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fully realized, the comparative method cannot claim to picture the historical
process. (p. 318)
This having been said, Dixon (1997) calls into question the appropriateness of
applying the comparative method to Niger-Congo at all. According to his punctuated
equilibrium model of language change, the Niger-Congo languages have been in a state
of equilibrium in which areal features have diffused over the geographical region through
borrowing, effectively masking the type of language change typically associated with
historical reconstruction. As a result, he doubts that an accurate reconstruction of Proto-
Niger-Congo is possible.
5. Other methods. Two other types of classifications, typology and
dialectometrical, have been occasionally employed in Niger-Congo classification, but I
have not focused on them in this paper. According to Heine (1980a), “The typological
method is nowadays rejected by most linguists since its basic assumption that structural
comparisons necessarily lead to the discovery of genetic relationship has been proved
wrong in a number of cases” (p. 298). The dialectometrical method has been the basis of
one study on African languages (Guarisma & Möhlig 1986), but I will not discuss it here
for lack of space.
C.6 Conclusion
It is clear from this overview of Niger-Congo language classification that much
more work needs to be done in this realm. The exact placement of Ijoid, Kru, and Dogon
within the Niger-Congo genetic tree remains to be determined. Whether several
linguistic groups—Atlantic, (new) Kwa, (new) Benue-Congo, Wide Bantu, Narrow
Bantu, and Adamawa-Ubangi—are each a unity also remains to be established.
Up until now, the Niger-Congo classification has been influenced predominantly
first by work using the method of resemblances, and then by work focusing on
lexicostatistics and shared innovations. While these methods may be useful for
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