Talk:Eastern Sudanic languages

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Controversy about Nilo-Saharan[edit]

I note that Azalea Pomp has raised questions about Nilo-Saharan. This should be backed up with some reference to support the controversy claim. Pete unseth (talk) 23:12, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it's hypothetical, but no more than many other proposals. But I think her point is that all such proposals should be made explicit.

BTW, any idea where the Ethnologue 16 classification comes from? kwami (talk) 09:27, 26 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed the wording indicating any controversy about Nilo-Saharan. So far Azalea has failed to provide any sources showing that such a controversy really exists, apart from the usual doubts which arise with any statement in historical linguistics. On the source of Ethnologue 16: I don't know where it comes from, but the classification sort of matches with one I got as a student from Bernd Heine 15 years ago. Landroving Linguist (talk) 11:43, 4 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Classification #3[edit]

George Starostin has posted a third classification of Eastern Sudanic, recognizing the following groups as clearly valid and potentially connected to each other:

Surmic
Nilotic
Astaboran
Nyima (as a possible sister group to Astaboran)
Jebel
Temein
Daju

He also rejects the affinity of Kuliak.

The paper is a "draft", though; is it worth citing here yet? --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 23:38, 21 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

We could, since so little work is done on this topic, though I'd place it after Bender because it hasn't been reviewed. Need to clarify what Astaboran includes, note that only significant change is that he breaks up Bender's Southern group. We should probably also remove Ehret, since his scholarship is so poor, and is now 30 years old with no-one supporting it. Do you want to do it? — kwami (talk) 02:44, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I went ahead. — kwami (talk) 19:39, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good to me. I suppose we could still keep around Ehret for a reference for the term "Astaboran", which we currently list as a descendant. (Or we could rename the page to something more neutral.)

Similarly, if "n-Sudanic" is disputed, do we need a separate article for Kir-Abbaian languages at all? --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 22:35, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]