Plateau
Platoid
Geographic distribution	Plateau,Kaduna, andNasarawa states,Nigeria
Linguistic classification	Niger–Congo? Atlantic–Congo Volta-Congo Benue–Congo Central Nigerian Plateau
Language codes
Glottolog	benu1248
The Plateau languages shown within Nigeria

ThePlateau languages are a tentative group of forty or soBenue–Congo languages spoken by 15 million people on theJos Plateau,Southern Kaduna,Nasarawa State and in adjacent areas in centralNigeria.^{[citation needed]}

Berom andEggon have the most speakers. Most Plateau languages are threatened and have around 2,000-10,000 speakers.^[1]

Defining features of the Plateau family have only been published in manuscript form (Blench 2008). Many of the languages have highly elaborate phonology systems that make comparison with poor data difficult.

Below is a list of major Plateau branches and their primary locations (centres of diversity) based on Blench (2019).^[2]

The Plateau languages are highly typologically and lexically diverse. For instance,Roger Blench (2022) notes thatBeromic is more internally diverse than all ofWest Chadic A3.^[3]

Little work has been done on the Plateau languages, and the results to date are tentative.

Blench (2018:112) gives the following classification of the Plateau languages.^[4]

The following classification is taken from Blench (2008).^[5] Most of the branches are discrete constituents, though Central is a residual grouping and there are doubts about some of the purportedNinzic languages. Plateau languages as a whole share a number of isoglosses, as do all branches apart fromTarokoid.

Glottolog adds theYukubenic languages.^[6] Blench, however, places Yukubenic in theJukunoid family,^[7] following Shimizu (1980).^[8]

Classification of Plateau languages by Gerhardt (1983),^[9] based on Maddieson (1972):^[10]

Note:Plateau 1 languages, consisting of Plateau 1a and 1b, are now classified separately asKainji languages.

List of Plateau languages given by Blench (2018):^[4]

Nisam is a presumed Plateau language once spoken in Nince Village, Kaduna State, but its place within the Plateau branch cannot be ascertained due to the lack of linguistic data. In 2005, there was only one speaker of Nisam.^[11]

Proto-Plateau nominal prefixes:^[4]

• *ni- (corresponding to Bantu noun class 9 *n- for animals and inanimate objects)
• *V- for person, *bV- for people
• *N- prefixes, homorganic with the following consonant
• *nV- ~ *mV- (both singular and plural), which mark liquids, mass nouns, and abstract nouns

Only some of the languages have nominal classes, as theBantu languages have, where in others these have eroded. In many Plateau languages, many CV- prefixes have become fossilised, replaced by V- prefixes, or disappeared altogether.^[4] The large numbers of consonants in many languages is due to the erosion ofnoun-class prefixes.

In Plateau languages, adjectives and possessive forms generally follow the noun.

Some Proto-Plateau quasi-reconstructions proposed byRoger Blench (2008) are:

Comparison of numerals in individual languages:^[12]

• List of Plateau reconstructions (Wiktionary)
• Systematic graphic of the Niger–Congo language family

• Blench (2008)Prospecting proto-Plateau. Manuscript.

 This article incorporatestext available under theCC BY 3.0 license.

• Plateau materials from Roger Blench
• ComparaLex, database with Plateau word lists

• Plateau languages

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