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Stewart and Williamson interpret them as making that claim. Indeed, Bennett & Sterk
(1977: 255) find no common innovations for (new) Benue-Congo, and they do not
provide evidence for any (new) Kwa innovations.
In summary, (new) Kwa and (new) Benue-Congo are listed in the Niger-Congo
chart in Section C.1, but their status as units is by no means established.
The second question regarding Kwa and Benue-Congo is whether the two groups
should be considered a single branch under Volta-Congo, rather than two. Even though
Greenberg lists Kwa and Benue-Congo as separate subgroups of Niger-Congo, he himself
notes that the two are closely related to the extent that perhaps they should be considered
a single unit rather than two separate branches (see quote from Greenberg 1970 in
Section C.1 above).
Bennett & Sterk (1977) posit a group comprising (new) Kwa, (new) Benue-Congo
and Ijoid, which they call South Central Niger-Congo (SCNC). They state, “SCNC is, as
will be shown, a well-defined group.” They mean by “well-defined group” that there is
clear evidence for lexical innovations found only within the group. Strangely, the
promised data in support of the SCNC node are never given in the paper, as they focus
instead on justifying the subgroupings under SCNC. In addition, they cast doubt on the
inclusion of Ijoid within SCNC, since there are few obvious cognates.
Williamson (1989a) decides to abandon the SCNC node based on Schadeberg’s
(1986) re-evaluation of Bennett & Sterk’s data using Nearest Neighbor, Furthest
Neighbor, and Branch Average methods. However, it appears that more work needs to be
done to clarify this conclusion.
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