Jarawan languages

Jarawan is a group of languages spoken mostly in Bauchi State, Nigeria, with some also scattered in Plateau State, Taraba State, and Adamawa State in the same country. Two related languages formerly spoken in Cameroon are now extinct but are believed to have belonged to the group. This connection between Nigerian and Cameroonian Jarawan is attributed to Thomas (1925). Whether Jarawan languages are best classified alongside other Bantu languages or among non-Bantu Bantoid languages is a matter of ongoing debate. A number of descriptions and classifications in the early 20th century suggest that they may be historically related to Bantu languages but not necessarily Bantu themselves. Other perspectives based on lexicostatistic modeling and other phylogenetic techniques for language comparison argue instead that Jarawan languages are properly classified alongside Zone A Bantu languages (A31-A40-A60). For classifications based on these more recent studies, see for example Blench (2006), Piron (1997), and Grollemund (2012).

Languages
The classification of Jarawan according to Blench (2011) is:


 * Mboa (Mbonga) (extinct)
 * Nagumi (Ngong) (extinct)
 * Nigerian Jarawan
 * Numan
 * 'Bile (Bille)
 * Mbula-Bwazza (dialect cluster): Mbula, Bwazza, Tambo
 * Mama (also sometimes called Kantana)
 * Lame (dialect cluster)–Gwa
 * Kulung
 * Jaku–Gubi: Shiki (Gubi), Dulbu, Labir (Jaku)
 * Jarawa (dialect cluster): Mbat (Baɗa), Galamkya, Duguri (Doori), Bankal, Kantana, Gwak

Names and locations
Below is a list of language names, populations, and locations adapted from Blench (2019).

Characteristics
The vast majority of what is known by linguists about Jarawan languages is gleaned from wordlists, many of which were compiled very early in the 20th century, and contain anywhere from a couple dozen to approximately 400 words, and occasionally a few phrases or simple sentences. Jarawan languages are sometimes argued to be Bantu languages given the presence of certain Bantu cognates, but the number and types of these cognates are not robust. The Jarawan lexicon is heavily influenced by Chadic languages, and particularly Hausa, due to contact.

Perhaps due to contact with Chadic languages, Jarawan languages have "frozen" prefixes that are likely vestiges of a lost noun class system; this is discussed in Blench (2007) and earlier in Maddieson & Williamson (1975). This is not to say that the prefixes themselves are from Chadic, but rather likely from an earlier ancestor. The prefixes are no longer productive, and there is no related system of agreement or concord, as found in modern day Bantu languages. Jarawan languages for which information is available appear to make a simple opposition between singular and plural wherein a singular noun is equivalent to the noun stem, and the plural is formed by the same prefix, at least for countable nouns.

Jarawan languages exhibit predominantly isolating (analytic) morphology. Other than plural prefixes on nouns, the only affixation yet noted is aspectual Habitual and Perfective suffixes, or verb "extensions" whose form depends on the shape of the verb stem. This is discussed in Gerhardt (1988) for "Jar" and Kantana, but also by Green (2020, 2021) for Mbat (Bada).

Although Jarawan had undergone Chadic influence during its earlier days, the reverse situation of a Chadic language being influenced by Jarawan is found in the curious case of Chadic Kulung being extensively influenced by the surrounding Jarawan Kulung language. Speakers of both languages identify as ethnic Kulung, but the languages belong to unrelated language families.

Previous studies
Blench (2006) presents the early research as follows: "The Jarawan Bantu languages have always been something of a poor relation to Bantu proper. Scattered across northern Cameroun and east-central Nigeria, they remain poorly documented and poorly characterised. The first record of Jarawan Bantu is Koelle (1854), whose Dṣạ̄rāwa probably corresponds to modern-day Bankal. Gowers (1907) has six wordlists of Jarawan Bantu (Bomborawa, Bankalawa, Gubawa, Jaku, Jarawa, and Wurkunawa) included in his survey of the largely Chadic languages of the Bauchi area. Strümpell (1910) has a wordlist of the Jarawan Bantu language Mboa, formerly spoken on the Cameroon/CAR border near Meiganga. Strümpell (1922) and Baudelaire (1944) are the only records of Nagumi, based around Natsari, SE of Garoua in northern Cameroun. Johnston (1919: 716 ff.) assigned the language recorded by Koelle to a "Central-Bauci" one of his "Semi-Bantu" language groups. Thomas (1925, 1927) recognised the Bantu affinities of the Nigerian Jarawan Bantu languages, but Doke (1947) and Guthrie (1969–71) make no reference to Jarawan Bantu, and the latest reference book on Bantu also excludes it (Nurse & Philippson 2003). Some Jarawan Bantu languages are listed in the Benue–Congo Comparative wordlist (henceforth BCCW) (Williamson & Shimizu 1968; Williamson 1973) and a student questionnaire at the University of Ibadan in the early 1970s provided additional sketchy data on others."

In addition, Kraft's (1981) Chadic wordlists includes data on Bankal and Jaku. Sachnine & Dieu (1974) and Mohammadou (1979) include word lists for Ngong, which may be the same language as the now extinct Cameroonian language Nagumi. Also for Cameroonian Jarawan, Mohammadou (1980) contains a wordlist for Mboa, also called Mbɔŋa. These are summarized in Mohammadou (2002/2020). In 2016, Adelberger & Kleinewillinghöfer published a history sketch and lexicon of Kulung, as compiled by the missionary Ira McBride.

According to Blench (2006): "Maddieson & Williamson (1975) represents the first attempt to synthesise this data on the position of these languages. Since that period, publications have been limited. . . . Lukas and Gerhardt (1981) analyse some rather hastily collected data on Mbula, while Gerhardt (1982) published an analysis of some of this new data and memorably named the Jarawan Bantu "the Bantu who turned back". Gerhardt (1982) provides data on verbal extensions in Mama and Kantana. Blench (2006) likewise classified them as Bantu languages. Ulrich Kleinewillinghöfer has made available a comparative wordlist of six Jarawan Bantu lects; Zaambo (Dukta), Bwazza, Mbula, Bile, Duguri and Kulung, collected in the early 1990s as part of the SFB 268."

Wycliffe Nigeria has conducted two surveys of Jarawan groups in Nigeria, the Mbula-Bwazza (Rueck et al. 2007) and the Jar cluster (Rueck et al. 2009) providing much new and more accurate data in the status of Jarawan in Nigeria.

Work begun in 2018 by Green at Syracuse University has focused on languages of the "Jar" cluster, and particularly on description and documentation of Mbat (Bada) and Duguri.