[29] Eight other Chadic languages have around 100,000 speakers; other Chadic languages often have few speakers and may be endangered of going extinct. (abbrev. [175] In Egyptian, it takes the forms -j, whereas in Semitic it takes the form -i(y);[138] it thus has the same form in both language families. As Egyptian is spelled without vowels, it is difficult to know whether it had internal change plurals. [121] This structure is particularly visible in the verbs,[153] and is particularly noticeable in the triliteral Semitic verb. Pre-Proto-Semitic Roots (Additional to those presented in Ehret 1989) Appendix 2. Dogon Momo This can be found in Semitic, Egyptian, Beja, Berber, and Chadic. Tula-Waja [193][194], Afroasiatic languages share a vocabulary of Proto-Afroasiatic origin to varying extents. [40] Tom Gldemann, however, argues that less time may have been required than is commonly assumed, as it is possible for a language to rapidly restructure due to language contact, as happened in the Chadic branch and probably also in Omotic. It is, rather, a comparison of Proto-Indo-European with Proto-Afroasiatic. ; semantics: egg curves at every point? Beboid While this is not the first attempt to demonstrate that Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Afroasiatic are genetically related, it is the first to use the radical revision of the Proto-Indo-European consonantal system proposed by Thomas V. Gamkrelidze, Paul J. Hopper, Vol.1. innovation: 'increase' > 'grow in size'), (root #838 + * part. Proto-Chadic reconstruction is in its infancy, Proto-Cushitic is even less developed, and according to Glottolog it's not demonstrable that Omotic languages are even related to each other, let alone as part of Afro-Asiatic. Jalaa innovation: 'send' > 'direct,' hence 'command, rule'), (Agaw *a allows PAA vowel reconstructions *a, *aa, *o, or *e), (Sem., Eg. p-Idomoid [131], Afroasiatic languages have a variety of ways of marking plurals; in some branches, nouns change gender from singular to plural (gender polarity),[133] while in others, plural forms are ungendered. Proto-Afroasiatic (Proto-Afrasian . [183][184] In the Chadic family alone, there are two different roots for "two,"[185] and Berber and Semitic likewise have two different branch-internal roots for "two". envisaged a tome citing several hundred reconstructed roots; he did manage, however, to publish over a hundred (53 proto-roots were published, for example, in Hodge 1981). The only group with an African origin is Ethiopian Semitic. [122] In some Chadic and some Omotic languages every syllable has to have a tone, whereas in most Cushitic languages this is not the case. + stem; PS *lisn 'tongue' is a separate and distinct derivation from the same verb root), (Sem., Eg., Ch. The other three are very closely related and it is not hard for, say, a Dane to learn to understand a Swede. [34] The Cushitic family is traditionally spit into four branches: the single language of Beja (c. 3 million speakers), the Agaw languages, Eastern Cushitic, and Southern Cushitic. [72] Earlier, the first scholar to question to existence of "Hamitic languages" was Marcel Cohen (1924),[9] while skepticism was also expressed by A. Klingenheben and Dietrich Westermann (1920s and '30s). Temein Proto-Afro-Asiatic is of great antiquity; experts tend to place it in the Mesolithic Period at about 15,000-10,000 bce. Kadu The construct state is a special, usually reduced form of a noun, which is used when the noun is possessed by another noun (Semitic) or is modified by an adjective or relative clause (Cushitic). Central Sudanic (p-Central Sudanicp-Sara-Bongo-BagirmiSinyarBirrip-Mangbetu) shared innovation: 'move, take' > 'take hold of'), (Cush., Ch., Eg., Sem. . Meredith Holt
of proto-Afroasiatic cultivation. The results, while confirming some previous views on proto-Afroasiatic (proto-Afrasian), revise or overturn many others, and add much that is new. Linguistics 450
suff. ), #209 + Afroasiatic pl. [49][48] Arabic, spoken in both Asia and Africa, has around 300 million native speakers, while the Ethiopian Amharic has around 25 million. [128] In most branches, gender is an inherent property of nouns. Tadaksahak, p-Niger-Congo [83], A significant minority of scholars supports an Asian origin of Afroasiatic,[78] most of whom are specialists in Semitic or Egyptian studies. [11] In 1855, Ernst Renan named these languages, related to Semitic but not Semitic, "Hamitic," in 1860 Carl Lottner proposed that they belonged to a single language family, and in 1876 Friedrich Mller first described them as a "Hamito-Semitic" language family. SOm stat. [101] It is generally agreed that only the obstruents had a contrast between voiceless and voiced forms in Proto-Afroasiatic, whereas continuants were voiceless. These records make it possible to classify and reconstruct many languages. [198] Andrzej Zaborski refers to Orel and Stolbova's reconstructions as "controversial", and Ehret's as "not acceptable to many scholars". [29] The Chadic languages are typically divided into three major branches, East Chadic, Central Chadic, and West Chadic. [87], Afroasiatic languages share a number of phonetic and phonological features. . [45] Omotic is typically split into North Omotic (or Aroid) and South Omotic, with the latter more influenced by the Nilotic languages; it is unclear whether the Dizoid group of Omotic languages belongs to the Northern or Southern group. [103][101] The feminine marker T is one of the most consistent aspects across the different branches of AA;[133] in addition to deriving feminine nouns in many branches, it also functions as a diminutive, pejorative, and/or singulative marker in some languages. p-Benue-Congo Aunque las estimaciones varan ampliamente, los eruditos creen que se hablaba como un solo idioma hace entre 12.000 y 18.000 aos (12 a 18 kya ), es decir, entre 16.000 y 10.000 a . Berkeley: University of California Press. [106] The most widespread constraint is against two different labial consonants (other than w) occurring together in a root, a constraint which can be found in all branches but Omotic. There was additional language contact within the Afro-Asiatic family when Arabs invaded Egypt in 640 A.D. Coptic, a daughter language of ancient Egyptian, had flourished until that time but was replaced eventually by Arabic (Voegelin ,p13). [174] It is found in Egyptian, Semitic, and possibly, in some relic forms, Berber. Whether this proto-language is ancestral to Berber and Semitic only, or also to other branches of Afroasiatic, still remains to be established. Kujarge p-Akokoid p-Gbe (Fongbe) [124] Other scholars argue that Proto-AA had a pitch accent and some branches subsequently developed tone. [68] In 1969, Harold Fleming proposed that a group of languages classified as Cushitic by Greenberg were in fact an independent "Omotic" language family, a proposal that has been widely accepted but remains controversial. [40] The latest possible date for the existence of Proto-Afroasiatic is c. 4000 BCE, after which Egyptian and the Semitic languages are first attested; however, the languages must have diverged and evolved for some time before this. [75] Proponents of an African origin of Afroasiatic assume the proto-language to have been spoken by pre-Neolithic African hunter-gatherers,[76] arguing that there is no evidence of words in Proto-Afroasiatic related to agriculture or animal husbandry. p-Khoe Author: Martin Bernal Language: EnglishEdition: 1stBinding: HardcoverPages: 575Publisher: Rutgers Univ PressPublication Date: 304805601149 as EL). Consider also the debate over the origins of the Afroasiastic or Afrasan languages and cultures, a linguistic group with a wide geographical distribution covering the Middle East and Northern. Proto-Nostratic would have been spoken between 15,000 and 12,000 BCE, in the Epipaleolithic period, close to the end of the last glacial period. In Afro-Asiatic languages: Origins originated is referred to as Proto-Afro-Asiatic. ; short vowel required by derived verb #399), calabash (used as container, utensil, etc. *kanf-/*kinf-wing: 325. Egyptian is classified as a distinct language and the other sub-groups are: Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Omotic, and Semitic (Voegelin, p.12). Proto-Afroasiatic phonology has been the subject of several proposals for reconstruction that are not only different from each other, but also very divergent (cf. Linguists use the term "state" to refer to different things in different languages. [173] While some scholars posit an AA origin for this form, it is possible that the Berber and Cushitic forms are independent developments,[130] as they show significant differences from the Egyptian and Semitic forms. However, not one of Militarev's proposed 32 agricultural roots can be considered diagnostic of cultivation. [103] Igor M. Diakonoff proposed that Proto-AA had a three vowel system of long and short a, i, and u. BLACK ATHENA: THE Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (The Fabrication, - $16.27. ; PC variant *damn-), (Ch., Eg., Sem. >I find it odd how Semitic is still Afroasiatic even though it's tied to a non-E haplogroup Egyptian and Semitic are both J. Cushitic is T and Chadic is J/R1b-V88. Proto-Afroasiatic is a reconstructed language. p-Semitic, Khoisan Sandawe [156] It is unclear whether this system is a common AA trait;[157] the Chadic examples, for instance, show signs of originally deriving from affixes, which could explain the origins of the alterations in other languages as well. [30] For most branches, the first person pronouns contain a nasal consonant (n, m), whereas the third person displays a sibilant consonant (s, sh). ; PS, Eg., Ch. p-Lower Cross River p-Chadic Defaka . 3 The Phonemes of English - A. Cohen 1971-07-31 I gladly take this opportunity to convey my heartfelt thanks to those who have guided me on my way as an Tiefo [103][53] In some branches, it can also derive abstract nouns and participles. [99], The majority of AA languages are tonal languages: phonemic tonality is found in Omotic, Chadic, and Cushitic languages, but absent in Berber and Semitic. To the south lay the other language families of Africa: Niger-Kordofanian, Nilo-Saharan, and Khoisan (Atlas,p74). [54] However, Christopher Ehret (1979), Harold Fleming (1981), and Joseph Greenberg (1981) all agree that the Omotic branch split from the rest first. Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary. p-Oti-Volta (p-E. Oti-Voltap-C. Oti-Volta) Lafofa, p-Afroasiatic The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. [78] An additional complicating factor is the lack of agreement on the subgroupings of Afroasiatic (see Subgrouping) - this makes associating archaeological evidence with the spread of Afroasiatic particularly difficult. The quality of the underlying vowels varies considerably by language; the most common vowel throughout AA is schwa. [99] In Cushitic, the Ethiopian Semitic language Tigrinya, and some Chadic languages, there is no underlying phoneme [p] at all. innovation: added sense, 'to listen to'), (Ch., Sem., Berber innovation: specialized meaning 'tooth'; but note presence of that meaning isolated in single Omotic language), (innovation: Sem., Ch. [195] Writing in 2004, John Huehnergaard notes the great difficulty in establishing cognate sets across the family. [67][68], An important development in the history of Afroasiatic scholarship - and the history of African linguistics - was the creation of the "Hamitic theory" or "Hamitic hypothesis" by Lepsius, fellow Egyptologist Christian Bunsen, and linguist Christian Bleek. Allan Bomhard's own reconstructions of Proto-Afroasiatic roots (and phonology) seem to be biased toward Proto-Indo-European and Nostratic roots . [140] A common pattern in AA languages with case is for the nominative to marked by -u or -i, and the accusative to be marked by -a. to different specific animals), (possible vowel reconstructions: *a, *aa, *e, or *o), (Sem., Ch. innovation: 'to rub' > 'to scrape'), (* and *a are reconstructed because they are required in derived root #651 below), (#649 + *r diffus. [14], The term Semitic had already been coined in 1781 by August Ludwig von Schlzer, following an earlier suggestion by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in 1710. Thanks for viewing our Ebay listing! [37][34] Only one Cushitic language, Oromo, has more than 25 million speakers; other languages with more than a million speakers include Somali, Saho-Afar, Hadiyya, and Sidaama. [127], Afroasiatic Languages use the processes of reduplication and gemination (which often overlap in meaning) to derive nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs throughout the AA language family. innovation: addition of *b extend., imputing meaning 'to count'), to show, bring to (ones) notice or attention, (Ch., Berber, and Eg. Bendi reflex), (root #723 + *x extend. Afroasiatic(Afro-Asiatic), also known as Afrasianand in older sources as Hamito-Semitic(Chamito-Semitic)[3]or Semito-Hamitic,[4]is a large language familyof about 300 languages. May 29th, 2020 - grammar lithuanian is a richly inflected language that has retained some of the plex morphology of its ancestral proto indo european nouns nouns are marked for gender number and case that are fused into one ending there are two genders masculine and feminine with a few neuter nouns there are three numbers singular dual and plural This name is possibly based upon the root "-b-r" ( . Proto-Chadic and Proto-Cushitic are likely even older. Shabo in *n, as also in #210) 324. Report Save. Archaeology and the study of oral traditions helps linguists find connections between language families. [115] James P. Allen has demonstrated that slightly different rules apply to Egyptian: for instance, Egyptian allows two identical consonants in some roots, and disallows velars from occurring with pharyngeals. p-Igboid p-Bantu (Swadesh list) [26] Egyptian is usually divided into two major periods, Earlier Egyptian (c. 3000-1300 BCE), which is further subdivided into Old Egyptian and Middle Egyptian, and Later Egyptian (1300 BCE-1300 CE), which is further subdivided into Late Egyptian, Demotic, and Coptic. shared innovation: *als-/*ils- 'tongue': *a-/*i-attrib. Proto-Afro-Asiatic: *abaw/y- Meaning: a k. of plant Semitic: *abVw- 'reed, papyrus' Egyptian: wb 'root', cf. [103], A form of long-distance consonant assimilation known as consonant harmony is attested in Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, and Semitic: it usually affects features such as pharyngealization, palatalization, and labialization. Great variety is incorporated in one family and this makes Afro-Asiatic an interesting topic of study. *y: attributive noun and attributive deverbative suffix: 2a. The prefixes ti and it mean she. [164] Identifying cognates is difficult because the languages in question are often separated by thousands of years of development and many languages within the family have long been in contact with each other, raising the possibility of loanwords. Dictionary - Vladimir E. Orel 2015-11-02 This dictionary is a fundamental source of information on the extinct proto-language of the ancient Hamito-Semites, the Proto-Hamito-Semitic language, and . p-Aroid WCh WOT *kns-loins: 326. [105], Restrictions against the co-occurrence of certain, usually similar, consonants in verbal roots can be found in all Afroasiatic branches, though they are only weakly attested in Chadic and Omotic. Kim Fifteen are glossed as names of plants or loose categories of plants. sing. [34] Cushitic does not appear to be related to the attested ancient languages known from its area, Meroitic or Old Nubian. [23] In the past, Berber languages were spoken throughout North Africa except in Egypt;[24] since the 7th century CE, however, they have been heavily affected by Arabic and have been replaced by it in many places. These are some known features common to more than one branch, though (Hodge 1971; Lecarme, Lowenstamm, and Shlonsky 2000; Frajzyngier and Shay 2012): El proto-afroasitico , a veces denominado proto-afrasiano , es el proto-lenguaje reconstruido del que descienden todas las lenguas afroasiticas modernas . [152], A widely attested feature in AA languages is a consonantal structure into which various vocalic "templates" are placed. [47] Other scholars have questioned whether it is Afroasiatic at all, due its lack of several typical aspects of Afroasiatic morphology. innovation: to spoil > to sour), (Sem., Eg. [127] These pronouns tend to show a masculine "u" and a feminine "i". [85][86] Scholar Jared Diamond and archaeologist Peter Bellwood have taken up Militarev's arguments as part of their general argument that the spread of linguistic macrofamilies (such as Indo-European, Bantu, and Austro-Asiatic) can be associated with the development of agriculture; they argue that there is clear archaeological support for farming spreading from the Levant into Africa via the Nile valley. velar consonants can occur with pharyngeals or laryngeals; This page was last edited on 4 March 2023, at 01:29. all catalog, articles, website, & more in one search catalog books, media & more in the Stanford Libraries' collections articles+ journal articles & other e-resources [130], The assignment of nouns and pronouns to either masculine or feminine gender is present in all branches - but not all languages - of the Afroasiatic family. [151] Such an etymology is rejected by A. Zaborski and Gbor Takcs, the latter of whom argues for a PAA *ma- that unites all or some of the meanings in the modern languages. Abstract The paper is a new contribution to revealing the Afro-Asiatic heritage in the lexicon of the Angas-Sura group of Chadic languages by means of interbranch comparison using a.o. 4 This was Hodge's term for the ancestral proto-language of Proto-Afroasiatic and Proto-Indo-European based on Proto-Lislakh *lis- 'language' + *laxwos 'people'. Proto-Afroasiatic, sometimes also referred to as Proto-Afrasian, is the reconstructed proto-language from which all modern Afroasiatic languages are descended. 6), (Eg., Sem., Cush. [130], Many AA languages use prefixes or suffixes (verbal extensions) to encode various pieces of information about the verb. In An Encyclopedia of Language, Omotic is listed as a sub-set of Cushitic, and Andrew Dalby writes the Egyptian division as "Egyptian-Coptic," even though Coptic is considered to be a sub-set of Egyptian. Mao This family was formally described and named "Semitic" by August Ludwig von Schlzer in 1781. of #724 by adding *-(a)C- where C = preceding stem-final C, is implied in Eg. [90], Syllable weight plays an important role in AA, especially in Chadic; it can affect the form of affixes attached to a word. stretching out of arms), (Sem, Eg., Ch., Cush, innovation: 'set on top of' > 'cover'), (Sem., Eg. [54][73][9] The reluctance of some scholars to recognize Chadic as a member of Afroasiatic persisted as late as the 1980s. p-Potou-Akanic SLEC Som. [132] Additionally, even when nouns are not cognates, they tend to have the same gender throughout Afroasiatic ("gender stability"). suff. Both works provide highly divergent reconstructions and have been heavily criticized by other scholars. Rashad [31] They are all spoken in southwest Ethiopia except for the Ganza language, spoken in Sudan. (Though I found no mention of the origin of Semito-, it is possible that this name comes from Shem, another son of Noah). [81] Christopher Ehret, O. Y. Keita, and Paul Newman also argue that archaeology does not indicate a spread of migrating farmers into Africa, but rather a gradual incorporation of animal husbandry into indigenous foraging cultures. For example, the Hamitic component inaccurately suggests the existence of a monophyletic "Hamitic" branch alongside Semitic. ), to get up to leave, start out, come or go forth, (Eg., Sem. [182], Unlike in the Indo-European or Austronesian language families, numerals in AA languages cannot be traced to a proto-system. [119] Vladimir Orel and Olga Stolbova instead proposed a six vowel system with a, e, o, i, ([y]), and u. These three groups are classified as being in Africa while Afro-Asiatic is listed under the term Eurasia (Atlas, p.74). Summary of Numbered Sound Shift Rules; Index 1. Origins, Migrations, and Language Contacts. He later added Semitic and Beja to Chadic-Berber-Egyptian and tentatively proposed, Alexander Militarev (2000), on the basis of. ; SC semantics: early beads were made of shell), (root of #48 + *c extend. [27] The first longer written examples of modern Berber varieties only date from the 16th or 17th centuries CE. Proto-Afroasiatic is a language and NOT an ethnicity: Proto-Afroasiatic language - Wikipedia There is no proof where the Afroasiatic languages originated, but the oldest Afroasiatic language writing has been found in Egypt and dated 6000 years. Bijogo innovation: specialization of meaning to plant growth), (Berber, e.g., Shilh agafay 'cloud,' implies a 2nd root shape *-gaap-), to impel, make move (by pushing, pulling), (root #311+old Afroasiatic pl. p-Katloid ), to fit on top of, go above or in front of, (Eg., Sem. ; *u < *i /#-p_C-#? (abbrev. [11], Greenberg reintroduced the name "Afroasiatic" in 1960, a name seemingly coined by Maurice Delafosse (as French afroasiatique) in 1914. Additionally, Joseph Greenberg argued that "Hamitic" has racial connotations, and that the name "Hamito-Semitic" overstates the centrality of the Semitic languages within the family. Root Structure Patterning in Proto-Kartvelian. innovation: integration of *t dur. PSom-III. The Afroasiatic language family is thought to have originated in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula around 15,000 years ago. See . It typically comprises Kartvelian, Indo-European, and Uralic languages; some languages from the disputed Altaic family; the Afroasiatic languages spoken in North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and the Near East; and the Dravidian languages of the Indian Subcontinent (sometimes also Elamo-Dravidian, which connects India and the [17][18] Victor Porkhomovsky suggests that the label "Hamito-Semitic" is at this point simply convention and no more implies an opposition between Semitic and "Hamitic" languages than "Indo-European" implies a "European" and an Indic branch. It also fully incorporates the most up-to-date evidence from the distinctive African branches of the family, Cushitic, Chadic, and Omotic. Well-known Afroasiatic languages include Arabic, Ancient Egyptian, Somali, Tuareg, and Hausa. [171][172] In Akkadian and Egyptian, the suffixes appear to be reduced forms of the independent pronouns (see Pronouns); the obvious correspondence between the endings in the two branches has been argued to show that Egyptian and Semitic are closely related. Nilo-Saharan The Berber and Semitic branches share certain grammatical features (e.g. A relationship between Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic and the Berber languages was perceived as early as the 9th century CE by the Hebrew grammarian and physician Judah ibn Quraysh, who is regarded as a forerunner of Afroasiatic studies. Upload your video About the author Each aspect of these reconstructions is substantiated in detail in an extensive etymological vocabulary of more than 1000 roots. innovation: n. 'morning' by addition of *r n. *iw- 'cow') (Eg., Sem.