Page "Kwa languages" Paragraph 19

In 1952 Westermann and Bryan expanded Kwa to the various Lagoon languages of southern Ivory Coast and to what are now called the Volta – Niger languages of southern Nigeria.

Greenberg ( 1963 ) added the Kru languages of Liberia, the Ghana – Togo Mountain languages which Westermann and Bryan had specifically excluded, and Ijaw of the Niger delta ; West Kwa included the languages from Liberia to Dahomey ( Republic of Benin ), and East Kwa the languages of Nigeria.

Bennett & Sterk ( 1977 ) proposed that the Yoruboid and Igboid languages belonged in Benue – Congo rather than in Kwa.

Stewart ( 1989 ) removed Kru, Ijaw, and Volta – Niger ( East Kwa ), but kept the Ghana – Togo Mountain and Lagoon languages, as well as adding a few obscure, newly described languages.

Stewart's classification is the basis of more recent conceptions.

In order to disambiguate this from Greenberg's influential classification, the reduced family is sometimes called " New Kwa ".