See . New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1996. [132] Additionally, even when nouns are not cognates, they tend to have the same gender throughout Afroasiatic ("gender stability"). ); to reach out, (only C. reflexes imply 2nd form with reconstructed *a), to remove (from surface), pull, tear, or scrape off, to grumble, sigh, make sounds of complaint, (Eg., Sem. In current scholarship, the most common names used for the family are Afroasiatic (or Afro-Asiatic), Hamito-Semitic, and Semito-Hamitic. Newman suggested a relationship between Semitic and the Hausa language, an idea that was taken up by early scholars of Afroasiatic. 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. Afroasiatic is generally considered to be comprised of the language families Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, Omotic, and Semitic. This can be found in Semitic, Egyptian, Beja, Berber, and Chadic. innovation: stem + *n n. suff. Online Library The Oxford Introduction To Proto Indo European And The innovation: addition of *b extend., imputing meaning 'to count'), to show, bring to (ones) notice or attention, (Ch., Berber, and 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]. . [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". I.2.1. Proto-Afroasiatic language - Wikipedia p-Potou-Akanic 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'. Fig. Laal Under East Semitic rose Akkadian and Babylonian. [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. [128] Proto-Chadic is reconstructed as having verb-initial word order,[80] but most Chadic languages have subject-verb-object word order. 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)). p-Oti-Volta (p-E. Oti-Voltap-C. Oti-Volta) 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. [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. p-Daju ; *m > /n/ ([])/_*x), (Sem., Eg. shared innovation: n. for 'clay'), great (especially in size but also in number), (Ch., Eg., Sem. Pre-Proto-Semitic Roots (Additional to those presented in Ehret 1989) Appendix 2. ), (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. p-Central Togo Roots Beginning with P and B - Oleg Linkohr 2020-03-15 . . Vol.1. [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. [92] Diakonoff argues that Proto-Afroasiatic syllables disallowed consonant clusters or vowels at the end of a syllable. p-Maban [103][53] In some branches, it can also derive abstract nouns and participles. 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. Common Indo-European-Afroasiatic Roots, Supplement I (1986) - Academia.edu [76], There is no consensus where the original homeland (Urheimat) of the first Afroasiatic speakers was located. [101] The Omotic forms of the personal pronouns differ from the others, with only the plural forms in North Omotic appearing potentially to be cognate. The Afro-Asiatic Language Family - Linguistics [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. [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. Traditionally, the Hausa subject pronouns have been compared to the prefix conjugation. There is an obvious trend (probably driven by Semitic and Egyptian researchers) to place the Afroasiatic Homeland near one of the many proposed Semitic homelands, i.e. It's impossible to tell exactly how old Proto-Afroasiatic is, or where it was spoken, but there are a few ideas. [31] They are all spoken in southwest Ethiopia except for the Ganza language, spoken in Sudan. [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. There is no information on whether Egyptian had tones. Is Proto-Afro-Asiatic considered to be the oldest known proto - reddit Proto-Afro-Asiatic is proposed to have been spoken 18,000 years ago near the Horn of Africa (eastern Africa). [34], The Egyptian branch consists of a single language, Ancient Egyptian, which was historically spoken in the lower Nile Valley. [65] In 1844, Theodor Benfey first described the relationship between Semitic and the Egyptian language and connected both to the Berber and the Cushitic languages (which he called "Ethiopic"). ), (root seen also in #984 + *n non-fin. [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. Originally Posted by gihanga.rwanda. These classifications of language sub-sets vary according to different texts. [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. infix [also tonal shift as found in Chadic cases]), (this root is included because #871 following derives from it), (sing. [145] Edward Lipiski refers to Semitic nouns as having four states: absolute (free/indeterminate), construct, determinate, and predicate. p-Talodi [20] Omotic was formerly considered part of the Cushitic branch;[46] some scholars continue to consider it part of Cushitic. 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). 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. Bijogo p-Nilotic (p-E. Niloticp-S. Nilotic) (abbrev. Some features observed in most or all Afroasiatic languages include: It remains unclear what word order Proto-Afroasiatic had. 1 Afro-Asiatic Language Family. [29] Eight other Chadic languages have around 100,000 speakers; other Chadic languages often have few speakers and may be endangered of going extinct. p-Gbaya Theodor Benfy found that Egyptian and Semitic languages were similar in 1844, and he classified them under the Semito-Hamitic language family. innovation: addition of *t n. except for Semitic, which is also spoken in the Middle-East and Malta, all branches of the [137][d] Another common method of forming plurals is reduplication. Atlantic (Guinea) 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 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. Afroasiatic languages - Wikipedia Shabo Archive The "s-causative" may be reflected in Hausa (as -r), however this may be a language internal development. p-Masa 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). [146] Coptic and Egyptian grammar also refers to nouns having a "free" (absolute) state, a "construct state," and a "pronominal state." [117] Christopher Ehret proposed a five vowel system with long and short a, e, o, i, and u. common genetic origin of Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Afroasiatic differ considerably from the assumptions made in other works on . Since there is written data available from this region, it is easier to reconstruct ancient roots and find common characteristics (ELL, p.51). innovation: shift to outflow of water, not from body; root *-sa- seen in #540 + *t dur. Map of Afro-Asiatic languages distribution (click to enlarge it) Afroasiatic. [54] Greenberg rejected the Afroasiatic classification of languages that Meinhof had classified as "Hamitic" based on racial and anthropological data. Afro-Asiatic is divided into six branches: Semitic, Berber, Egyptian, Cushitic, Chadic and Omotic. C. p-Ogoni Afro-Asiatic is a large language family with great diversity. Category:Proto-Afroasiatic language - Wiktionary Report Save. TV. London: Routledge, 1990. El proto-afroasitico , a veces denominado proto-afrasiano , es el proto-lenguaje reconstruido del que descienden todas las lenguas afroasiticas modernas . 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. [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. Adapted from Ruhlen 1987. 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 . The other three are very closely related and it is not hard for, say, a Dane to learn to understand a Swede. The Subclassification of Afroasiatic (Afrasian) Appendix 1. Jalaa p-Upper Cross River PSom-III. [6], Scholars generally consider Afroasiatic to have at least five and as many as eight separate branches, with the five universally agreed upon branches consisting of the Berber (also called "Libyco-Berber"), Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, and Semitic. Proto-Afro-Asiatic is proposed to have been spoken 18,000 years ago near the Horn of Africa (eastern Africa). Yendang ; semantics: egg curves at every point? [40] Militarev associates the speakers of Proto-Afroasiatic with the Levantine Post-Natufian Culture, arguing that the reconstructed lexicon of flora and fauna, as well as farming vocabulary indicates that Proto-AA must have been spoken in this area. [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. ; Sem., Eg. Archaeologists and anthropologists have long viewed the Bible as mankind's best guide to prehistoric religion, however, archaeologist Klaus Schmidt had no reason to . [149], A prefix in m- is the most widely attested affix in AA that is used to derive nouns. [128] In most branches, gender is an inherent property of nouns. [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. You guys might disagree with the results form the Shum Laka paper but don't distort their own interpretations of their findings. innovation: move > move toward), (probably demon., root #767+ *l n./adj. E-V13. [49][48] Arabic, spoken in both Asia and Africa, has around 300 million native speakers, while the Ethiopian Amharic has around 25 million. The results, while confirming some previous views on proto-Afroasiatic (proto-Afrasian), revise or overturn many others, and add much that is new. reflex), (root #723 + *x extend. The languages of what is now Afro-Asiatic occupy a "vast area that stretches from Morocco to Arabia" (Dalby, p.6). [99] In Cushitic, the Ethiopian Semitic language Tigrinya, and some Chadic languages, there is no underlying phoneme [p] at all. 2.10. This work provides the first truly comprehensive and systematic reconstruction of proto-Afroasiatic (proto-Afrasian). 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 ). A set of constraints, developed originally by Joseph Greenberg on the basis of Arabic, has been claimed to be typical for Afroasiatic languages. Tula-Waja [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. p-Idomoid 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. fort. *y: attributive noun and attributive deverbative suffix: 2a. with pre-PAA root *way thus having been a n. or adj. Diamond and Bellwood adopt Militarev's ( 2) solitary counterclaim of proto-Afroasiatic cultivation. BLACK ATHENA The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization - V - $57.73. Anaang Proto-Semitic was a contemporary of PIE. [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]. p-Mumuye [127] These pronouns tend to show a masculine "u" and a feminine "i". in Semitic, Berber, and in Cushitic,[130][166] where it is only found on a small set of frequent verbs. Gemination in particular is one of the typical features of AA. [98] AA languages tend to have pharyngeal fricative consonants, with Egyptian, Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic sharing and . From the earliest times we have written records from Northern Africa. Temein Each aspect of these reconstructions is substantiated in detail in an extensive etymological vocabulary of more than 1000 roots. The Sumerian and Etruscan languages, usually regarded as language isolates, are thought by some to be Nostratic languages as well. At the same time, linguistic similarities such as vowel changes help show relationships among languages. How did Semitic languages originate? Are they descended from Proto [191], The Cushitic and Chadic numeral systems appear to have originally been base 5. Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary. [179] However, there is no consensus on what the reconstructed set of Afroasiatic pronouns might have looked like. The results, while confirming some previous views on proto-Afroasiatic (proto-Afrasian), revise or overturn many others, and add much that is new. 28 July 1999. ), (additional Cushitic alternants *-br- and *-br-), (stem + *r n. Kim p-Central Chadic He later added Semitic and Beja to Chadic-Berber-Egyptian and tentatively proposed, Alexander Militarev (2000), on the basis of. suff. Voegelin, C.F. [116], There is a large variety of vocalic systems in AA. [109] Additionally, he showed that Proto-Semitic restricted a sequence of two identical consonants in the first and second position of the triliteral root. ; short vowel required by derived verb #399), calabash (used as container, utensil, etc. These three groups are classified as being in Africa while Afro-Asiatic is listed under the term Eurasia (Atlas, p.74). [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. innovation: to spoil > to sour), (Sem., Eg. p-Ukaan [79], An African origin has broad scholarly support,[75] and is favored by most linguists on the basis of the linguistic data. p-Omotic This language family has now been renamed Afro-Asiatic, because this term is less culture specific (Dalby, p.6). Proto-Afroasiatic, sometimes also referred to as Proto-Afrasian, is the reconstructed proto-language from which all modern Afroasiatic languages are descended. p-Kuliak (Ik) [195] Writing in 2004, John Huehnergaard notes the great difficulty in establishing cognate sets across the family. p-Lower Cross River Like in the English example, feet foot, vowels make the difference between separate words. rather than the subject and object. Mimi-D Christopher Ehret. Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic (Proto-Afrasian [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. shared innovation: *isin-/*usun- 'they' (originally fem./masc. Other Language Families and Fields of Study. Afro-Asiatic languages | Britannica Gule It is traditionally understood to be an adjective based on the name of Abraham's ancestor, Eber ("Ever" in Hebrew), mentioned in Genesis 10:21. [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. p-Ijaw [65] He did not include the Chadic languages, though contemporary Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius argued for the relation of Hausa to the Berber languages. [113] These rules also have a number of exceptions: Similar exceptions can be demonstrated for the other AA branches that have these restrictions to their root formation. 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. The following list of Proto-Afroasiatic reconstructions is from Ehret (1995). Omotic is the most controversial member of Afro-Asiatic. innovation: integration of *t dur. [44], The c. 30 Omotic languages are still mostly undescribed by linguists. and touches on external evidence from Afroasiatic cognate languages. The Berber and Semitic branches share certain grammatical features (e.g. [28], Chadic languages number between 150 and 190, making Chadic the largest family in Afroasiatic. [118], Attempts to reconstruct the vocalic system of Proto-Afroasiatic vary considerably. [198] Andrzej Zaborski refers to Orel and Stolbova's reconstructions as "controversial", and Ehret's as "not acceptable to many scholars". 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. innovation: n. 'morning' by addition of *r n. They are not found in Chadic languages, and there is no evidence for cases in Egyptian. [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-Bantu (Swadesh list) [176], Due to its presence in the oldest attested and best-known AA branches, nisba derivation is often thought of as a "quintessentially Afroasiatic feature". in *n, as also in #323), (possible V reconstructions: *a, *aa, *e, or *o), (Sem., Eg., Ch. An Encyclopedia of Language. *w: deverbative complement and result suffix: 2. Cognate Dictionary Studies in Baltic and Indo-European Linguistics The Roots of Hinduism Latin - nus, -na, -nus and -neus Tracing the Indo-Europeans Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo- . Proto-Afro-Asiatic is of great antiquity; experts tend to place it in the Mesolithic Period at about 15,000-10,000 bce. 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. Kujarge innovation: narrowing of application of v. to angry calling out), (Sem., Cush, innovation: > n. 'covering' > 'rind, bark'), (root #447+ * iter. suff. p-Songhay The quality of the underlying vowels varies considerably by language; the most common vowel throughout AA is schwa. p-Fali Some languages have an additional feminine plural form in -t that is not listed here. Semitic and Berber are quite closely related, and both are more distantly connected to Cushitic. Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic (Proto-Afrasian): Vowels, Tone South Bauchi Their range extended from the Benue Trough and Lake Chad, to the Nile Valley, the Indus Valley, and Southern Europe during the African Aqualithic Period. [186] Within the Semitic language family, Lipiski counts four different roots meaning "one". (Pdf) From Proto-berber to Proto-afroasiatic in East Africa. innovation: *agaw- 'cooked grain,' stem + *w n. [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. 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. [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.