The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic ), also known as Hamito-Semitic, [3] or Semito-Hamitic, [4] and sometimes also as Afrasian or Erythraean, [5] are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in Western Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahara / Sahel. Jalaa 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 In Cushitic and Semitic, nouns exist in the "free state" or the "construct state". Great variety is incorporated in one family and this makes Afro-Asiatic an interesting topic of study. fort. ; SC semantics: early beads were made of shell), (root of #48 + *c extend. The results, while confirming some previous views on proto-Afroasiatic (proto-Afrasian), revise or overturn many others, and add much that is new. [54] These five or six branches remain the academic consensus on the family. [179] However, there is no consensus on what the reconstructed set of Afroasiatic pronouns might have looked like. New York: Elsevier, 1977. He later added Semitic and Beja to Chadic-Berber-Egyptian and tentatively proposed, Alexander Militarev (2000), on the basis of. [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. [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. 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. 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). Origins of the Semites | Somali Spot | Forum, News, Videos West Semitic brought forth such languages as Canaanite, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Arabic (EL, p.906). Beboid [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. 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. [190] Some South Cushitic numerals are borrowed from Nilotic languages, other Cushitic numerals have been borrowed from Ethiopian Semitic languages. [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. p-Jukunoid [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. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter Mouton, 2011. . *kanf-/*kinf-wing: 325. [168] Prefixes of - (glottal stop) for the first person singular and y- for the third person masculine can also be reconstructed. 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. [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. p-Bua to domestic animals in general, then narrowing in PS and Eg. /his/ - how did sissytufians allowed this to happen? menas - History p-Jebel 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. [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. ; short vowel required by derived verb #399), calabash (used as container, utensil, etc. E-V13. [40] Scholars have proposed locations both in the Middle East and in Africa. ; Sem., Eg. The other three are very closely related and it is not hard for, say, a Dane to learn to understand a Swede. p-Jen Proposed specific locations include the Horn of Africa, Egypt, the eastern Sahara, and the Levant. 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. Proto-Afro-Asiatic Swadesh List : r/linguistics - reddit Online Library The Oxford Introduction To Proto Indo European And The He showed that, generally, any consonant from one of these groups could combine with consonants from any other group, but could not be used together with consonants from the same group. Newman suggested a relationship between Semitic and the Hausa language, an idea that was taken up by early scholars of Afroasiatic. There is no information on whether Egyptian had tones. in East Africa. The results, while confirming some previous views on proto-Afroasiatic (proto-Afrasian), revise or overturn many others, and add much that is new. [20], The Berber (or Libyco-Berber) languages are spoken today by perhaps 16 million people. [117] In the different languages, central vowels are often inserted to break up consonant clusters (a form of epenthesis). Gemination in particular is one of the typical features of AA. innovation: narrowing of meaning to loud kinds of response), (2nd shape: stem + *r n. There is also some evidence from. 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 Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Afroasiatic Languages - Linguistics - Oxford Bibliographies - obo [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. Additional Proposed PAA Roots; Appendix 4. suff. Mimi-D 2.12. [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. BLACK ATHENA The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization - V $57.73 Proto-Afroasiatic, sometimes also referred to as Proto-Afrasian, is the reconstructed proto-language from which all modern Afroasiatic languages are descended. [17] The name refers to the fact that this is the only major language family with members in both Africa and Asia. 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. [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. innovation: narrowing of application of v. to angry calling out), (Sem., Cush, innovation: > n. 'covering' > 'rind, bark'), (root #447+ * iter. innovation: move > move toward), (probably demon., root #767+ *l n./adj. Root Structure Patterning in Proto . Tivoid innovation: to spoil > to sour), (Sem., Eg. p-Gbaya [32] It may have as many as 80 to 100 million first and second language speakers. (PDF) The Origins of Afroasiatic - ResearchGate 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 . Afro-Asiatic is divided into six branches: Semitic, Berber, Egyptian, Cushitic, Chadic and Omotic. p-Gurunsi stretching out of arms), (Sem, Eg., Ch., Cush, innovation: 'set on top of' > 'cover'), (Sem., Eg. [158] Most grammars of AA posit a distinction between perfective and imperfective verbal aspects, which can be found in Cushitic, Berber, Semitic, most Chadic languages, and some Omotic languages. [116], There is a large variety of vocalic systems in AA. [103][53] In some branches, it can also derive abstract nouns and participles. n. pref. [145] Edward Lipiski refers to Semitic nouns as having four states: absolute (free/indeterminate), construct, determinate, and predicate. "[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. 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). [76] It may have originally mostly biconsonantal, to which various affixes (verbal extensions) were then added and lexicalized. Proto-Semitic was a contemporary of PIE. Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic (Proto-Afrasian): Vowels, Tone [27] The first longer written examples of modern Berber varieties only date from the 16th or 17th centuries CE. [3] The phylum has six branches: Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, Semitic, and Omotic. Origins, Migrations, and Language Contacts. Some features observed in most or all Afroasiatic languages include: It remains unclear what word order Proto-Afroasiatic had. 2.11. 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)). [95], "Afro-Asiatic" redirects here. p-Ogoni [8][9] Other proposed names which have not found widespread acceptance among the linguistic community include Erythraic, Lisramic, Noahitic, and Lamekhite. [68] On the other hand, the classification relied on anthropological and racial features, such as skin color, hair type, and lifestyle. [51] The classification within West Semitic remains contested. Dogon The construct state is used when a noun becomes unstressed as the first element of a compound, whereas the pronominal state is used when the noun has a suffixed possessive pronoun. p-Nubian Published 1995 Linguistics This work provides the first truly comprehensive and systematic reconstruction of proto-Afroasiatic (proto-Afrasian). [128] Proto-Chadic is reconstructed as having verb-initial word order,[80] but most Chadic languages have subject-verb-object word order. Archaeologists and anthropologists have long viewed the Bible as mankind's best guide to prehistoric religion, however, archaeologist Klaus Schmidt had no reason to . Gbekli Tepe's Pillars and Architecture Reveal the Foundation of The name Hamitic originates from Ham, one of the sons of Noah. p-Masa [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. Proto-Cushitic Roots (Additional to those presented in Ehret 1987) Appendix 3. as denom. Bariba innovation: 'not want' > 'not need,' hence 'be sated'), (Eg., Sem. Dalby, Andrew. 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. Other Language Families and Fields of Study. *kns-loins: 326. [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. [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. For these versions, common words found in both Dolgopolsky (2008) and Bomhard (2018) are used, with Nostratic roots shared at least by Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Semitic, whenever possible. with pre-PAA root *way thus having been a n. or adj. infix), fruit, seeds, foliage, plant growth in general, (Ch., Sem. A Description of the Afro-Asiatic (Hamito-Semitic - Linguistics p-South Bauchi [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. Proto-Afro-Asiatic is generally considered the oldest accepted one, though it's not known exactly how long ago it was spoken. 6), (Eg., Sem., Cush. [174] It is found in Egyptian, Semitic, and possibly, in some relic forms, Berber. [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. [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] FOR SALE! Allan Bomhard's own reconstructions of Proto-Afroasiatic roots (and phonology) seem to be biased toward Proto-Indo-European and Nostratic roots . [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". V. V. ven. If you are not satisfied with 225345861639 [29] Eight other Chadic languages have around 100,000 speakers; other Chadic languages often have few speakers and may be endangered of going extinct. rather than the subject and object. Akpes [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. 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). suff. London, Bloomsbury, 1998. [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. The modern word "Hebrew" is derived from the word "Ivri" (plural "Ivrim"; English: Hebrews), one of several names for the Israelite (Jewish and Samaritan) people. The most up to . [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. in a word must match. [159] The Egyptian verbal system diverges greatly from that found in the other branches. [10][11], Friedrich Mller introduced the name "Hamito-Semitic" to describe the family in his Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft, published in 1876. [100], All or most branches of AA have a contrast between voiceless, voiced, and "emphatic" consonants. 1995. shared innovation: n. for 'clay'), great (especially in size but also in number), (Ch., Eg., Sem. [153][168][h], Some AA branches have what is called a "suffix conjugation", formed by using pronominal suffixes to indicate person, gender, and number and a verbal adjective. Diamond and Bellwood adopt Militarev's ( 2) solitary counterclaim of proto-Afroasiatic cultivation. p-Koman [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. innovation: 'grow' > 'live,' whence Eg. Shabo Proto-Afroasiatic, sometimes also referred to as Proto-Afrasian, is the reconstructed proto-language from which all modern Afroasiatic languages are descended. Bendi [40] Coptic is the only stage written alphabetically to show vowels, whereas Egyptian was previously written in Egyptian hieroglyphs, which only represent consonants. 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. The quality of the underlying vowels varies considerably by language; the most common vowel throughout AA is schwa. p-Surmic Linguists use the term "state" to refer to different things in different languages. . In Afro-Asiatic, there are five main families. *kop-sole (of foot . [117] Christopher Ehret proposed a five vowel system with long and short a, e, o, i, and u. [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. Iberomaurasians and Proto-Afroasiatic - Page 13 North of the Sahara and the Ethiopian mountains are the Afro-Asiatic languages. [128] In most branches, gender is an inherent property of nouns. 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. 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. [44], The c. 30 Omotic languages are still mostly undescribed by linguists. [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. ; PS, Eg., Ch. p-Cushitic Proto-Afroasiatic English gloss Notes 1. Classification and Index of the Worlds Languages. The Berber and Semitic branches share certain grammatical features (e.g. The Cushitic forms in particular may be derived from morphology found in subordinate clauses. [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. [104] Several Omotic languages have "sibilant harmony", meaning that all sibilants (s, sh, z, ts, etc.) [187] Modern Chadic numeral systems are sometimes decimal, having separate names for the numbers 1-10, and sometimes base-5, deriving the numbers 6-9 from the numbers 1-5 in some way. [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. [90], Syllable weight plays an important role in AA, especially in Chadic; it can affect the form of affixes attached to a word. < v. in #918 by V > VV; occurrence of PSC *ee (or *e?) [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. It rigorously applies, throughout, the established canon and techniques of the historical-comparative method. *y: adjective suffix: 3. [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). [89] Igor Diakonoff argues that the requirement to begin with a vowel goes back to Proto-Afroasiatic. ), (Berber, Eg. suff. p-Talodi Historical phonology central chadic prosodies and lexical innovation: integration of *t dur. Afro-Asiatic languages | Britannica p-Maban [18][11], The alternative name "Lisramic" is based on the AA root *lis- ("tongue") and the Egyptian word rm ("person"). [33] Only about 40 Chadic languages have been fully described by linguists. + stem; PS *lisn 'tongue' is a separate and distinct derivation from the same verb root), (Sem., Eg., Ch. Afroasiatic languages - Wikipedia [30] For most branches, the first person pronouns contain a nasal consonant (n, m), whereas the third person displays a sibilant consonant (s, sh). [121], As part of these templates, the alternation (apophony) between high vowels (e.g. Afro-Asiatic has been hypothesized to be related to many other language families. [69] This theory connected the "Hamites", the originators of Hamitic languages, with (supposedly cultural superior) "Caucasians", who were assumed to have migrated into Africa and intermixed with indigenous "Negroid" Africans in ancient times. Atlantic (Guinea) Laal I.2. Afroasiatic - Indo-European Social:Proto-Semitic language - HandWiki Gumuz Pr. [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. 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. Originally Posted by gihanga.rwanda. Gule ; *m > /n/ ([])/_*x), (Sem., Eg. Mimi-N [70] On the one hand, the classification of languages as "Hamitic" relied on linguistic features, such as the presence of male and female grammatical gender; thus Meinhof even split the Chadic family into "Hamito-Chadic" and unrelated non-Hamitic Chadic based on which languages possessed gender. 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. 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. The Atlas of Languages. Whether this proto-language is ancestral to Berber and Semitic only, or also to other branches of Afroasiatic, still remains to be established. p-Potou-Akanic ), (Eg., Sem. Hadza, https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Appendix:Proto-Afroasiatic_reconstructions&oldid=68902118, attributive noun and attributive deverbative suffix, attributive and complement deverbative suffix, noun derivation from verb by stem-vowel lengthening, (Sem., Eg. ; semantics: flow out bit-by-bit), *-man-/*-mun-, *-ma-/*-mu-, *-ma-/*-mu-, (root #572 + *w inchoat. Appendix:Proto-Afroasiatic reconstructions - Wiktionary Tula-Waja Such evidence may reveal plants known to early Afroasiatic speakers; but it does not diagnose whether they were cultivated or wild. Tiefo innovation: stem + *n n. suff. BLACK ATHENA: THE Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (The Fabrication, - $16.27. These include Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Altaic and Dravidian (Atlas, p.74). This can be found in Semitic, Egyptian, Beja, Berber, and Chadic. The Afro Asiatic Biblical Hebrew Language & History Proto-Afroasiatic language - Wikipedia p-Agaw The Proto-Afroasiatic Vowel System" In The Nostratic Macrofamily: A Study in Distant Linguistic Relationship, 105-108. p-Songhay * "Revising the Consonant Inventory of Proto-Eastern Cushitic," Studies in African Linguistics 22, 3 (1991): 211-275. [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. [192] Thus, it is possible that the numerals in Egyptian, Berber, and Semitic are more closely related, whereas the Cushitic and Chadic numerals are more closely related to each other. 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. [146] Coptic and Egyptian grammar also refers to nouns having a "free" (absolute) state, a "construct state," and a "pronominal state." [121] This structure is particularly visible in the verbs,[153] and is particularly noticeable in the triliteral Semitic verb. p-Heiban Nara With the exception of its Semitic branch, all branches of the Afroasiatic family are . Proto-Chadic and Proto-Cushitic are likely even older. [121] Such scholars postulate that tones developed to compensate for lost or reduced syllables, and note that certain tones are often associated with certain syllable-final consonants.[125]. [182], Unlike in the Indo-European or Austronesian language families, numerals in AA languages cannot be traced to a proto-system. 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. p-Idomoid innovation: 'lift' > 'carry', (Eg., Sem., Cush, shared innovations: *su, *usu 'he'; *si, *isi 'she': see Chap. Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary. shared innovation: *isin-/*usun- 'they' (originally fem./masc. p-Yoruboid innovation: addition of *t n. >>14700322 >Proto-Semitic language contact with PIE implies the Semitic languages themselves come from J Caucasians.
