Eastern Sudanic is generally taken to embrace most of the languages of Sudan, including the following families:
- Nubian
- Nara
- Taman
- Nyima
- Jebel
- Daju
- Surmic
- Nilotic
- Temeinic
Its existence, however, remains debatable (cf. Güldemann 2022). A reconstruction of Eastern Sudanic (much less anything above it, such as Nilo-Saharan) remains out of reach. If it is possible at all, it will most likely need to be based on prior reconstructions of each of these subgroups. It is therefore useful to outline what has been done in terms of reconstruction.
Rilly's (2010) monograph identifies a clearer family consisting of Nubian, Nara, Taman, and Nyimang (along with the extinct Meroitic), which he labels North Eastern Sudanic ("soudanique oriental du nord"), and for which he proposes some 200 lexical reconstructions. In the process, he also offers 200-word reconstructions of proto-Nubian and proto-Taman, finding it necessary for the former to amend Bechhaus-Gerst's reconstruction of 97 items significantly, and drawing for the latter primarily on Edgar (1991).
Nara is a single language, whose dialectal diversity is not sufficiently well documented to make even internal reconstruction feasible.
Nyima consists of two languages, both poorly documented; Rilly gives provisional reconstructions.
For (Eastern) Jebel, Bender (1998) proposes an extremely provisional reconstruction of 100 items, outlining major sound correspondences.
Proto-Daju is reconstructed in the Ph.D. thesis of Thelwall (1981), who provides more than 300 lexical reconstructions along with the principal sound correspondences, but keeps discussion of morphology and syntax to a minimum.
Proto-Surmic has yet to be reconstructed; Yigezu (2001), however, reconstructs 200-300 words for each of two of its three subgroups, Southwest and Southeast. (The third is a single language, Majang.)
For Proto-Nilotic, Dimmendaal (1988) provides a "first reconnaissance", giving 204 items and ignoring tone; the work of Hall et al. (1975) and Hieda (2006) also deserves notice. Much more elaborated monograph-length reconstructions are available for Eastern Nilotic (Vossen 1982) and Southern Nilotic (Rottland 1982); each of these provides about 200 items for the relevant proto-language along with quite a few more for lower-level subgroups. Western Nilotic has not been reconstruced, but one sub-subgroup, Southern Luo, has been reconstructed in Heusing (1983).
Temein, with three poorly documented members, has not been reconstructed.
In brief: out of nine primary Eastern Sudanic families, none has yet been reconstructed in detail. Where reconstructions at this level exist, they cover a limited number of sound correspondences (usually segmental, ignoring tone), and a couple of hundred basic words; discussion of morphology is limited to a few prominent affixes.
