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convincing. More will be said about the methodology of language classification in
Appendix C.
1.2.1 Adamawa-Ubangi
Since Greenberg (1970), Adamawa-Ubangi has been considered to be a part of
Niger-Congo. Greenberg offered as evidence for this affiliation resemblances in form and
meaning (rather than correspondences in the accepted sense) between Adamawa-Ubangi
and the rest of Niger-Congo, both in their noun class systems and in lexical items. As
discussed in Appendix C, this evidence is strong for the Adamawan languages but weak
for most of the Ubangian languages. In fact, Boyd (1978) and Cloarec-Heiss (1995a)
point out shared features between Ubangian languages and their Nilo-Saharan neighbors
to the north and east. At present, it is generally thought that the Ubangian languages are
genetically a part of Niger-Congo and acquired certain typological features from Nilo-
Saharan as a result of language contact. The similarites between Nilo-Saharan and Banda
led Cloarec-Heiss (1995a) to hypothesize that Proto-Banda was a pidgin with Central
Sudanic as the substrate and Ubangian as the superstrate (i.e. the lexifier).
As far as the integrity of Adamawa-Ubangi is concerned, it is not clear that it
forms a linguistic unit. Bennett & Sterk (1977), Bennett (1983a), and Williamson (1989a)
point out that there is little evidence from lexicostatistics or shared innovations for an
Adamawa-Ubangi node in the Niger-Congo tree. Instead, such evidence points more
convincingly to a node consisting of both Adamawa-Ubangi and Gur, which Williamson
calls “North Volta-Congo.”
The integrity of Ubangi is also in question. Most of the classifications of the
group have either incomplete data, or have not specified clearly their criteria, or both.
Bennett (1983a) questions the inclusion of Gbaya within Ubangi and claims that there is
more evidence for an Ubangi node which excludes Gbaya rather than including it. Once
again, more research is necessary on this question.
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