Abstract

The paper is an overview of scholarship on the Plateau language group of Central Nigeria to November 2020. It reviews the existing published and manuscript sources and describes modern scholarship. It provides an overview of the literature on the internal and external classification of these languages and the issue of endangerment, which is severe for some languages. It summarises the use of Plateau languages in education and the media, which has undergone a major revival after 2010. There is now a concerted push for the use of Plateau languages in education. The paper then reviews each subgroup, presenting an internal classification and references to publications. Based on the existing evidence, a fresh classification of Plateau is presented.

Highlights

  • 1.1 Background to Plateau languagesAmong the many language families represented in Nigeria, one of the largest and most complex is the Plateau languages considered to be a major subgroup of Benue-Congo (Greenberg 1963; Gerhardt 1989; Blench 2000a)

  • The paper is an overview of scholarship on the Plateau language group of Central Nigeria to November 2020

  • It reviews the existing published and manuscript sources and describes modern scholarship. It provides an overview of the literature on the internal and external classification of these languages and the issue of endangerment, which is severe for some languages

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Summary

Background to Plateau languages

Among the many language families represented in Nigeria, one of the largest and most complex is the Plateau languages considered to be a major subgroup of Benue-Congo (Greenberg 1963; Gerhardt 1989; Blench 2000a). With numerous emendations and additions these have been reprised in almost all subsequent works (notably Williamson and Shimizu 1968; Williamson 1971, 1972; Maddieson 1972; Hansford et al 1976; Gerhardt 1989; Crozier and Blench 1992; Storch et al 2011; Blench 1998, 2000a, 2018) This paper is an overview of the Plateau languages, incorporating recent findings and presenting a fresh but still tentative classification. It covers the sources of data, the media profile of Plateau and the issue of the decline in research. The second section presents the subgroups of Plateau, following the sequence of the overall classification adopted in this paper, reporting on newly available data

Data sources
Internal and external classifications of Plateau
Language status and language endangerment
Plateau languages in education and the media
The research agenda
Tarokoid
Central
Beromic
Ninzic
Alumic
Ndunic
East Plateau
Conclusion: a revised classification of Plateau
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