subset of linguistics but if the article is suddenly going to change to make some pretty major claims then it needs to be cited, but I won’t stand in the way of you improving it, for certain. Warrenᚋᚐᚊᚔ 12:37, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes, but I don't see how that's relevant, considering some linguists, like Blench, have explicitly attempted some Niger-Congo reconstructed roots/tone/syllable structure/etc., which is given in the article. Yes, there's much debate as to whether Mande is related to the Atlantic-Congo phylum, but data from Mande languages have been included in tentative pNC roots; for example, in Blench's (2016) paper on early Niger-Congo roots. Casinator (talk) 03:00, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

This article and several others about African language families follow an insular practice when it comes to terminology. Experts like Dimmendaal generally talk about "Niger–Congo" and then discuss that the membership of certain units is disputed/unclear. But he doesn't atomistically assigns a different name to every single possible constellation for the maximally valid extent of the family; thus Dimmendaal's Niger–Congo exludes Mande and Ubangian, yet he calls it "Niger–Congo". Also Güldemann follows this principle: "Niger–Congo" is a good label for the largest pool of demonstrably related languages. The atomistic practice is mainly associated with Blench and is followed in Glottolog. But this approach is highly problematic from a NPOV perspective: it feigns consensus where it doesn't exist. Atlantic-Congo as proposed by Blench includes Ubangian; Dimmendaal doesn't think that Ubangian is related to the undisputed core of Niger–Congo, so our atomistic articles explicitly are biased towards a particular POV about the classification of the Niger–Congo languages (or better: the languages that are generally associated with Niger–Congo).

There was a long debate whether the Reefs–Santa Cruz languages in the Solomon Islands can be classified as Austronesian or not. But no-one suggested to create two different names for the entities "Austronesian without Reefs–Santa Cruz" vs. "Austronesian including Reefs–Santa Cruz". I could add dozens of examples of other language families with some fuzzy edges (= languages/branches of disputed memebership status) that nevertheless remain terminologically stable. But for some reason, the atomistic practice of Blench and GLottolog is seen in WP as infallible for the way of how to present language families on the African continent. This is not just about NC, but also things like e.g. Atlantic, a subgroup of NC that has been trimmed in the last 20 yeasrs to a valid core, but continues to be called "Atlantic" by the people wo actually work on these languages (Pozdniakov, Segerer, Merril, Lübke, Güldemann); only we have them under the rarely used label "Senegambian". –Austronesier (talk) 10:57, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

It's a matter of which branches are being disputed. If the Formosan languages were removed from AN instead of Santa Cruz, or Sinitic from ST, or Indic from IE, it would be odd keep the same name for the remainder. IMO it's odd to keep 'Niger' in the name if you remove the Niger part. Wouldn't be an issue if we removed Dogon or Katla. — kwami (talk) 18:59, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

This would be a good topic to mention in the article maybe... Different linguists use different classifications. It is true there's no consensus where some languages belong in the NC phylum. Perhaps we could have a section specifying Niger-Congo constructions that include branches like Mande and Ijoid, and ones that don't. Casinator (talk) 22:43, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Reverted changes

What was the decision making criteria for the following changes being reverted?

Linguistic analyses has also suggested that Niger-Congo speaking hunter-gatherers may have originated from the Kordofanian speakers of the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, and then traversed the Sahel to Mali. 2601:42:0:4000:E8D7:9E7D:674:3C20 (talk) 16:57, 30 October 2024 (UTC)