Dimmendaal (2008) notes that Greenberg (1963) based his conclusion on strong evidence and that the proposal as a whole has become more convincing in the decades since. Mikkola (1999) reviewed Greenberg's evidence and found it convincing.
Roger Blench notes morphological similarities in all putative branches, which leads him to believe that the family is likely to be valid.
Koman and
Gumuz are poorly known and have been difficult to evaluate until recently. Songhay is markedly divergent, in part due to massive influence from the
Mande languages. }} }} }} }} }} }} }} }} }} Bender revised his model of Nilo-Saharan again in 1996, at which point he split Koman and Gumuz into completely separate branches of Core Nilo-Saharan.
Ehret 1989, 2001 Christopher Ehret came up with a novel classification of Nilo-Saharan in 1989, though most of the evidence was not published until 2001. His classification, which was not accepted by other researchers, }} }} }}
Blench 2006 Niger-Saharan, a language macrofamily linking the Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan phyla, was proposed by
Blench (2006). It was not accepted by other linguists. Blench's (2006) internal classification of the Niger-Saharan macrophylum is as follows: • Proto-Niger-Saharan •
Songhay,
Saharan,
Maba,
Fur,
Kuliak,
Berta,
Kunama,
Komuz,
Shabo • Kado-Sudanic •
Kado (Kadugli-Krongo) • Niger-Sudanic •
East Sudanic • Niger-Central Sudanic •
Central Sudanic •
Niger-Congo According to Blench (2006), typological features common to both Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan include: • Phonology: ATR vowel harmony and the labial-velars /kp/ and /gb/ • Noun-class affixes: e.g.,
ma- affix for mass nouns in Nilo-Saharan • Verbal extensions and plural verbs
Blench 2010 With a better understanding of Nilo-Saharan classifiers, and the affixes or number marking they have developed into in various branches, Blench believes that all of the families postulated as Nilo-Saharan belong together. He proposes the following tentative internal classification, with Songhai closest to Saharan, a relationship that had not previously been suggested: }} }} }} }} }} ?
Mimi of Decorse Blench 2015 By 2015, and again in 2017, Blench had refined the subclassification of this model, linking Maban with Fur, Kadu with Eastern Sudanic, and Kuliak with the node that contained them, and added a tentative, extinct branch he names "Plateau" as to explain a possible Nilo-Saharan substrate in the Malian
Dogon and
Bangime languages, for the following structure: }} }} }} }} }} }} }} }} }} }} }} Blench (2021) concludes that Maban may be close to Eastern Sudanic.
Starostin (2016) Georgiy Starostin (2016), using
lexicostatistics based on Swadesh lists, is more inclusive than
Glottolog, and in addition finds probable and possible links between the families that will require reconstruction of the proto-languages for confirmation. Starostin also does not consider Greenberg's Nilo-Saharan to be a valid, coherent clade. In addition to the families listed in
Glottolog (previous section), Starostin considers the following to be established: •
Northern "K" Eastern Sudanic or "NNT" (Nubian, Nara, and Tama; see below for Nyima) •
Southern "N" Eastern Sudanic (Surmic, Temein, Jebel, Daju, Nilotic), though their exact relationships to each other remain obscure •
Central Sudanic (including
Birri and
Kresh–Aja, which may prove to be closest to each other) •
Koman (including Gule) A relationship of
Nyima with Nubian, Nara, and Tama (NNT) is considered "highly likely" and close enough that proper comparative work should be able to demonstrate the connection if it's valid, though it would fall outside NNT proper (see
Eastern Sudanic languages). Other units that are "highly likely" to eventually prove to be valid families are: •
East Sudanic as a whole • Central Sudanic – Kadu (Central Sudanic +
Kadugli–Krongo) • Maba–Kunama (
Maban +
Kunama) •
Komuz (Koman + Gumuz) In summary, at this level of certainty, "Nilo-Saharan" constitutes ten distinct and separate language families: Eastern Sudanic, Central Sudanic – Kadu, Maba–Kunama, Komuz, Saharan, Songhai, Kuliak, Fur, Berta, and Shabo. Possible further "deep" connections, which cannot be evaluated until the proper comparative work on the constituent branches has been completed, are: • Eastern Sudanic + Fur + Berta • Central Sudanic – Kadu + Maba–Kunama There are faint suggestions that Eastern and Central Sudanic may be related (essentially the old Chari–Nile clade), though that possibility is "unexplorable under current conditions" and could be complicated if Niger–Congo were added to the comparison. Starostin finds no evidence that the Komuz, Kuliak, Saharan, Songhai, or Shabo languages are related to any of the other Nilo-Saharan languages.
Mimi-D and
Meroitic were not considered, though Starostin had previously proposed that Mimi-D was also an isolate despite its slight similarity to Central Sudanic. In a follow-up study published in 2017, Starostin reiterated his previous points as well as explicitly accepting a genetic relationship between Macro-East Sudanic and Macro-Central Sudanic. Starostin names this proposal "Macro-Sudanic". The classification is as follows. • Macro-Sudanic • Macro-Sudanic macrofamily • Macro-Central Sudanic family •
Central Sudanic family •
Sara-Bongo-Bagirmi (West-Central Sudanic branch) •
Kresh-
Aja-
Birri • East-Central Sudanic branch •
Mangbutu-Efe •
Mangbetu-Asoa •
Lendu-Ngiti •
Moru-Madi •
Krongo-Kadugli (Kadu) group •
Maba group • Macro-Eastern Sudanic family •
Eastern Sudanic family •
Northeast Sudanic family •
Nubian group •
Tama group •
Nara language • Nyimang-Afitti Group •
Southeast Sudanic family •
Surmic languages (Southern Surmic + Northern Surmic /
Majang branches) •
Nilotic languages (Western, Eastern, Southern branches) •
Jebel group •
Temein group •
Daju group •
Berta group •
Fur-Amdang group •
Kunama-Ilit group • Koman-Gumuz ("
Komuz") family •
Koman family • "Narrow Koman" group •
Gule (Anej) language •
Gumuz languages (group) •
Saharan family • Western Saharan group (Kanuri-Kanembu + Teda-Dazaga) • Eastern Saharan group (Zaghawa + Berti) •
Kuliak group •
Songhay group •
Shabo language (Mikeyir) Starostin (2017) finds significant lexical similarities between Kadu and Central Sudanic, while some lexical similarities also shared by Central Sudanic with Fur-Amdang, Berta, and Eastern Sudanic to a lesser extent.
Dimmendaal 2016, 2019 Gerrit J. Dimmendaal suggests the following subclassification of Nilo-Saharan: }} }} }} }} Dimmendaal et al. consider the evidence for the inclusion of
Kadu and
Songhay too weak to draw any conclusions at present, whereas there is some evidence that
Koman and
Gumuz belong together and may be Nilo-Saharan. The large Northeastern division is based on several typological markers: • tolerance of complex
syllable structure • higher amount of both inflectional and derivational morphology, including the presence of
cases • verb-final (SOV or OSV) word order •
coverb +
light verb constructions •
converbs
Blench 2023 By 2023, Blench had slightly revised the model for a deep primary split between Koman–Gumuz and the rest. Kunama and Berta are "provisionally" placed as the next to branch off, because they only partially share the features that unite the rest of the family. However, it is not clear if this is because they actually diverged early, or if they might have lost those features at a later date. For example, Berta shares plausible lexical cognates with the
Eastern Jebel languages (East Sudanic) and its system of grammatical number "closely resembles" those of the
East Sudanic languages; Kunama could be divergent "due to long-term interaction with
Afroasiatic languages." Saharan–Songhay (especially Songhay) have seen substantial erosion of key characteristics, but this appears to be a secondary development and not evidence of early branching. "Core" Nilo-Saharan ("Central African" in Blench 2015) thus appears to be a typological rather than genetic grouping, though Maban is treated as a divergent branch of Eastern Sudanic; Kadu also seems to be quite close. The resulting structure is as follows: }} }} }} }} }} }} Beyond the work of Colleen Ahland, Blench notes that the inclusion of Koman is buttressed by the work of Manuel Otero. The argument for Songhay is mostly lexical, especially the pronouns. Blench gives Greenberg credit for both East and Central Sudanic. Saharan and Songhay have some "striking" similarities in their lexicon, which Blench argues is genetic, though the absence of reliable proto-Sarahan and proto-Songhay reconstructions makes evaluation difficult.
Glottolog 4.0 (2019) In summarizing the literature to date, Hammarström et al. in
Glottolog do not accept that the following families are demonstrably related with current research: •
Berta •
Central Sudanic (excluding
Kresh–Aja;
Birri is also questionable as Central Sudanic) •
Daju (putatively
East Sudanic) •
Eastern Jebel (putatively
East Sudanic) •
Furan •
Gule •
Gumuz •
Kadugli–Krongo •
Koman (excluding
Gule) •
Kresh–Aja (putatively
Central Sudanic) •
Kuliak •
Kunama •
Maban (including Mimi-N) •
Mimi-Gaudefroy (Mimi-D) •
Nara (putatively
East Sudanic) •
Nilotic (putatively
East Sudanic) •
Nubian (putatively
East Sudanic) •
Nyimang (putatively
East Sudanic) •
Saharan •
Songhai •
Surmic (putatively
East Sudanic) •
Tama (putatively
East Sudanic) •
Temein (putatively
East Sudanic) ==External relations==