), (Eg., Sem. [54] Greenberg rejected the Afroasiatic classification of languages that Meinhof had classified as "Hamitic" based on racial and anthropological data. p-Fali [95], "Afro-Asiatic" redirects here. 6), (Eg., Sem., Cush. [103] Igor M. Diakonoff proposed that Proto-AA had a three vowel system of long and short a, i, and u. ; SC semantics: early beads were made of shell), (root of #48 + *c extend. From the earliest times we have written records from Northern Africa. Afroasiatic is generally considered to be comprised of the language families Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, Omotic, and Semitic. At the same time, linguistic similarities such as vowel changes help show relationships among languages. PSom-III. 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. p-Kuliak (Ik) [136] These so-called "internal a" or "broken" plurals are securely attested in Semitic, Berber, Cushitic, and Chadic, although it is unclear if the Chadic examples are an independent development. [9] ( [68] Greenberg also proposed that Hausa was part of a Chadic branch of Afroasiatic, and that Afroasiatic consisted of five main branches, Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, and Semitic. suff. innovation: *agaw- 'cooked grain,' stem + *w n. p-Kongo [31] They are all spoken in southwest Ethiopia except for the Ganza language, spoken in Sudan. [180] Also common are dependent/affix pronouns (used for direct objects and to mark possession). Mimi-D This original biblical genealogy reflected political rather than linguistic realities: thus the Canaanites are descendants of Ham, although their language is closely related to Hebrew, and the Elamites are descendants of Shem, although their language is not related to Hebrew at all. Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 June 2016 Alan S. Kaye Article Metrics Save PDF [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. NE Sudanic suff. Because i notice in some cases, they seem to have vowels shifting around quite a bit, akin to the trilateral root systems of the semitic languages. Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary. < v. in #918 by V > VV; occurrence of PSC *ee (or *e?) [41] In the Coptic period, there is evidence for six major dialects, which presumably existed previously but are obscured by pre-Coptic writing; additionally, Middle Egyptian appears to be based on a different dialect than Old Egyptian, which in turn shows dialectal similarities to Late Egyptian. North Germanic includes Icelandic, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian. [25][26], There are two extinct languages potentially related to modern Berber. 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. Laal US$62.00 (softcover). p-Tuu [189] In some Berber languages, the roots for one and two are also borrowed from Arabic. innovation: 'to rub' > 'to scrape'), (* and *a are reconstructed because they are required in derived root #651 below), (#649 + *r diffus. p-Idomoid p-North Bauchi The results, while confirming some previous views on proto-Afroasiatic (proto-Afrasian), revise or overturn many others, and add much that is new. [32] It may have as many as 80 to 100 million first and second language speakers. Classification and Index of the Worlds Languages. 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. in *n, as also in #323), (possible V reconstructions: *a, *aa, *e, or *o), (Sem., Eg., Ch. [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. 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. The Proto-Afroasiatic Vowel System" In The Nostratic Macrofamily: A Study in Distant Linguistic Relationship, 105-108. p-Gurunsi The prefixes ti and it mean she. [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. The other three are very closely related and it is not hard for, say, a Dane to learn to understand a Swede. [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. [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. . innovation: generalization of pl. Tiefo p-Cangin p-Bantu (Swadesh list) [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. [33] Only about 40 Chadic languages have been fully described by linguists. [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. [74], There is no consensus on when Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken. ), (root seen also in #984 + *n non-fin. These include Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Altaic and Dravidian (Atlas, p.74). [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. The Subclassification of Afroasiatic (Afrasian) Appendix 1. Proto-Afro-Asiatic is generally considered the oldest accepted one, though it's not known exactly how long ago it was spoken. as ELL). p-Maji [3] The phylum has six branches: Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, Semitic, and Omotic. [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. [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. [8][9] Other proposed names which have not found widespread acceptance among the linguistic community include Erythraic, Lisramic, Noahitic, and Lamekhite. innovation: stem + *n n. suff. Omotic and Cushitic followed the example and split together, as did Egyptian, Berber, and Semitic in another group. Of all of the languages in the Afro-Asiatic line, Arabic is the most widely spoken language, stretching from Western Africa to the Middle East (ELL, p.51). * "The Origins of Third Consonants in Semitic Roots: An Internal Reconstruction (Applied to Arabic)," Journal of Afroasiatic Languages 3, 2 (1989): 109-202. The languages that evolved from Proto-Arabic have around 313 million native speakers, concentrated primarily in the Middle East and North Africa.[5]. in *n, as also in #210), (Sem., Eg. *-kep-to cease, no longer function: 327. The reconstruction of Proto-Afroasiatic is problematic and . ; Eg., Sem. [117] In the different languages, central vowels are often inserted to break up consonant clusters (a form of epenthesis). Afro-Asiatic has been hypothesized to be related to many other language families. [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. common genetic origin of Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Afroasiatic differ considerably from the assumptions made in other works on . Continue Reading 5 Brian Collins Proto-Afroasiatic English gloss Notes 1. 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. A set of constraints, developed originally by Joseph Greenberg on the basis of Arabic, has been claimed to be typical for Afroasiatic languages. The following list of Proto-Afroasiatic reconstructions is from Ehret (1995). The only branch that's actually E is Berber. They can occur together with subject pronouns but cannot fulfill an object function. In this interpretation, a contrast existed between. innovation: 'increase' > 'grow in size'), (root #838 + * part. p-Edoid Central Sudanic (p-Central Sudanicp-Sara-Bongo-BagirmiSinyarBirrip-Mangbetu) As Egyptian is spelled without vowels, it is difficult to know whether it had internal change plurals. North of the Sahara and the Ethiopian mountains are the Afro-Asiatic languages. Ongota This great divide has made travel difficult so linguistic boundaries tend to be based on either side. 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. Among the countries included in this language family are: Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Sudan, Egypt, Algeria, and Ethiopia. [156], There is no agreement about which tenses or aspects Proto-Afroasiatic might have had. [6] Retard. innovation: addition of * concisive to denote short, concentrated outflow, hence vomiting), (Sem., Eg. [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]. shared innovation: 'raise' > 'lift, pick up'; probable further Ch., Eg., Sem. and touches on external evidence from Afroasiatic cognate languages. [99] In Cushitic, the Ethiopian Semitic language Tigrinya, and some Chadic languages, there is no underlying phoneme [p] at all. [181] Other commonalities are masculine and feminine forms used in both the second and third persons, except in Cushitic and Omotic. 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. p-Lakka [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). p-Lower Cross River These are some known features common to more than one branch, though (Hodge 1971; Lecarme, Lowenstamm, and Shlonsky 2000; Frajzyngier and Shay 2012): The only group with an African origin is Ethiopian Semitic. Root Structure Patterning in Proto . [133][150] It forms agent nouns, place nouns, and instrument nouns. BLACK ATHENA The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization - V - $57.73. p-Nupoid 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", . Due to isolation, Icelandic has changed the least and is most similar to Old Norse, and therefore probably also to Proto-Germanic. Sumerian- tamil links ( included links with turkish ( said to be closed to sumerian by panturkists which also said dravidian and turkish cognated when we know dravidians were first people of asia coming from black african L3haplogroup), yeniseian ( intermediate between turkish and chinese and member of sino caucasian family that links chinese to north caucesian langages who according to . reflex), (root #723 + *x extend. p-Ukaan [29] Eight other Chadic languages have around 100,000 speakers; other Chadic languages often have few speakers and may be endangered of going extinct. Since there is written data available from this region, it is easier to reconstruct ancient roots and find common characteristics (ELL, p.51). [30] Most Chadic languages are located in the Chad basin, with the exception of Hausa. However, since the 1970s and '80s, comparisons of other Chadic subject pronouns with the Hausa ones have convinced most scholars that the similarity to the prefix conjugation is incidental. p-Oti-Volta (p-E. Oti-Voltap-C. Oti-Volta) A main characteristic of Afro-Asiatic languages is the use of vowel changes in word formation. [90], Syllable weight plays an important role in AA, especially in Chadic; it can affect the form of affixes attached to a word. Kujarge fort. p-Maban [20], There are between 40 and 80 languages in the Semitic family. [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. In the series University of California Publications in Linguistics 126. [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. Mao Published 1995 Linguistics This work provides the first truly comprehensive and systematic reconstruction of proto-Afroasiatic (proto-Afrasian). [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. [27] The first longer written examples of modern Berber varieties only date from the 16th or 17th centuries CE. p-Nubian [103][53] In some branches, it can also derive abstract nouns and participles. p-Jen ), to become thoroughly wet, pour heavily (intr. 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. In current scholarship, the most common names used for the family are Afroasiatic (or Afro-Asiatic), Hamito-Semitic, and Semito-Hamitic.