•Greenberg
(1955) originally identified the group as Plateau 1b, where Plateau 1a was the now geographically separate West Kainji, which
includes such
languages as cLela and Kambari. Rowlands (1962) seems to have rediscovered this without reference to Greenberg, arguing that East
Kainji should be
treated as distinct from Plateau.
•The idea
that Kainji languages were co-ordinate with Plateau rather than simply to be included
within it seems to
have surfaced in the Benue-Congo Working Group in the 1970s. The informal use of the name Kainji, followed the creation of Lake
Kainji in 1974.
•Hofmann’s
(1976) listing in the Index of Nigerian Languages still calls them ‘Western
Plateau’ and the term
‘Kainji’ seems to have only been formally recognised in print by Gerhardt
(1989).
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