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The Mande languages are a family of languages spoken in several countries in West Africa by the Mandé peoples. They include Maninka language, Mandinka, Soninke language, Bambara language, Kpelle language, Dyula language, Bozo languages, Mende language, Susu language, and Vai language. There are around 60 to 75 languages spoken by 30 to 40 million people, chiefly in Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) and also in southern Mauritania, northern Ghana, northwestern Nigeria and northern Benin.
The Mande languages show a few lexical similarities with the Atlantic–Congo language family, so together they have been proposed as parts of a larger Niger–Congo language family since the 1950s. However, the Mande languages lack the noun-class morphology that is the primary identifying feature of the Atlantic–Congo languages. Accordingly, linguists increasingly treat Mande and Atlantic–Congo as independent language families.
Valentin Vydrin concluded that "the Mande Urheimat at the second half of the 4th millennium BC was located in Southern Sahara, somewhere to the North of 16° or even 18° of Northern latitude and between 3° and 12° of Western longitude.". That is now Mauritania and southern Western Sahara.
If Mande's linguistic affiliation were clearer that would help inform its history. For example, Joseph Greenberg suggested that the Niger-Congo group, which in his view includes the Mande language family, began to break up at around 7000 years Before Present. Its speakers would have practised a Neolithic culture, as indicated by the Proto-Niger-Congo words for "cow", "goat" and "cultivate".
In 1958, Welmers published an article called "The Mande Languages," where he divided the languages into three subgroups: North-West, South and East. His conclusion was based on lexicostatistics research. Joseph Greenberg followed that distinction in his The Languages of Africa (1963). Long (1971) and Gérard Galtier (1980) follow the distinction into three groups but with notable differences.
Without definitively concluding that Mande is or is not a member of Niger–Congo, Vydrin (2016) notes that proto-Mande basic vocabulary fits relatively well with Niger–Congo, and that typological criteria such as the absence of a noun-class system should not be taken as probative; he notes that "If the position of Mande within Niger-Congo is confirmed... Mande will certainly represent the most ancient branching of the phylum".
Most internal Mande classifications are based on lexicostatistics, for example, that based on the Swadesh list. An alternative classification from Kastenholz (1996) is based on lexical innovations and comparative linguistics. Kastenholz warns however that this is not based on objective criteria and thus is not a genealogical classification in the narrow sense. The following classification is acompilation of both.
Vydrin (2009) differs somewhat from this: he places Soso-Jalonke with Southwestern (a return to André Prost 1953); Soninke-Bozo, Samogho and Bobo as independent branches of Western Mande, and Mokole with Vai-Kono. Most classifications place Jo within Samogo.
Below are some cognates from D. J. Dwyer (1988) ( is or ):
Note that in these cognates:
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Internal classification
The diversity and depth of the Mande family is comparable to that of Indo-European. Eleven low-level branches of Mande are nearly universally accepted: Southern Mande (Dan etc.), Eastern Mande (Bisa, Boko etc.), Samogo languages, Bobo language, Soninke–Bozo, Southwestern Mande (Mende, Kpelle, Loma etc.), Soso–Jalonke, Jogo languages, Vai–Kono, Mokole languages and Manding (Bambara, Djula etc.). It is also widely accepted that these form two primary branches, the first two as Southeastern Mande and the rest as Western Mande.
Morphosyntactic features
Mande languages do not have the noun class system or verbal extensions of the Atlantic–Congo languages and for which the Bantu languages are so famous, but Bobo language has causative and intransitive forms of the verb. Southwestern Mande languages and Soninke have initial consonant mutation. Plurality is most often marked with a clitic; in some languages, with tone, as for example in Sembla language. Pronouns often have alienable–inalienable and clusivity distinctions. Word order in transitive clauses is subject–auxiliary verb–object–verb–adverb. Mainly are used. Within noun phrases, possessives come before the noun, and adjectives and plural markers after the verb; are found with both orders.9780521661782 ISBN 9780521661782
Comparative vocabulary
Below is a sample basic vocabulary of reconstructed proto-forms:
*tɔ́ko *tɔgɔ *tɔ *tɔ́ laqqe le, di laxan-ji liri ji yi konbe ɲoŋ -xatti n-yoŋ-yi sugo bɔ diggeh bɔ-guren jaxe bla
Numerals
Comparison of numerals in individual languages:
bʊ̀ kwi kurì kwi kurì kōōrì kōːlì korì wókòì flè / fʊ̀ bù vu fù vũ̀ ebu vù vu sɔ́jɔlú tɑ̄ táàn / táa tan / tan tán tã́ tan tã́ tan tã́ tan táŋ táŋ tan tán tan taŋ tán tâŋ fuú fù fuu pòǔ puu pù̀(ɡɔ̀) puu pû(ŋ), púù(ŋ) púu puu(ŋ), kapuu(ŋ) kapu puú ceũ tsjéù bʒĩĩ tó m̥ḿ̩ fʊ̃̀ tã̄ tá tã́ tan tʃɛ́mí tʃɛmi / tʃami tã́mú / tãmi
See also
Further reading
External links
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