To the south lay the other language families of Africa: Niger-Kordofanian, Nilo-Saharan, and Khoisan (Atlas,p74). [54][73][9] The reluctance of some scholars to recognize Chadic as a member of Afroasiatic persisted as late as the 1980s. This language family has now been renamed Afro-Asiatic, because this term is less culture specific (Dalby, p.6). It rigorously applies, throughout, the established canon and techniques. [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. [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. to different specific animals), (possible vowel reconstructions: *a, *aa, *e, or *o), (Sem., Ch. [34], The Egyptian branch consists of a single language, Ancient Egyptian, which was historically spoken in the lower Nile Valley. [34] Cushitic does not appear to be related to the attested ancient languages known from its area, Meroitic or Old Nubian. innovation: generalization of pl. Linguistic guesstimates or phylogenetic speculation date the proto-language (and thus the homeland) within a wide range, from 15,000 to 6,000 years ago. [134] A system K (masculine), T (feminine), and H (plural) can be found in Cushitic, Chadic, with masculine K also appearing in Omotic. [83], A significant minority of scholars supports an Asian origin of Afroasiatic,[78] most of whom are specialists in Semitic or Egyptian studies. Three dialects emerged (Omotic, Cushitic, and Chadic) from the main one and this left 'Boreafrasian,' the source of Berber, Egyptian and Semitic (Dalby ,p. 6). [4] The most widely spoken modern Afroasiatic language or dialect continuum by far is Arabic, a de facto group of distinct language varieties within the Semitic branch. [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. [128] In most branches, gender is an inherent property of nouns. Kujarge Allan Bomhard's own reconstructions of Proto-Afroasiatic roots (and phonology) seem to be biased toward Proto-Indo-European and Nostratic roots . [76] It may have originally mostly biconsonantal, to which various affixes (verbal extensions) were then added and lexicalized. p-Plateau (p-Tarokoid) p-Jukunoid The proto-language of each Afroasiatic branch developed its own distinct vocabulary of food production, further supporting the view that herding and cultivation emerged separately in each branch after the proto-Afroasiatic period ( 7, 8 ). reflex), (root #723 + *x extend. Fifteen are glossed as names of plants or loose categories of plants. ), (Eg., Sem. Oxford, Pergamon Press, 1994. WCh WOT A main characteristic of Afro-Asiatic languages is the use of vowel changes in word formation. tr. The Berber and Semitic branches share certain grammatical features (e.g. Egyptian is classified as a distinct language and the other sub-groups are: Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Omotic, and Semitic (Voegelin, p.12). . [89] Igor Diakonoff argues that the requirement to begin with a vowel goes back to Proto-Afroasiatic. [48] Today, Semitic languages are spoken across North Africa, Western Asia, and the Horn of Africa, as well as on the island of Malta, making them the sole Afroasiatic branch with members originating outside Africa. This work provides the first truly comprehensive and systematic reconstruction of proto-Afroasiatic (proto-Afrasian). In Cushitic and Semitic, nouns exist in the "free state" or the "construct state". rather than the subject and object. shared innovation: n. for 'clay'), great (especially in size but also in number), (Ch., Eg., Sem. For other uses, see, Distribution of the Afro-Asiatic languages, Similarities in grammar, syntax, and morphology, Common derivational and morphological processes, Consonantal root structures and verbal forms, Some scholars argue that on the basis of Coptic that Egyptian had neither "emphatic consonants" nor a phonemic distinction between voiced and voiceless consonants. Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 June 2016 Alan S. Kaye Article Metrics Save PDF [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. The main quality of Afro-Asiatic is that it "cuts across usually perceived racial boundaries" (Dalby, p.6). [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. [54] The "Hamitic theory" would serve as the basis for Carl Meinhof's highly influential classification of African languages in his book Die Sprache der Hamiten (1912). [9] ( to domestic animals in general, then narrowing in PS and Eg. all catalog, articles, website, & more in one search catalog books, media & more in the Stanford Libraries' collections articles+ journal articles & other e-resources [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. Great variety is incorporated in one family and this makes Afro-Asiatic an interesting topic of study. innovation: addition of *t n. 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. * "The Origins of Third Consonants in Semitic Roots: An Internal Reconstruction (Applied to Arabic)," Journal of Afroasiatic Languages 3, 2 (1989): 109-202. p-North Bauchi [84] Prominent in this camp is the linguist Alexander Militarev, who argues that Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken by early agriculturalists in the Levant and subsequently spread to Africa. n. pref. There is some evidence from Coptic, but this may be unrelated to AA. [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). The Egyptian prefix has a middle voice/intransitive/or passive meaning. Some features observed in most or all Afroasiatic languages include: It remains unclear what word order Proto-Afroasiatic had. into stem), to take (bit of food or drink) into the mouth, (* is required by derived noun, root #641 following), (Eg., Sem. The results, while confirming some previous views on proto-Afroasiatic (proto-Afrasian), revise or overturn many others, and add much that is new. Momo [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-. Report Save. p-Lower Cross River Bariba 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. [165] This theory has been criticized by some, such as Andrzej Zaborski and Alan Kaye, as being too many extensions to be realistic, though Zygmont Frajzyngier and Erin Shay note that some Chadic languages have as many as twelve extensions. These three groups are classified as being in Africa while Afro-Asiatic is listed under the term Eurasia (Atlas, p.74). Rashad innovation: narrowing of meaning to particular kind of joining, by sewing), to split in two, split one from the other, (proposed source: #502, with regular PAA * > PBA *n; Eg., Berber, Sem. [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. There are multiple possibilities: Egyptian had already undergone radical changes from Proto-Afroasiatic before it was recorded, the Afroasiatic family has so far been studied with an excessively Semito-centric approach, or Afroasiatic is a typological, not a genetic group of languages. [124] Other scholars argue that Proto-AA had a pitch accent and some branches subsequently developed tone. [156], There is no agreement about which tenses or aspects Proto-Afroasiatic might have had. >>14700332 [76], There is no consensus where the original homeland (Urheimat) of the first Afroasiatic speakers was located. Pp. < v. in #918 by V > VV; occurrence of PSC *ee (or *e?) Shabo Tadaksahak, p-Niger-Congo 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). ), to get up to leave, start out, come or go forth, (Eg., Sem. [64] The French orientalist Guillaume Postel had also pointed out similarities between Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic in 1538, and Hiob Ludolf noted similarities also to Ge'ez and Amharic in 1701. Proto-Chadic and Proto-Cushitic are likely even older. [99] [101][a] The emphatic consonants are typically formed deeper in the throat than the others;[99] they can be realized variously as glottalized, pharyngealized, uvularized, ejective, and/or implosive consonants in the different branches. Three dialects emerged (Omotic, Cushitic, and Chadic) from the main one and this left Boreafrasian, the source of Berber, Egyptian and Semitic (Dalby ,p. 6). [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. suff. [27] The first longer written examples of modern Berber varieties only date from the 16th or 17th centuries CE. 1 Afro-Asiatic Language Family. . 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. Looking at present languages and going backward helps us know what languages were like anciently (Atlas, p.75). 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. [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. [159] The Egyptian verbal system diverges greatly from that found in the other branches. He later added Semitic and Beja to Chadic-Berber-Egyptian and tentatively proposed, Alexander Militarev (2000), on the basis of. derivation by addition of *-u- tr. 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. ; short vowel required by derived verb #399), calabash (used as container, utensil, etc. [128] Proto-Chadic is reconstructed as having verb-initial word order,[80] but most Chadic languages have subject-verb-object word order. Greenberg, 1958 D. Cohen,. innovation: addition of *b extend., imputing meaning 'to count'), to show, bring to (ones) notice or attention, (Ch., Berber, and Eg. [195] Writing in 2004, John Huehnergaard notes the great difficulty in establishing cognate sets across the family. [109] Additionally, he showed that Proto-Semitic restricted a sequence of two identical consonants in the first and second position of the triliteral root. suff. Bomhard postulates that from Proto-Afroasiatic (henceforth PAA), Chadic was the first to break off. [196] Additionally, because Egyptian is written without vowels before the Coptic period, its use for comparative purposes often relies on vocalic reconstructions that themselves depend on comparisons with other Afroasiatic languages. The Semitic line of Afro-Asiatic has the most language sub-sets. [15] Hamitic was coined by Ernest Renan in 1855, to refer to languages that seemed similar to the Semitic languages, but were not themselves provably a part of the family. [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. These are some known features common to more than one branch, though (Hodge 1971; Lecarme, Lowenstamm, and Shlonsky 2000; Frajzyngier and Shay 2012): 28 July 1999. [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. bw 'plant used in medicine' (med) Central Chadic: *abay 'leaf' Proto-Afro-Asiatic: * (a-)bil- Meaning: door Semitic: *abul- 'door, gate' Western Chadic: *HVbil- 'door' Central Cushitic (Agaw): *bil- 'door' 1, 'hole, window' 2 innovation: 'knee'; Berber *afud < *puuz), to be finished, come to an end, be used up, (Sem., Cush. Afro-Asiatic has been hypothesized to be related to many other language families. Ayere-Ahan [49][48] Arabic, spoken in both Asia and Africa, has around 300 million native speakers, while the Ethiopian Amharic has around 25 million. [90], Syllable weight plays an important role in AA, especially in Chadic; it can affect the form of affixes attached to a word. p-Central Chadic innovation: added meaning 'firm,' hence, figuratively, 'firmly established, strong'), to intertwine, to bind by twining together, to be above, be at the top, form the tip or peak, (Sem., Ch. [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. In Afro-Asiatic, there are five main families. The other three are very closely related and it is not hard for, say, a Dane to learn to understand a Swede. The results, while confirming some previous views on proto-Afroasiatic (proto-Afrasian), revise or overturn many others, and add much that is new. [188] Andrzej Zaborski further notes that the numbers "one," "two," and "five" are particularly susceptible to replacement by new words, with "five" often based on a word meaning "hand". From the earliest times we have written records from Northern Africa. [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. 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. fort. This is in part due to Boroafrasian speakers breaking into groups such as Berber and Egyptian in North Africa and Semitic dialects in the Arabian Peninsula. An Encyclopedia of Language. Originally Posted by gihanga.rwanda. . p-Ukaan Each aspect of these reconstructions is substantiated in detail in an extensive etymological vocabulary of more than 1000 roots. p-Maban 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. [179] However, there is no consensus on what the reconstructed set of Afroasiatic pronouns might have looked like. innovation: narrowing of meaning to beating time to music), (Eg., Sem. Afrasian. p-Atlantic-Congo ), (root *-sa-, seen also in #539 preceding, + *w inchoative), (2nd root shape *-caab- seen in PEC v. and Banna (SOm) 'white,' is not as yet satisfactorily accounted for), indefinite pronoun stem (one, someone, somebody), (stem + * iter. This can be found in Semitic, Egyptian, Beja, Berber, and Chadic. Answer: Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family, which includes over 400 languages spoken across much of Africa and the Middle East. A set of constraints, developed originally by Joseph Greenberg on the basis of Arabic, has been claimed to be typical for Afroasiatic languages. [64] In the same year T.N. There is no consensus regarding the location of the Proto-Semitic Urheimat; scholars hypothesize that it may have originated in the Levant, the Sahara, or the Horn of Africa, and the view that it arose in the Arabian Peninsulahas also been common historically. innovation: narrowing of meaning to tr. [80] Most scholars place the homeland of Afroasiatic near the center of its current distribution,[8] "in the southeastern Sahara or adjacent Horn of Africa. innovation: narrowing of meaning to loud kinds of response), (2nd shape: stem + *r n. p-Semitic, Khoisan This name is possibly based upon the root "-b-r" ( . Ekoid [117] In the different languages, central vowels are often inserted to break up consonant clusters (a form of epenthesis). Forms that do not follow the pattern are in parentheses. [33] Only about 40 Chadic languages have been fully described by linguists. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter Mouton, 2011. . Tula-Waja Archaeology and the study of oral traditions helps linguists find connections between language families. Afro-Asiatic is a large language family with great diversity. [98] Additionally, the glottal stop () usually exists as a phoneme, and there tends to be no phonemic contrast between [p] and [f] or [b] and [v]. p-Songhay ), (root seen also in #984 + *n non-fin. as EL). Among the countries included in this language family are: Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Sudan, Egypt, Algeria, and Ethiopia. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1996. London, Bloomsbury, 1998. Dictionary of Languages. [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. Proposed specific locations include the Horn of Africa, Egypt, the eastern Sahara, and the Levant. [116], There is a large variety of vocalic systems in AA. >>14700322 >Proto-Semitic language contact with PIE implies the Semitic languages themselves come from J Caucasians. These records make it possible to classify and reconstruct many languages. p-Gbaya TV. p-Upper Cross River Bendi [18][11], The alternative name "Lisramic" is based on the AA root *lis- ("tongue") and the Egyptian word rm ("person"). p-Koman Defaka 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. Afroasiatic. p-Surmic 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 [146] Coptic and Egyptian grammar also refers to nouns having a "free" (absolute) state, a "construct state," and a "pronominal state." innovation: semantic narrowing to hitting with the hand), (probable *tliiz-, adj. You guys might disagree with the results form the Shum Laka paper but don't distort their own interpretations of their findings. [27] The first is the Numidian language, represented by over a thousand short inscriptions in the Libyco-Berber alphabet, found throughout North Africa and dating from the 2nd century BCE onward. [51] The classification within West Semitic remains contested. in a word must match. [121] In contemporary Omotic, Chadic, and Cushitic languages, tone is primarily a grammatical feature: it encodes various grammatical functions, only differentiating lexical roots in a few cases. [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. [11], Greenberg reintroduced the name "Afroasiatic" in 1960, a name seemingly coined by Maurice Delafosse (as French afroasiatique) in 1914. Afro-Asiatic is divided into six branches: Semitic, Berber, Egyptian, Cushitic, Chadic and Omotic. p-Ogoni [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. [38] The oldest text in a Cushitic language probably dates from around 1770. infix [also tonal shift as found in Chadic cases]), (this root is included because #871 following derives from it), (sing. *y: adjective suffix: 3. except for Semitic, which is also spoken in the Middle-East and Malta, all branches of the [10][11], Friedrich Mller introduced the name "Hamito-Semitic" to describe the family in his Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft, published in 1876. p-Khoe Benfys title was later inverted to make Hamito-Semitic but over time racial connotations were applied to this name (Voegelin, p.13). [132] Additionally, even when nouns are not cognates, they tend to have the same gender throughout Afroasiatic ("gender stability"). [123], Some scholars postulate that Proto-Afroasiatic was a tonal language, with tonality subsequently lost in some branches: Christopher Ehret has postulated a tonal system of at least two tonal phonemes, falling tone, rising tone, and possibly a third tone, level tone. [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. suff. innovation: addition of *t n. 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. *iw- 'cow') (Eg., Sem. *kanf-/*kinf-wing: 325. Continue Reading 5 Brian Collins 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. [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). [77][127] Berber, and Egyptian, and most Semitic languages are verb-initial languages, whereas Cushitic, Omotic and some Semitic subgroups are verb-final languages. 6), (Eg., Sem., Cush. innovation: addition of *w inchoative to stem), (root #866 with *-u- tr. BLACK ATHENA: THE Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (The Fabrication, - $16.27. p-Ron [49], There there are also other proposed branches, but none has so far convinced a majority of scholars:[7]. Classification and Index of the Worlds Languages. [66], Meinhof's version of the "Hamitic theory" remained prevalent until the 1940s, when it was definitively disproved by Joseph Greenberg. 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. ; semantics: from closed- to open-ended action), to be wrong, bad, ill; do or function wrongly, (Eg., Ch. Nara Map of Afro-Asiatic languages distribution (click to enlarge it) p-Guang : *itsim-), (2nd root shape: possible old tr. [40] Scholars have proposed locations both in the Middle East and in Africa. 2.10. 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. The reconstructed consonants for Proto-Afro-Asiatic are p and b, t and d, and k and g. The Egyptian bw meaning place and the Semitic bi meaning in or from are believed to be from the reconstructed root *b- meaning foot or place (ELL, p.51). p-Manjaku Yendang [17] The name refers to the fact that this is the only major language family with members in both Africa and Asia. innovation: to spoil > to sour), (Sem., Eg. suff. The speakers of Boreafrasian migrated north to an arid Sahara climate, then eventually pushed on west and east. 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. Vol.1. US$62.00 (softcover). Upload your video About the author [127] These pronouns tend to show a masculine "u" and a feminine "i". [144], A second category, which partially overlaps with case, is the AA linguistic category of "state." The prefixes ti and it mean she. of proto-Afroasiatic cultivation. Well-known Afroasiatic languages include Arabic, Ancient Egyptian, Somali, Tuareg, and Hausa.
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