In most classifications, the Eastern Sudanic languages are a group of nine families of languages that may constitute a branch of the Nilo-Saharan language family. Eastern Sudanic languages are spoken from southern Egypt to northern Tanzania.
Nubian (and possibly Meroitic) gives Eastern Sudanic some of the earliest written attestations of African languages. However, the largest branch by far is Nilotic, spread by extensive and comparatively recent conquests throughout East Africa. Before the spread of Nilotic, Eastern Sudanic was centered in present-day Sudan. The name "East Sudanic" refers to the eastern part of the region of Sudan where the country of Sudan is located, and contrasts with Central Sudanic and Western Sudanic (modern Mande, in the Niger–Congo family).
Lionel Bender (1980) proposes several Eastern Sudanic isoglosses (defining words), such as *kutuk "mouth", *(ko)TVS-(Vg) "three", and *ku-lug-ut or *kVl(t) "fish".
In older classifications, such as that of Meinhof (1911), the term was used for the eastern Sudanic languages, largely equivalent to modern Nilo-SaharansansNilotic, which is the largest constituent of modern Eastern Sudanic.
Güldemann (2018, 2022) considers East Sudanic to be undemonstrated at the current state of research. He only accepts the evidence for a connection between the Nilotic and Surmic languages as "robust", and states that Rilly's evidence (see below) for the northern group comprising Nubian, Nara, Nyima, Taman and Meroitic "certainly look[s] promising".[1] He finds the Southern East Sudanic unit (comprising Nilotic, Surmic, Jebel, Temein and Daju) typologically coherent and, with the exclusion of Daju, showing likely correspondences among personal pronouns.[2]Glottolog (2023) does not accept even a Surmic–Nilotic relationship.
Typology
The putative Eastern Sudanic languages are "surprisingly diverse" and resemble in this the larger Nilo-Saharan proposal.[3] No common typological features unify them. A set of head-initial languages corresponds largely with the Southern group (typologically similar to also e.g. the Kadu and Central Sudanic families), and a set of head-final languages corresponds largely with the Northern group (typologically similar to also e.g. the Maban and Saharan families). Typological difference, however, does not preclude a relationship, and typological similarities with nearby certainly or likely unrelated languages suggests that these similarities might be partly areal. Omotic and Cushitic, in particular, are nearby head-final families belonging instead in the large Afro-Asiatic phylum and forming the Ethiopian language area.
Internal classification
There are several different classifications of East Sudanic languages.
Bender (2000)
Lionel Bender assigns the languages into two branches, depending on whether the 1sg pronoun ("I") has a /k/ or an /n/:
Starostin, using lexicostatistics, finds strong support for Bender's Northern branch, but none for the Southern branch.[5] Eastern Sudanic as a whole is rated a probable working model, pending proper comparative work, while the relationship between Nubian, Tama, and Nara is beyond reasonable doubt.
Nyima is not part of the northern group, though it appears to be closest to it. (For one thing, its pronouns align well with the northern (Astaboran) branches.) Surmic, Nilotic, and Temein share a number of similarities, including in their pronouns, but not enough to warrant classifying them together in opposition to Astaboran without proper comparative work. Jebel and Daju also share many similarities with Surma and Nilotic, though their pronominal systems are closer to Astaboran.
Inclusion of Kuliak and Berta is not supported. Similarities with Kuliak may be due to both being Nilo-Saharan families, whereas Berta and Jebel form a sprachbund.
A similar classification was given in Starostin (2014):[6]
Roger Blench (2019)[7]:18 and (2021),[8] like Starostin, only finds support for Bender's Northern branch. Blench proposes the following internal structure, supported by morphological evidence.
↑ Güldemann, Tom (2018). "Historical linguistics and genealogical language classification in Africa". In Güldemann, Tom (ed.). The Languages and Linguistics of Africa. The World of Linguistics series. Vol.11. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp.299–308. doi:10.1515/9783110421668-002. ISBN978-3-11-042606-9. S2CID133888593.
↑ Rilly, Claude. 2009. From the Yellow Nile to the Blue Nile: The quest for water and the diffusion of Northern East Sudanic languages from the fourth to the first millennia BCE. Paper presented at ECAS 2009 (3rd European Conference on African Studies, Panel 142: African waters – water in Africa, barriers, paths, and resources: their impact on language, literature and history of people) in Leipzig, 4 to 7 June 2009.
↑ Blench, Roger. 2019. Morphological evidence for the coherence of East Sudanic. Paper submitted for a Special Issue of Dotawo. Also presented at the 14th Nilo-Saharan Linguistics Colloquium Department of African Studies, University of Vienna, 31 May 2019.
↑ Dimmendaal, Gerrit J. and Angelika Jakobi. 2020. Eastern Sudanic. In: Vossen, Rainer and Gerrit J. Dimmendaal (eds.). 2020. The Oxford Handbook of African Languages, 392–407. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bender, M. Lionel. 2000. "Nilo-Saharan". In: Bernd Heine and Derek Nurse (eds.), African Languages: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press.
Bender, M. Lionel. 1981. "Some Nilo-Saharan isoglosses". In: Thilo Schadeberg, M. L. Bender (eds.), Nilo-Saharan: Proceedings of the First Nilo-Saharan Linguistics Colloquium, Leiden, Sept. 8–10, 1980. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.
Güldemann, Tom (2022). "The Historical-Comparative Status of East Sudanic". In Blench, Roger; Weschenfelder, Petra; Ziegelmeyer, Georg (eds.). Current Research in Nilo-Saharan. Cologne: Köppe. pp.53–73.
Starostin, George (2015). Языки Африки. Опыт построения лексикостатистической классификации. Том II. Восточносуданские языки[The Languages of Africa. The experience of building a lexiostatistical classification.] (in Russian). Vol.II: The Eastern Sudanic Languages. Moscow: Languages of Slavic culture. ISBN9785457890718.
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