The family is named after the
Oti and
Volta rivers.
Languages
The internal classification of OtiâVolta, as worked out by
Manessy 1975â79[1][2] and
Naden 1989[3][4] (Williamson & Blench 2000[5][6]) is as follows:
Bodomo (2017) refers to the Western OtiâVolta group (and also including BuliâKoma) as Central Mabia.[7][8] The term Mabia is a portmanteau of the two
lexical innovationsma- 'mother' + bia 'child'.[9]
The following is a classification of the Central Mabia languages from Bodomo (2017), as cited in Bodomo (2020).[9] Bodomo's Central Mabia group consists of 7 subgroups.
Bodomo, Adams, Hasiyatu Abubakari and Samuel Alhassan Issah (2020). Handbook of the Mabia Languages of West Africa. Glienicke: Galda Verlag.
ISBN978-3-96203-118-3.
References
^Manessy, Gabriel (1975). Les langues Oti-Volta. Paris: SELAF.
^Naden, Tony (1989). Gur. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. pp. 141â168.
^Bendor-Samuel, John T. [ed.] (1989). The Niger-Congo Languages. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. {{
cite book}}: |first= has generic name (
help)
^Heine, Bernd and Derek Nurse [eds] (2000). African Languages â An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. {{
cite book}}: |first= has generic name (
help)
^Williamson, Kay and
Roger Blench (2000). NigerâCongo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 11â42.
^Bodomo, Adams. 2017. Mabia: its etymological genesis, geographical spread and some salient genetic features. Paper presented at the Mabia Languages Conferences in Winneba, Ghana and Vienna, Austria.
^Naden, Tony. 2021. Comparative Dictionary of Central Mabia Languages (Formerly Western Oti-Volta) / Dictionnaire Comparatif Des Langues Mabia-Central (anciennement Western Oti-Volta). m.s.