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dichotomy. In addition, their lexicostatistical and shared innovation evidence reject the
distinction as well.
Instead, Bennett & Sterk offer a regrouping of the languages into what they call
“Western South Central Niger-Congo” (i.e. new Kwa) and “Eastern South Central Niger-
Congo” (i.e. new Benue-Congo). They claim that the lexicostatistical percentages support
this division, although they give neither their data nor their analytical charts for this part
of their study. In addition, they give four sample lexical isoglosses which demonstrate a
lexical border between the two groups:
(2) (new) Kwa (new) Benue-Congo gloss
*J= J= J= J=
*J=(J J=(J J=(J() J=(J
‘three’
*- - - - ~
*>--1 >--1 >--1 >--1
‘breast’
*A A A A ~ A A A A
*( ( ( ( ‘firewood’
*C C C C
*J J J J
‘neck’
Stewart (1989: 218-219) examines the Kwa terms and concludes that the word for
‘firewood’ comes the closest to representing a Kwa innovation, though it is not
convincing to him. He points out that the Tano subgroup of Kwa is clearly defined based
on phonological innovations. However, “...no phonological innovation can yet be
assigned with any confidence to Kwa...” It is clear from his prose that he doubts the
integrity of the (new) Kwa group.
Williamson (1989b: 249ff) examines the Benue-Congo terms and concludes that
only the word for ‘neck’ appears to be a Benue-Congo innovation. She proposes seven
additional words which may be possible innovations, but she points out that “not a single
one of them is attested in every division of Benue-Congo...” Her conclusion is that
“Proto-Benue-Congo existed as a single language (if at all...) for a very short period of
time.” Thus the integrity of (new) Benue-Congo is also doubtful.
It is interesting to note that Bennett & Sterk do not claim that these two sets of
words represent common innovations for the two language groups, but it appears that
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