| Plateau | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution: |
Nigeria |
| Genetic classification: |
Niger-Congo Atlantic-Congo Benue-Congo Plateau |
| Subdivisions: |
—
|
 The Platoid languages (yellow) in Nigeria. |
|
The forty or so Plateau are a tentative group of Benue-Congo languages spoken by 3.5 million people on the Jos Plateau and in adjacent areas in Central Nigeria. The original formulation, now sometimes called Platoid or Central Nigerian, included the Jukunoid and Kainji languages (and later the Dakoid languages), and is suspected to be a geographic rather than genealogical grouping, or at least Jukunoid and Kainji appear to be more distant than the other languages are to each other. However, the remaining Plateau proper has yet be shown to form a valid family.
Contents |
Classification
Little work has been done on the Plateau languages, and the results to date are tentative. The following classification is taken from Blench (2006).
| Plateau |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Characteristics
Only some of the languages have nominal classes, as the Bantu languages have. Adjectives and possessive forms generally follow the noun.
See also
References
- Blench (2006) Prospecting proto-Plateau. Manuscript.
External links
- Plateau materials from Roger Blench
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
