Disputed Statements

Koreanic, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States Korean is usually treated at the family level as a language isolate; Koreanic here groups it with the closely related and severely endangered Jeju language. Proposed deeper connections to Japonic or to a broader Altaic grouping are fringe hypotheses rejected by most comparative linguists.

Korean at the family level is usually treated as an isolate rather than as securely reconstructed from multiple sister languages.

Source Glottolog

Kru, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States Whether Kru belongs within Niger-Congo is unresolved. Guldemann (2018) found insufficient lexical and noun-class evidence to conclude a relationship, and Glottolog treats Kru as an independent family rather than a Niger-Congo branch.

Source Wikipedia: Kru languages

Kuliak, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States Kuliak's external affiliation is unresolved and has shifted repeatedly: classified within Eastern Sudanic, then as a basal Nilo-Saharan branch, while Glottolog treats it as an independent family and rejects Nilo-Saharan as a valid grouping. Bernd Heine has proposed Proto-Kuliak sound correspondences.

Source Wikipedia: Kuliak languages

Kunama, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States Kunama's placement beyond its own small family is unresolved: it is provisionally included within the proposed Nilo-Saharan phylum but is only distantly related to the other languages there, if related at all.

Source Wikipedia: Kunama language

Kwa, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States A Proto-Kwa vowel inventory has been proposed, but Kwa itself, in its modern (Stewart) sense, remains a proposed and as-yet-undemonstrated family: it has not been shown that its constituent branches are more closely related to each other than to neighboring Niger-Congo languages.

The name and membership have narrowed substantially since Greenberg's broader 1963 Kwa; the reduced grouping is sometimes called New Kwa to distinguish it from that earlier, larger sense.

Source Wikipedia: Kwa Languages tier 2

Lepki-Murkim-Kembra, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States No proto-language reconstruction has been published. Classification is unsettled: Wichmann (2013) found Lepki and Murkim closely related, a position accepted by Glottolog; Usher (2018) places the group in the southern branch of Pauwasi; Foley (2018) treats them as an independent family with Kembra as an isolate.

Source Wikipedia: Lepki-Murkim Languages tier 2

Macro-Bai languages, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States Putative group proposed in 2010; no established proto-language

Source Macro-Bai languages, Wikipedia

Macro-Pama-Nyungan languages, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States No proto-language established; the classification is inconclusive and widely dissented

Source Macro-Pama-Nyungan languages - Wikipedia

Malayo-Polynesian, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States Consists of many small local clusters; only the Oceanic subgroup is universally accepted as a valid group, with its ancestor Proto-Oceanic fully reconstructed, while every other proposed large subgroup within Malayo-Polynesian remains controversial.

Source Wikipedia: Malayo-Polynesian Languages tier 2

Mayan, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States The proto-Mayan homeland is usually placed in the southern Guatemalan highlands, refined by Terrence Kaufman (1976) to the area around modern Soloma, Huehuetenango, on "least moves" and river-geography grounds, though competing hypotheses favor northern South America, coastal Veracruz or the Belize lowlands. Time depth is similarly contested: Kaufman's (1976) glottochronological estimate places the family's initial breakup around 2200 BCE, roughly 4,200 years ago, and remains the figure most used by archaeologists, but two later computational estimates diverge sharply, Atkinson (2006) proposing a much older 6,000 to 6,500 years and Holman et al. (2011) a much younger 2,200 years; no published study has yet adjudicated between them (Law 2013).

Source Danny Law, Mayan Historical Linguistics in a New Age, Language and Linguistics Compass 7/3, 2013 tier 1

Miji languages, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States uncertain; possibly independent of Sino-Tibetan

affiliation and ancestral grouping disputed; may form an independent family rather than descend from Proto-Sino-Tibetan

Source Miji languages - Wikipedia

Misumalpan, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States Proto-Misumalpan reconstructions have been published (Constenla Umana 1987), but the proposed wider link to Chibchan (Macro-Chibchan) is contested: Kaufman found it convincing while Misumalpan specialist Ken Hale considered it too distant to establish.

Source Wikipedia: Misumalpan languages

Mon-Khmer languages, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States The status of Mon-Khmer as a valid branch distinct from Austroasiatic as a whole is disputed. Some recent classifications no longer treat it as a taxon at all, folding what would be its reconstructed ancestor into Proto-Austroasiatic directly, while other schemes retain a three way Munda, Mon-Khmer and Khasi-Khmuic split.

Classification is actively contested; two incompatible recent schemes are both cited in the source, one abandoning Mon-Khmer as a taxon altogether.

Source Wikipedia: Mon-Khmer Languages tier 2

Murrinh-patha, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States Debated: once thought a language isolate on the strength of minimal shared vocabulary with any tested language (at most 11 percent), but Green (2003) argues shared complexities and irregularities in the finite verb system show Murrinh-Patha and Ngan'gityemerri descend from a common parent, together forming the Southern Daly family; no separate Proto-Southern Daly reconstruction is documented.

No separate Proto-Southern Daly reconstruction is documented; the family grouping rests on shared verbal morphology, not shared vocabulary.

Source Wikipedia: Murrinh-Patha Language tier 2

Na-Dene, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States Proto-Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit is broadly accepted; reconstruction beyond that core, toward a hypothetical Dene-Yeniseian ancestor, is not.

The core family (Athabaskan, Eyak and Tlingit) is broadly accepted; Haida, once included, is now generally classified as an unrelated isolate, and Edward Sapir's own proposal linking Na-Dene to the Yeniseian languages of Siberia remains a minority hypothesis pending further comparative work.

Source Wikipedia: Na-Dene Languages tier 2

Namla-Tofanma, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States No proto-language reconstruction has been published. Classification is contested between a West Pauwasi branch placement (Usher 2020) and status as an independent family (Foley 2018).

Source Wikipedia: Namla-Tofanma Languages tier 2

Newaric languages, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States Proposed group only, not an established family

Source Newaric languages, Wikipedia

Niger-Congo, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States No Proto-Niger-Congo has been securely reconstructed, and the genealogical unity of Niger-Congo as a single family, rather than a geographic grouping of related but separately descended families, remains an open question in historical linguistics.

Niger-Congo unity itself, as opposed to a looser areal grouping of several distinct large families such as Atlantic-Congo, is disputed among historical linguists; this atlas follows the broader traditional grouping while naming the dispute.

Source Glottolog

Nilo-Saharan, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States Unreconstructed beyond individual branches; the genetic unity of the proposed family is itself the open question, not merely the shape of its common ancestor.

Glottolog, published by the Max Planck Institute, does not recognise the unity of the family, and some linguists have called it 'Greenberg's wastebasket' for otherwise unclassified non-click African languages; others, including Roger Blench, argue morphological evidence across the branches makes the family likely valid. No Proto-Nilo-Saharan has been securely reconstructed because the genetic unity of its branches is itself unresolved.

Source Wikipedia: Nilo-Saharan Languages tier 2

North Caucasian, Language Families

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Proto-Language Status

Currently States Proposed and controversial, not universally accepted

Source North Caucasian languages, Wikipedia