Mimi-N In the above model, Taforalt draws about half of their ancestry (you can call this ANA) from a population that also (likely through a sister population) contributes the . Africa is divided by geographical features, including the Sahara desert and the Ethiopian mountains. The languages that evolved from Proto-Arabic have around 313 million native speakers, concentrated primarily in the Middle East and North Africa.[5]. * "The Origins of Third Consonants in Semitic Roots: An Internal Reconstruction (Applied to Arabic)," Journal of Afroasiatic Languages 3, 2 (1989): 109-202. This great divide has made travel difficult so linguistic boundaries tend to be based on either side. p-Khoe Proposed specific locations include the Horn of Africa, Egypt, the eastern Sahara, and the Levant. xvii + 557. [89] In Cushitic and Chadic languages, a glottal stop or glottal or fricative may be inserted to prevent a word from beginning with a vowel. all catalog, articles, website, & more in one search catalog books, media & more in the Stanford Libraries' collections articles+ journal articles & other e-resources p-Atlantic-Congo [29], There are about 30,[34] 50,[35] or 70[36] Cushitic languages, spoken around the Horn of Africa and in Sudan and Tanzania. innovation: shift to outflow of water, not from body; root *-sa- seen in #540 + *t dur. This page was last edited on 28 August 2022, at 11:13. It is, rather, a comparison of Proto-Indo-European with Proto-Afroasiatic. [27] The first longer written examples of modern Berber varieties only date from the 16th or 17th centuries CE. Yendang Afro-Asiatic is a large language family with great diversity. The Atlas of Languages. Once the Luwian hieroglyphics for God "" and Gate "" were discovered at Gbekli Tepe, this author was able to directly link the site's carved pillars and pillar enclosures to the Abrahamic/Mosaic "Word of God", . 'be, exist'), (root seen also in #983 + probably *s caus. ), to fit on top of, go above or in front of, (Eg., Sem. Ongota In Afro-Asiatic languages: Origins originated is referred to as Proto-Afro-Asiatic. [99] Various Semitic, Cushitic, Berber, and Chadic languages, including Arabic, Amharic, Berber, Somali, and East Dangla, also exhibit various types of vowel harmony. However, not one of Militarev's proposed 32 agricultural roots can be considered diagnostic of cultivation. *kns-loins: 326. Tivoid Origins, Migrations, and Language Contacts. [77][127] Berber, and Egyptian, and most Semitic languages are verb-initial languages, whereas Cushitic, Omotic and some Semitic subgroups are verb-final languages. Ehret's dictionary lists "Proto-South-Cushitic, original homeland of the Afroasiatic family, "The feminine endings *-ay and *-y in Semitic and Berber", "A reconstruction of the system of verb aspects in proto-Berbero-Semitic", Afro-Asiatic and Semitic genealogical trees, short annotations of the talks given there, The prehistory of a dispersal: the Proto-Afrasian (Afroasiatic) farming lexicon, Once More About Glottochronology And The Comparative Method: The Omotic-Afrasian case, Root Extension And Root Formation In Semitic And Afrasian, A comparison of Orel-Stolbova's and Ehret's Afro-Asiatic reconstructions, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Afroasiatic_languages&oldid=1142726919, Linguist H. Fleming proposed that the near-exinct, Harold Fleming (1981) divides non-Omotic Afroasiatic, or "Erythraean", into three groups, Cushitic, Semitic, and Chadic-Berber-Egyptian. p-Katloid Since there is written data available from this region, it is easier to reconstruct ancient roots and find common characteristics (ELL, p.51). Though estimations vary widely, it is believed by scholars to have been spoken as a single language around 12,000 to 18,000 years ago , that is, between 16,000 and 10,000 BC. [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. innovation: 'increase' > 'grow in size'), (root #838 + * part. [66] Some scholars would continue to regard Hausa as related to the other Afroasiatic languages, but the idea was controversial: many scholars refused to admit that the largely unwritten, "Negroid" Chadic languages were in the same family as the "Caucasian" ancient civilizations of the Egyptians and Semites. There is some evidence from Coptic, but this may be unrelated to AA. p-Heiban They are not found in Chadic languages, and there is no evidence for cases in Egyptian. [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. to domestic animals in general, then narrowing in PS and Eg. [54] However, Christopher Ehret (1979), Harold Fleming (1981), and Joseph Greenberg (1981) all agree that the Omotic branch split from the rest first. Semitic speakers moved into the Fertile Crescent and "emerg[ed] into history" by bringing Akkadian (a Semitic language) into what is now Iraq, a previously Sumerian-speaking area (Dalby ,p6). [154] In Semitic, Egyptian, Berber, and some Chadic languages, verbs have no inherent vowels at all; the vowels found in a given verb are dependent on the vocalic template. p-Igboid Bomhard postulates that from Proto-Afroasiatic (henceforth PAA), Chadic was the first to break off. innovation: narrowing of meaning to loud kinds of response), (2nd shape: stem + *r n. Like in the English example, feet foot, vowels make the difference between separate words. (root #311+old Afroasiatic pl. [141] However, the number and types of cases varies across AA and also within the individual branches. Author: Martin Bernal Language: EnglishEdition: 1stBinding: HardcoverPages: 575Publisher: Rutgers Univ PressPublication Date: 304805601149 p-Benue-Congo "[81] The African languages of Afroasiatic are not more closely related to each other than they are to Semitic, as one would expect if only Semitic had remained in an Asian AA homeland while all other branches had spread from there. There is no general consensus over the location of the Urheimat, the original homeland from which began the migrations into the present locations of the speakers. The Semitic line of Afro-Asiatic has the most language sub-sets. [74], There is no consensus on when Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken. Gemination in particular is one of the typical features of AA. [82] Likewise, all Semitic languages are fairly similar to each other, whereas the African branches of Afroasiatic are very diverse; this suggests the rapid spread of Semitic out of Africa. [133][150] It forms agent nouns, place nouns, and instrument nouns. ), (root seen also in #984 + *n non-fin. These include Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Altaic and Dravidian (Atlas, p.74). [12] Each component of this term was derived from the name of a Biblical son of Noah as detailed in the Book of Genesis: Semitic from his first-born son Shem, and Hamitic from his second son Ham (Genesis 5:32). Beboid p-Central Khoisan [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. New York: Elsevier, 1977. The Proto-Afrasian Phonological System Unlike the comparative-historical study of the Indo-European languagefamily, which has a long history, the comparative-historical study of the Afrasian language familyis still not far advanced, though enormous progress has been made in recent years. [89] Igor Diakonoff argues that the requirement to begin with a vowel goes back to Proto-Afroasiatic. Diamond and Bellwood adopt Militarev's ( 2) solitary counterclaim of proto-Afroasiatic cultivation. 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-Semitic was a contemporary of PIE. Linguists use the term "state" to refer to different things in different languages. At the same time, linguistic similarities such as vowel changes help show relationships among languages. [11], Greenberg reintroduced the name "Afroasiatic" in 1960, a name seemingly coined by Maurice Delafosse (as French afroasiatique) in 1914. [8][9] Other proposed names which have not found widespread acceptance among the linguistic community include Erythraic, Lisramic, Noahitic, and Lamekhite. p-Maban *-kep-to cease, no longer function: 327. [178], The forms of the pronouns are very stable throughout the Afroasiatic (excluding Omotic),[127] and they have been used as one of the chief tools for determining whether a language belongs to the family. p-Daju [30] Most Chadic languages are located in the Chad basin, with the exception of Hausa. [90] Some Chadic languages allow a syllable to begin with a vowel. London: Routledge, 1990. This work provides the first truly comprehensive and systematic reconstruction of proto-Afroasiatic (proto-Afrasian). Kanuri [32] It may have as many as 80 to 100 million first and second language speakers. FOR SALE! alternative feminine endings *-ay/*-y; corresponding vowel templates for verbal conjugations) which can be reconstructed for a higher-order proto-language (provisionally called "Proto-Berbero-Semitic" by Kossmann & Suchard (2018) and Van Putten (2018)). The Proto-Afroasiatic Vowel System" In The Nostratic Macrofamily: A Study in Distant Linguistic Relationship, 105-108. Ekoid p-Ogoni p-Lakka [71] In the end, Meinhof's classification included languages from every family in Africa that is recognized by modern linguistics. [118], Attempts to reconstruct the vocalic system of Proto-Afroasiatic vary considerably. as EL). [42] Egyptian was replaced by Arabic as the spoken language of Egypt,[43] but Coptic continues to be the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church. Berta BLACK ATHENA: THE Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (The Fabrication, - $16.27. [167] These prefixes are clearly cognate across the branches, although their use within the verbal systems of the individual languages varies. In Afro-Asiatic, there are five main families. p-Nupoid 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. [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. Oxford, Pergamon Press, 1994. Dictionary of Languages. [109] Roots that may have contained sequences that were possible in Proto-Afroasiatic but are disallowed in the daughter languages are assumed to have undergone consonant dissimilation or assimilation.[110][111]. Akpes [2] With the exception of its Semitic branch, all branches of the Afroasiatic family are exclusively native to the African continent. 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. [164] Christopher Ehret has proposed that Proto-Afroasiatic originally had as many as thirty-seven separate verbal extensions, many of which then became fossilized as third consonants. 'to come so close as to brush against'), (Eg., Sem. Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic (Proto-Afrasian) : vowels, tone, consonants, and vocabulary / Christopher Ehret Get this Comments (0) Librarian's View Copyright Status Online In the Library Order a copy Request this item to view in the Library's reading rooms using your library card. as denom. SOm stat. [40] Egyptian is first attested in writing around 3000 BCE and finally went extinct around 1300 CE, making it the language with the longest written history in the world. Newman suggested a relationship between Semitic and the Hausa language, an idea that was taken up by early scholars of Afroasiatic. WCh WOT [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. [133], A widespread pattern of gender and number marking in Afroasiatic is a consonant N for masculine, T for feminine, and N for plural. [5] It includes languages spoken predominantly in West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africaand parts of the Sahel. p-Upper Cross River It also fully incorporates the most up-to-date evidence from the distinctive African branches of the family, Cushitic, Chadic, and Omotic. E-V13. p-Edoid [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. Benfys title was later inverted to make Hamito-Semitic but over time racial connotations were applied to this name (Voegelin, p.13). The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. p-Aroid The Proto-Afroasiatic Vowel System. common genetic origin of Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Afroasiatic differ considerably from the assumptions made in other works on . Gumuz p-Grassfields [139], Nouns cases are found in the Semitic, Berber, Cushitic, and Omotic. [121], As part of these templates, the alternation (apophony) between high vowels (e.g. 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 . [88], Egyptian, Cushitic, Berber, Omotic, and most languages in the Semitic branch all require a syllable to begin with a consonant (with the exception of some grammatical prefixes). suff. in a word must match. p-Manjaku ; Sem., Eg. Tadaksahak, p-Niger-Congo Kujarge suff. p-Songhay innovation: semantic narrowing to hitting with the hand), (probable *tliiz-, adj. 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). The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic,or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic subregions of Western Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahara/Sahel. innovation: generalization of pl. Whether this proto-language is ancestral to Berber and Semitic only, or also to other branches of Afroasiatic, still remains to be established. p-Fali Its words and roots are not directly attested in any written works, but have been reconstructed through the comparative method, which finds regular similarities between languages that cannot be explained by coincidence or word-borrowing, and extrapolates ancient forms from these similarities. [137][d] Another common method of forming plurals is reduplication. [107] Another widespread constraint is against two non-identical lateral obstruents, which can be found in Egyptian, Chadic, Semitic, and probably Cushitic. He later added Semitic and Beja to Chadic-Berber-Egyptian and tentatively proposed, Alexander Militarev (2000), on the basis of. [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. p-N. Jos [174] The Semitic genitive case in -i is probably related to "nisba" adjective derivation. 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). innovation: meaning shift, from avoiding per se to feeling a need or reason to avoid), to wear out, be used up, cease to function, (Eg., Cush., Ch. p-Cangin [91] Typically, syllables only begin with a single consonant. NE Sudanic rather than the subject and object. Therefore the root is considered ktb. When looking for roots it is important to remember that early Semitic only had consonants and vowels had to be inferred from the context (Atlas, p.78-79). [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. innovation: narrowing of meaning to tr. In Arabic, ti-ktib means she writes and katab-it means she wrote. p-Cushitic Momo [99] In all AA languages, consonants can be bilabial, alveolar, velar, and glottal, with additional places of articulation found in some branches or languages. Many of these roots have other proposed cognates that are not included on the table. Roots Beginning with P and B - Oleg Linkohr 2020-03-15 . [93] Most words end in a vowel in Omotic and Cushitic, making syllable-final consonant clusters rare. North Germanic includes Icelandic, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian. 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 [130], Many AA languages use prefixes or suffixes (verbal extensions) to encode various pieces of information about the verb. Both works provide highly divergent reconstructions and have been heavily criticized by other scholars. ; *u < *i /#-p_C-#? With the exception of its Semitic branch, all branches of the Afroasiatic family are . Such evidence may reveal plants known to early Afroasiatic speakers; but it does not diagnose whether they were cultivated or wild. [33] Only about 40 Chadic languages have been fully described by linguists. p-Talodi [193][194], Afroasiatic languages share a vocabulary of Proto-Afroasiatic origin to varying extents. [190] Some South Cushitic numerals are borrowed from Nilotic languages, other Cushitic numerals have been borrowed from Ethiopian Semitic languages. [15] The association between Africans and the Biblical Ham dates back to at least Isidore of Seville (6th century CE), and earlier 19th-century scholars had vaguely spoken of "Hamian" or "Hamitish" languages. [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. [134] A system K (masculine), T (feminine), and H (plural) can be found in Cushitic, Chadic, with masculine K also appearing in Omotic. The system in Berber, Egyptian, and Semitic, however, has independent words for the numbers 6-9. p-Ukaan Omotic is the most controversial member of Afro-Asiatic. [103] Igor M. Diakonoff proposed that Proto-AA had a three vowel system of long and short a, i, and u. It is very difficult to reconstruct ancient Proto-Afroasiatic (PAA) vocabulary, and still more difficult to reconstruct a common morphosyntax. [108] Such rules do not always apply for nouns, numerals, or denominal verbs, and do not affect prefixes or suffixes added to the root. PSom-III. Archaeology and the study of oral traditions helps linguists find connections between language families. All branches of Afroasiatic have a limited number of underlying vowels (between two and seven), but the number of phonetic vowels can be much larger. While there is no consensus among historical linguists concerning the original homeland of the Afroasiatic family or the period when the parent language (i.e. Anaang As the Afroasiatic languages tend to be the tongues with the longest and oldest historical record, there are not many that can beat the Proto-Afroasiatic. p-Kuliak (Ik) *t: . [94], Several Afroasiatic languages have large numbers of consonants, and it is likely that Proto-Afroasiatic did as well:[95] Vladimir Orel and Olga Stolbova reconstruct 32 consonant phonemes,[96] while Christopher Ehret reconstructs 42. p-Akokoid The "s-causative" may be reflected in Hausa (as -r), however this may be a language internal development. [90], Syllable weight plays an important role in AA, especially in Chadic; it can affect the form of affixes attached to a word. 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. [98] AA languages tend to have pharyngeal fricative consonants, with Egyptian, Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic sharing and . Each aspect of these reconstructions is substantiated in detail in an extensive etymological vocabulary of more than 1000 roots. [195] Writing in 2004, John Huehnergaard notes the great difficulty in establishing cognate sets across the family. This family was formally described and named "Semitic" by August Ludwig von Schlzer in 1781. [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. !Kung, Bangime innovation: 'fold over, bend'), (Eg., Sem. [92], With the exception of some Chadic languages, all AA languages allow both closed and open syllables; many Chadic languages do not allow a syllable to end in a consonant. [169] As there is no evidence for the "prefix conjugation" in Omotic, Chadic, or Egyptian, it is unclear whether this was a Proto-Afroasiatic feature that has been lost in those branches or is a shared innovation among Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic. Egyptian is classified as a distinct language and the other sub-groups are: Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Omotic, and Semitic (Voegelin, p.12). [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. Laal [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. [120] Ronny Meyer and H. Ekkehard Wolff instead propose that Proto-Afroasiatic may have had no vowels as such, instead employing various syllabic consonants (*l, *m, *n, *r) and semivowels or semivowel-like consonants (*w, *y, *, *, *, *h, *, *, *, *h) to form syllables. suff. In Cushitic and Semitic, nouns exist in the "free state" or the "construct state". ), (Berber, Eg. Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 June 2016 Alan S. Kaye Article Metrics Save PDF suff. p-Lower Cross River [179] However, there is no consensus on what the reconstructed set of Afroasiatic pronouns might have looked like. ; PC variant *damn-), (Ch., Eg., Sem. [22] Other scholars, however, argue that they are a group of around twelve languages, about as different from each other as the Romance or Germanic languages. One hypothesis places it in the Levant, as the language of the Natufian hunter-gatherers who were the first to adopt a farming lifestyle more than 10,000 years ago. [117] Christopher Ehret proposed a five vowel system with long and short a, e, o, i, and u. Adapted from Ruhlen 1987. [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. The languages of what is now Afro-Asiatic occupy a "vast area that stretches from Morocco to Arabia" (Dalby, p.6). suff. p-Jen [142][143] Zygmont Frajzyngier states that a general characteristic of case marking in AA languages is that it tends to mark roles such as genitive, dative, locative, etc. suff. ; possible n. derivation < v. in #1004). [54] These five or six branches remain the academic consensus on the family. [129] Full or partial reduplication of the verb is often used to derive forms showing repeated action (pluractionality), though it is unclear if this is an inherited feature or has been widely borrowed. p-Agaw [150] Christopher Ehret has argued that this prefix is a later development that was not present in Proto-Afro-Asiatic, but rather derived from a PAA indefinite pronoun *m-. p-Gurunsi Kunama [101] It is generally agreed that only the obstruents had a contrast between voiceless and voiced forms in Proto-Afroasiatic, whereas continuants were voiceless. They can occur together with subject pronouns but cannot fulfill an object function. ; PS, Eg., Ch.