Relation to Niger-Congo Mande does not share the
morphology characteristic of most of the Niger–Congo family, such as the
noun-class system. Nor are there many recognized cognates in core vocabulary between Mande and Niger-Congo. Accordingly, Dimmendaal (2008) argues that the evidence for inclusion is slim, and that for now Mande is best considered an independent family. The same view is held by Güldemann (2018). Blench regards it as an early branch that diverged before the noun-class morphology developed. Dwyer (1998) compared it with other branches of Niger–Congo and finds that they form a coherent family, with Mande being the most divergent of the branches he considered. A preliminary study from 2024 suggests that a relationship between the Mande and Atlantic-Congo branches is plausible based on reconstructed lexical items.
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,
Bobo,
Soninke–Bozo,
Southwestern Mande (Mende, Kpelle, Loma etc.),
Soso–Jalonke,
Jogo,
Vai–Kono,
Mokole 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. 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 a compilation of both. •
Mande • Southeast Mande •
Southern Mande (Dan, Mah, etc.) •
Eastern Mande (Bisa, Busa, etc.) • West Mande • Central West (Manding–Kpelle) • Central Mande •
Susu–Yalunka • Manding–Jɔgɔ •
Jogo languages • Manding–Vai •
Vai–Kono • Manding–Mokole •
Manding languages •
Mokole languages •
Southwest Mande (Mende, Kpelle, etc.) • Northwest (Samogo–Soninke) •
Jɔ (Jowulu) • Northwest proper •
Samogo languages (partial: Duun–Sembla) • Soninke–Bobo •
Bɔbɔ •
Soninke–Bozo 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. ==Morphosyntactic features==