A competing Austro-Tai proposal linking Austronesian and Tai–Kadai is supported by Weera Ostapirat, Roger Blench, and Laurent Sagart, and is based on the traditional comparative method.
A number of language groups in Arunachal Pradesh traditionally considered to be Sino-Tibetan (Tibeto-Burman) may in fact constitute independent language families or isolates (Roger Blench 2011).
Blench (ms, 2006) lists the following as separate languages, with dialects in parentheses; like Ethnologue, he classifies Nafusi as Eastern Zenati.
However, Roger Blench and Paul Sidwell demonstrate that it is an Austroasiatic language, though they suggest that it might constitute a distinct branch of that family.
Cambridge linguist and anthropologist Roger Blench sees the Solubba as the last survivors of Palaeolithic hunters and salt-traders who once dominated Arabia.
Roger Blench notes that the Talodi and Heiban families have the noun-class systems characteristic of the Atlantic–Congo core of Niger–Congo, but that the Katla languages (another putative branch of Kordofanian) have no trace of ever having had such a system, whereas the Kadu languages and some of the Rashad languages appear to have acquired noun classes as part of a Sprachbund, rather than having inherited them.
The people have been described to some extent in anthropological and ethnographical works by Fitzpatrick (1910), Roger Blench, Lamle (1995), Famwang and Longtau (1997).
In more recent times, the linguist Roger Blench, referencing Kirk, has similarly indicated that the Yibir and Madhiban dialects both "differ substantially in lexicon from standard Somali".
Roger Moore | Roger Corman | Roger Federer | Roger Daltrey | Who Framed Roger Rabbit | Roger Waters | Roger Maris | Roger McGuinn | Beaumont-le-Roger | Roger Zelazny | Roger Ebert | Roger Clemens | Roger Smith | Roger Miller | Roger Tory Peterson | Roger Vadim | Roger Sanchez | Roger Blench | Roger Williams | Roger & Me | Roger Taylor | Roger Staubach | Roger Heim | Roger Goodell | Roger Douglas | Roger Williams (theologian) | Roger Sherman | Roger Mayweather | Roger Lancelyn Green | Roger B. Taney |
Roger Blench notes that the Talodi and Heiban families have the noun-class systems characteristic of the Atlantic–Congo core of Niger–Congo, but that the two Katla languages have no trace of ever having had such a system, whereas the Kadu languages and some of the Rashad languages appear to have acquired noun classes as part of a Sprachbund rather than having inherited them.