The Bua Group languages (Chad, Adamawa 13): A comparative perspective

International audience; The aim of the present paper is to sketch a state of the art regarding the Bualanguages of Chad, a genetically related linguistic group that remains relativelylittle-known. Section 1 presents and lists the different languages that belong to thisgenetic unit. A historical review of the documentation is presented in Section 2.Section 3 lays out a lexicostatistical approach to the internal relationships of thelanguages, complemented by some other discriminating features. Some salientphonological and morphological features are discussed in Section 4 that gives aparticular attention to the crucial noun class system of Kulaal. Section 5 deals withproblems of comparison, correspondences and reconstruction within the Group.Lastly a word will be said about the current Bua languages comparative project inSection 6.