1958年、ウェルマーズは "The Mande Languages" と題する論文を発表し、その中で言語を北西、南、東の3つのサブグループに分類した[9]。彼の議論は語彙統計学的研究に基づいている。ジョーセフ・グリーンバーグ著(1963)"The Languages of Africa"『アフリカの言語』においてこの分類に従った。
^McCall, D.F. (1971). “The Cultural Map and Time Profile of the Mande Speaking Peoples”. In Hodge, C.T. Hodge. Papers on the Manding. Bloomington: Indiana University. ISBN9780877501589
^Delafosse, Maurice (1901). Essai de manuel pratique de la langue mandé ou mandingue .... Institut national de langues et civilisations orientales. OCLC461494818
^Welmers, William E. (1971). “Niger–Congo, Mande”. Linguistics in Sub-Saharan Africa. Current Trends in Linguistics (The Hague: Mouton) 7: 113–140.
^Dimmendaal, Gerrit J. (2008). “Language Ecology and Linguistic Diversity on the African Continen t”. Language and Linguistics Compass2 (5): 840–858. doi:10.1111/j.1749-818x.2008.00085.x. ISSN1749-818X.
^Dimmendaal, Gerrit Jan (2011). Historical linguistics and the comparative study of African languages. Amsterdam Philadelphia: J. Benjamins Pub. Co. ISBN978-90-272-1178-1
^Güldemann, Tom (2018). “Historical linguistics and genealogical language classification in Africa”. In Güldemann, Tom. The Languages and Linguistics of Africa. The World of Linguistics. 11. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 58–444. doi:10.1515/9783110421668-002. ISBN978-3-11-042606-9. "Overall, unless more robust and systematic evidence is brought forward, the long-standing but vague idea that Mande is distant from the rest of Niger-Kordofanian as one of its earliest offshoots should give way to the neutral assessment that it is a family without a proven genealogical affiliation (p. 192)."