Berom and Eggon have the most speakers. Most Plateau languages are threatened and have around 2,000-10,000 speakers.[1]
Defining features of the Plateau family have only been published in manuscript form (Blench 2008). Many of the languages have highly elaborate phonology systems that make comparison with poor data difficult.
Branches and locations
Below is a list of major Plateau branches and their primary locations (centres of diversity) based on Blench (2019).[2]
The Plateau languages are highly typologically and lexically diverse. For instance, Roger Blench (2022) notes that Beromic is more internally diverse than all of West Chadic A3.[3]
Classification
Little work has been done on the Plateau languages, and the results to date are tentative.
Blench (2018)
Blench (2018:112) gives the following classification of the Plateau languages.[4]
The following classification is taken from Blench (2008).[5] Most of the branches are discrete constituents, though Central is a residual grouping and there are doubts about some of the purported Ninzic languages. Plateau languages as a whole share a number of isoglosses, as do all branches apart from Tarokoid.
Nisam is a presumed Plateau language once spoken in Nince Village, Kaduna State, but its place within the Plateau branch cannot be ascertained due to the lack of linguistic data. In 2005, there was only one speaker of Nisam.[11]
*ni- (corresponding to Bantu noun class 9 *n- for animals and inanimate objects)
*V- for person, *bV- for people
*N- prefixes, homorganic with the following consonant
*nV- ~ *mV- (both singular and plural), which mark liquids, mass nouns, and abstract nouns
Only some of the languages have nominal classes, as the Bantu languages have, where in others these have eroded. In many Plateau languages, many CV- prefixes have become fossilised, replaced by V- prefixes, or disappeared altogether.[4] The large numbers of consonants in many languages is due to the erosion of noun-class prefixes.
In Plateau languages, adjectives and possessive forms generally follow the noun.
Reconstructions
Some Proto-Plateau quasi-reconstructions proposed by Roger Blench (2008) are:
No.
Gloss
Proto-Plateau
1.
tree
#ku-kon V-kon
2.
leaf
#(g)yaNa
4.
dew
#-myeŋe
12.
wind
#-gbulu
21.
hunger
#igbyoŋ
25.
ear
#ku-toŋ(ɔ)
26.
mouth
#ku-nyu
30.
female breast
#ambɛŋ
31.
navel
#i-kumbu
32.
bone
#-kupu
35.
blood
#-(n)ji
64.
twelve/ten
#isok-
Numerals
Comparison of numerals in individual languages:[12]
^ abcdBlench, Roger M. 2018. Nominal affixes and number marking in the Plateau languages of Central Nigeria. In John R. Watters (ed.), East Benue-Congo: Nouns, pronouns, and verbs, 107–172. Berlin: Language Science Press. doi:10.5281/zenodo.1314325
