Bak languages

Bak
Bak
Bak–Bijago
Geographic; distribution	Senegal, Guinea-Bissau
Linguistic classification	Niger–Congo? Atlantic–Congo Senegambian Bak; ; ;
Subdivisions	Bak proper; Bijago;
Language codes
Glottolog	cent2230

The Bak languages are a group of typologically Atlantic languages of Senegal and Guinea-Bissau linked in 2010 to the erstwhile Atlantic isolate Bijago. Bak languages are non-tonal.

Languages

Bak proper

Balanta

	Jola languages (Diola)

	Papel languages (Manjaku)

Bijago

Bijago is highly divergent. Sapir (1971) classified it as an isolate within West Atlantic. However, Segerer (2010) showed that this is primarily due to unrecognized sound changes, and that Bijago is in fact close to the Bak languages. For example, the following cognates in Bijago and Joola Kasa (one of the Jola languages) are completely regular, but had not previously been identified:

Gloss	Bijago	Joola Kasa
head	bu	fu-kow
eye	nɛ	ji-cil

Segerer reconstructs the ancestral forms as *bu-gof and *di-gɛs, respectively, with the following developments:

*bu-gof
- > *bu-kof > *bu-kow > fu-kow
- > *bu-ŋof > *bu-ŋo > (u-)bu
*di-gɛs
- > *di-kis > *di-kil > ji-cil
- > *ne-ŋɛs > *ne-ŋɛ > nɛ

References

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