Trees and Traps: Strategies for the Classification of African Languages and their Historical Significance

Abstract

For the present series there will emerge a complete genetic reclassification of the languages of Africa. These results are so at variance with the commonly accepted scheme that a brief methodological foreword seems in order. There is nothing recondite about the methods which I have employed.…These abruptly articulated sentences form the opening of the first in a series of articles which, with time, would be seen to have initiated a new phase in the historical study of African languages. Seven of these articles appeared, at quarterly intervals, during 1949/50. They offered not only a fresh classification for the languages of the African continent; they also exemplified a fresh approach to the problem of language classification anywhere in the world. Since then, the classification itself has been revised and extended on several occasions, and the methodology has been made more explicit in some respects. But of none of these subsequent developments can it be said that they were not latent in the original publications. Even if the author had lost interest in the subject soon afterwards--which happily was not the case--the indications would still have been there for others to follow up, if and when they chose. In that sense, the achievement was complete by 1950.Recognition of the achievement, however, was only slowly gained. Among Africanists these articles became the focus for a prolonged and sometimes acrimonious controversay, the echoes of which are with us even now. In some quarters, the classification was not at all willingly accepted; nor was the methodology which lay behind it.