Afroasiatic languages

"Afro-Asiatic" redirects here. For other uses, see Afro-Asiatic (disambiguation).
Afroasiatic
Geographic
distribution:
Horn of Africa, North Africa, Sahel, Middle East
Linguistic classification: One of the world's primary language families
Proto-language: Proto-Afroasiatic
Subdivisions:
ISO 639-2 / 5: afa
Glottolog: afro1255[2]
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Interrelations between branches of Afro-Asiatic

Afroasiatic (Afro-Asiatic), also known as Afrasian and traditionally as Hamito-Semitic (Chamito-Semitic),[3] is a large language family of several hundred related languages and dialects. It comprises about 300 or so living languages and dialects, according to the 2009 Ethnologue estimate.[4] It includes languages spoken predominantly in the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahel.

Afroasiatic languages have 350+ million native speakers, the fourth largest number of any language family.[5] It has six branches: Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, Omotic and Semitic.

The most widely spoken Afroasiatic language is Arabic, including literary Arabic and the spoken colloquial varieties. It has around 200 to 230 million native speakers concentrated primarily in the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and Malta.[6] Tamazight and other Berber varieties are spoken in Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, northern Mali, and northern Niger by about 25 to 35 million people. Other widely spoken Afroasiatic languages include:

In addition to languages spoken today, Afroasiatic includes several important ancient languages, such as Ancient Egyptian, Akkadian, Biblical Hebrew, and Old Aramaic. It is uncertain when or where the original homeland of the Afroasiatic family existed. Proposed locations include North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Eastern Sahara, and the Levant.

Etymology

The Afroasiatic language family was originally referred to as "Hamito-Semitic", a term introduced in the 1860s by the German scholar Karl Richard Lepsius.[10] The name was later popularized by Friedrich Müller in his Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft (Vienna 1876-88).[11][12]

The term "Afroasiatic" (often now spelled as "Afro-Asiatic") was later coined by Maurice Delafosse (1914). However, it did not come into general use until Joseph Greenberg (1950) formally proposed its adoption. In doing so, Greenberg sought to emphasize the fact that Afroasiatic was represented transcontinentally, in both Africa and Asia.[12]

Individual scholars have also called the family "Erythraean" (Tucker 1966) and "Lisramic" (Hodge 1972). In lieu of "Hamito-Semitic", the Russian linguist Igor Diakonoff later suggested the term "Afrasian", meaning "half African, half Asiatic", in reference to the geographic distribution of the family's constituent languages.[10]

The term "Hamito-Semitic" remains in use in the academic traditions of some European countries.

Distribution and branches

Some linguists' proposals for grouping within Afroasiatic

The Afroasiatic language family is usually considered to include the following branches:

Although there is general agreement on these six families, there are some points of disagreement among linguists who study Afroasiatic. In particular:

Classification history

In the 9th century, the Hebrew grammarian Judah ibn Quraysh of Tiaret in Algeria was the first to link two branches of Afroasiatic together; he perceived a relationship between Berber and Semitic. He knew of Semitic through his study of Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic.

In the course of the 19th century, Europeans also began suggesting such relationships. In 1844, Theodor Benfey suggested a language family consisting of Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic (calling the latter "Ethiopic"). In the same year, T.N. Newman suggested a relationship between Semitic and Hausa, but this would long remain a topic of dispute and uncertainty.

Friedrich Müller named the traditional "Hamito-Semitic" family in 1876 in his Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft. He defined it as consisting of a Semitic group plus a "Hamitic" group containing Egyptian, Berber, and Cushitic; he excluded the Chadic group. These classifications relied in part on non-linguistic anthropological and racial arguments that have largely been discredited (see Hamitic hypothesis).

Leo Reinisch (1909) proposed linking Cushitic and Chadic, while urging a more distant affinity to Egyptian and Semitic, thus foreshadowing Greenberg, but his suggestion found little resonance.

Marcel Cohen (1924) rejected the idea of a distinct Hamitic subgroup and included Hausa (a Chadic language) in his comparative Hamito-Semitic vocabulary.

Joseph Greenberg (1950) strongly confirmed Cohen's rejection of "Hamitic", added (and sub-classified) the Chadic branch, and proposed the new name "Afroasiatic" for the family. Nearly all scholars have accepted Greenberg's classification.

In 1969, Harold Fleming proposed that what had previously been known as Western Cushitic is an independent branch of Afroasiatic, suggesting for it the new name Omotic. This proposal and name have met with widespread acceptance.

Several scholars, including Harold Fleming and Robert Hetzron, have since questioned the traditional inclusion of Beja in Cushitic.

Glottolog does not accept that the inclusion or even unity of Omotic has been established, nor that of Ongota or the unclassified Kujarge, and so splits off the following groups as small families:

South Omotic, Mao, Dizoid, Gonga–Gimojan (North Omotic apart from the preceding), Ongota, Kujarge.

Subgrouping

Proposed Afroasiatic sub-divisions
Greenberg (1963) Newman (1980) Fleming (post-1981) Ehret (1995)
  • Semitic
  • Egyptian
  • Berber
  • Cushitic
    • Northern Cushitic
      (equals Beja)
    • Central Cushitic
    • Eastern Cushitic
    • Western Cushitic
      (equals Omotic)
    • Southern Cushitic
  • Chadic
  • Berber–Chadic
  • Egypto-Semitic
  • Cushitic

(excludes Omotic)

  • Omotic
  • Erythraean
    • Cushitic
    • Ongota
    • Non-Ethiopian
      • Chadic
      • Berber
      • Egyptian
      • Semitic
      • Beja
  • Omotic
    • North Omotic
    • South Omotic
  • Erythrean
    • Cushitic
      • Beja
      • Agaw
      • East–South Cushitic
        • Eastern Cushitic
        • Southern Cushitic
    • North Erythrean
      • Chadic
      • Boreafrasian
        • Egyptian
        • Berber
        • Semitic
Orel & Stobova (1995) Diakonoff (1996) Bender (1997) Militarev (2000)
  • Berber–Semitic
  • Chadic–Egyptian
  • Omotic
  • Beja
  • Agaw
  • Sidamic
  • East Lowlands
  • Rift
  • East–West Afrasian
    • Berber
    • Cushitic
    • Semitic
  • North–South Afrasian
    • Chadic
    • Egyptian

(excludes Omotic)

  • Omotic
  • Chadic
  • Macro-Cushitic
    • Berber
    • Cushitic
    • Semitic
  • North Afrasian
    • African North Afrasian
      • Chado-Berber
      • Egyptian
    • Semitic
  • South Afrasian
    • Omotic
    • Cushitic

Little agreement exists on the subgrouping of the five or six branches of Afroasiatic: Semitic, Egyptian, Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, and Omotic. However, Christopher Ehret (1979), Harold Fleming (1981), and Joseph Greenberg (1981) all agree that the Omotic branch split from the rest first.

Otherwise:

Position among the world's languages

Afroasiatic is one of the four language families of Africa identified by Joseph Greenberg in his book The Languages of Africa (1963). It is the only one that extends outside of Africa, via the Semitic branch.

There are no generally accepted relations between Afroasiatic and any other language family. However, several proposals grouping Afroasiatic with one or more other language families have been made. The best-known of these are the following:

Date of Afroasiatic

Speech sample in the Semitic Neo-Aramaic language, a descendant of Old Aramaic.

The earliest written evidence of an Afroasiatic language is an Ancient Egyptian inscription of c. 3400 BC (5,400 years ago).[15] Symbols on Gerzean pottery resembling Egyptian hieroglyphs date back to c. 4000 BC, suggesting an earlier possible dating. This gives us a minimum date for the age of Afroasiatic. However, Ancient Egyptian is highly divergent from Proto-Afroasiatic (Trombetti 1905: 1–2), and considerable time must have elapsed in between them. Estimates of the date at which the Proto-Afroasiatic language was spoken vary widely. They fall within a range between approximately 7,500 BC (9,500 years ago) and approximately 16,000 BC (18,000 years ago). According to Igor M. Diakonoff (1988: 33n), Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken c. 10,000 BC. Christopher Ehret (2002: 35–36) asserts that Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken c. 11,000 BC at the latest, and possibly as early as c. 16,000 BC. These dates are older than those associated with most other proto-languages.

Afroasiatic Urheimat

Main article: Afroasiatic Urheimat
Map showing one of the proposed Afroasiatic Urheimat.

The term Afroasiatic Urheimat (Urheimat meaning "original homeland" in German) refers to the 'hypothetical' place where Proto-Afroasiatic speakers lived in a single linguistic community, or complex of communities, before this original language dispersed geographically and divided into distinct languages. Afroasiatic languages are today primarily spoken in the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahel. Their distribution seems to have been influenced by the Saharan pump operating over the last 10,000 years.

There is no agreement when or where the original homeland of this language family existed. Proposed locations include North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Eastern Sahara,[16][17][18][19][20] and the Levant.[21][22]

Similarities in grammar and syntax

Verbal paradigms in several Afroasiatic languages:
Number Language → Arabic Coptic Kabyle Somali Beja Hausa
Verb → katab mou afeg
Meaning → write die fly come eat drink
singular 1 ʼaktubu timou ttafgeɣ imaadaa tamáni ina shan
2f taktubīna temou tettafgeḍ timaadaa tamtínii kina shan
2m taktubu kmou tamtíniya kana shan
3f smou tettafeg tamtíni tana shan
3m yaktubu fmou yettafeg yimaadaa tamíni yana shan
dual 2 taktubāni
3f
3m yaktubāni
plural 1 naktubu tənmou nettafeg nimaadnaa támnay muna shan
2m taktubūna tetənmou tettafgem timaadaan támteena kuna shan
2f taktubna tettafgemt
3m yaktubūna semou ttafgen yimaadaan támeen suna shan
3f yaktubna ttafgent

Widespread (though not universal) features of the Afroasiatic languages include:

One of the most remarkable shared features among the Afroasiatic languages is the prefixing verb conjugation (see table above), with a distinctive pattern of prefixes beginning with /ʔ t n y/, and in particular a pattern whereby third-singular masculine /y-/ is opposed to third-singular feminine and second-singular /t-/.

According to Ehret (1996), tonal languages appear in the Omotic and Chadic branches of Afroasiatic, as well as in certain Cushitic languages. The Semitic, Berber and Egyptian branches generally do not use tones phonemically.

Shared vocabulary

Speech sample in Shilha (Berber branch).
Speech sample in Somali (Cushitic branch).
Speech sample in Arabic (Semitic branch).

The following are some examples of Afroasiatic cognates, including ten pronouns, three nouns, and three verbs.

Source: Christopher Ehret, Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).
Note: Ehret does not make use of Berber in his etymologies, stating (1995: 12): "the kind of extensive reconstruction of proto-Berber lexicon that might help in sorting through alternative possible etymologies is not yet available." The Berber cognates here are taken from previous version of table in this article and need to be completed and referenced.
Abbreviations: NOm = 'North Omotic', SOm = 'South Omotic'. MSA = 'Modern South Arabian', PSC = 'Proto-Southern Cushitic', PSom-II = 'Proto-Somali, stage 2'. masc. = 'masculine', fem. = 'feminine', sing. = 'singular', pl. = 'plural'. 1s. = 'first person singular', 2s. = 'second person singular'.
Symbols: Following Ehret (1995: 70), a caron ˇ over a vowel indicates rising tone, and a circumflex ^ over a vowel indicates falling tone. V indicates a vowel of unknown timbre. Ɂ indicates a glottal stop. * indicates reconstructed forms based on comparison of related languages.
Proto-Afroasiatic Omotic Cushitic Chadic Egyptian Semitic Berber
*Ɂân- / *Ɂîn- or *ân- / *în- ‘I’ (independent pronoun) *in- ‘I’ (Maji (NOm)) *Ɂâni ‘I’ *nV ‘I’ ink 'I' *Ɂn ‘I’ nek / nec "I, me"
*i or *yi ‘me, my’ (bound) i ‘I, me, my’ (Ari (SOm)) *i or *yi ‘my’ *i ‘me, my’ (bound) -i (1s. suffix) *-i ‘me, my’ inu / nnu / iw "my"
*Ɂǎnn- / *Ɂǐnn- or *ǎnn- / *ǐnn- ‘we’ *nona / *nuna / *nina (NOm) *Ɂǎnn- / *Ɂǐnn- ‘we’ inn ‘we’ *Ɂnn ‘we’ nekni / necnin / neccin "we"
*Ɂânt- / *Ɂînt- or *ânt- / *înt- ‘you’ (sing.) *int- ‘you’ (sing.) *Ɂânt- ‘you’ (sing.) ntt IInd pers fem *Ɂnt ‘you’ (sing.) netta "he" (keyy / cek "you" (masc. sing.))
*ku, *ka ‘you’ (masc. sing., bound) *ku ‘your’ (masc. sing.) (PSC) *ka, *ku (masc. sing.) -k (2s. masc. suffix) -ka (2s. masc. suffix) (Arabic) inek / nnek / -k "your" (masc. sing.)
*ki ‘you’ (fem. sing., bound) *ki ‘your’ (fem. sing.) *ki ‘you’ (fem. sing.) -ṯ (fem. sing. suffix, < *ki) -ki (2s. fem. sing. suffix) (Arabic) -m / nnem / inem "your" (fem. sing.)
*kūna ‘you’ (plural, bound) *kuna ‘your’ (pl.) (PSC) *kun ‘you’ (pl.) -ṯn ‘you’ (pl.) *-kn ‘you, your’ (fem. pl.) -kent, kennint "you" (fem. pl.)
*si, *isi ‘he, she, it’ *is- ‘he’ *Ɂusu ‘he’, *Ɂisi ‘she’ *sV ‘he’ sw ‘he, him’, sy ‘she, her’ *-šɁ ‘he’, *-sɁ ‘she’ (MSA) -s / nnes / ines "his/her/its"
*ma, *mi ‘what?’ *ma- ‘what?’ (NOm) *ma, *mi (interr. root) *mi, *ma ‘what?’ m ‘what?’, ‘who?’ (Arabic) / mu? (Assyrian) ‘what?’ ma? / mayen? / min? "what?"
*wa, *wi ‘what?’ *w- ‘what?’ *wä / *wɨ ‘what?’ (Agaw) *wa ‘who?’ wy ‘how ...!’ mamek? / mamec? / amek? "how?
*dîm- / *dâm- ‘blood’ *dam- ‘blood’ (Gonga) *dîm- / *dâm- ‘red’ *d-m- ‘blood’ (West Chadic) i-dm-i ‘red linen’ *dm / dǝma (Assyrian) ‘blood’ idammen "bloods"
*îts ‘brother’ *itsim- ‘brother’ *itsan or *isan ‘brother’ *sin ‘brother’ sn ‘brother’ ax "brother" uma / gʷma "brother"
*sǔm / *sǐm- ‘name’ *sum(ts)- ‘name’ (NOm) *sǔm / *sǐm- ‘name’ *ṣǝm ‘name’ smi ‘to report, announce’ *ism (Arabic) / shǝma (Assyrian) ‘name’ isen / isem "name"
*-lisʼ- ‘to lick’ litsʼ- ‘to lick’ (Dime (SOm)) *alǝsi ‘tongue’ ns ‘tongue’ *lsn ‘tongue’ iles "tongue"
*-maaw- ‘to die’ *-umaaw- / *-am-w(t)- ‘to die’ (PSom-II) *mǝtǝ ‘to die’ mwt ‘to die’ *mwt / mawta (Assyrian) ‘to die’ mmet "to die"
*-bǐn- ‘to build, to create; house’ bin- ‘to build, create’ (Dime (SOm)) *mǐn- / *mǎn- ‘house’; man- ‘to create’ (Beja) *bn ‘to build’; *bǝn- ‘house’ *bnn / bani (Assyrian) ‘to build’ *bn(?) (esk "to build")

There are two etymological dictionaries of Afroasiatic, one by Christopher Ehret, and one by Vladimir Orel and Olga Stolbova. The two dictionaries disagree on almost everything. The following table contains the thirty roots or so (out of thousands) that represent a fragile consensus of present research:

Number Proto-Afroasiatic Form Meaning Berber Chadic Cushitic Egyptian Omotic Semitic
1 *ʔab father
2 (ʔa-)bVr bull
3 (ʔa-)dVm red, blood
4 *(ʔa-)dVm land, field, soil
5 ʔa-pay- mouth
6 ʔigar/ *ḳʷar- house, enclosure
7 *ʔil- eye
8 (ʔi-)sim- name
9 *ʕayn- eye
10 *baʔ- go
11 *bar- son
12 *gamm- mane, beard
13 *gVn cheek, chin
14 *gʷarʕ- throat
15 *gʷinaʕ- hand
16 *kVn- co-wife
17 *kʷaly kidney
18 *ḳa(wa)l-/ *qʷar- to say, call
19 *ḳas- bone
20 *libb heart
21 *lis- tongue
22 *maʔ- water *aman *aman
23 *mawVt- to die
24 *sin- tooth
25 *siwan- know
26 *inn- I, we
27 *-k- thou
28 *zwr seed
29 *ŝVr root
30 *šun to sleep, dream

Etymological bibliography

Some of the main sources for Afroasiatic etymologies include:

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 Sands, Bonny (2009). "Africa’s Linguistic Diversity". Language and Linguistics Compass 3/2 (2009): 559–580, 10.1111/j.1749-818x.2008.00124.x
  2. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Afro-Asiatic". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  3. Daniel Don Nanjira, African Foreign Policy and Diplomacy: From Antiquity to the 21st Century, (ABC-CLIO: 2010).
  4. Ethnologue family tree for Afroasiatic languages
  5. Summary by language family
  6. Languages of the World
  7. Ethnologue - Hausa
  8. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Northeastern Neo-Aramaic". Glottolog 2.2. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  9. Beyer, Klaus; John F. Healey (trans.) (1986). The Aramaic Language: its distribution and subdivisions. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht. p. 44. ISBN 3-525-53573-2.
  10. 1 2 The New Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 8; Volume 22. Encyclopædia Britannica. 1998. p. 722. ISBN 0-85229-633-9.
  11. Friedrich Müller (1884) Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft, Vol. 3, Alfred Hölder, Vienna
  12. 1 2 Lipiński, Edward (2001). Semitic Languages: Outline of a Comparative Grammar. Peeters Publishers. pp. 21–22. ISBN 90-429-0815-7.
  13. Harrassowitz Verlag - The Harrassowitz Publishing House
  14. Is Omotic Afroasiatic? (In Norwegian)
  15. Earliest Egyptian Glyphs
  16. Blench R (2006) Archaeology, Language, and the African Past, Rowman Altamira, ISBN 0-7591-0466-2, ISBN 978-0-7591-0466-2, https://books.google.com/books?id=esFy3Po57A8C
  17. Ehret C, Keita SOY, Newman P (2004) The Origins of Afroasiatic a response to Diamond and Bellwood (2003) in the Letters of SCIENCE 306, no. 5702, p. 1680 DOI: 10.1126/science.306.5702.1680c
  18. Bernal M (1987) Black Athena: the Afroasiatic roots of classical civilization, Rutgers University Press, ISBN 0-8135-3655-3, ISBN 978-0-8135-3655-2. https://books.google.com/books?id=yFLm_M_OdK4C
  19. Bender ML (1997), Upside Down Afrasian, Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere 50, pp. 19-34
  20. Militarev A (2005) Once more about glottochronology and comparative method: the Omotic-Afrasian case, Аспекты компаративистики - 1 (Aspects of comparative linguistics - 1). FS S. Starostin. Orientalia et Classica II (Moscow), p. 339-408.
  21. Quantitative Approaches to Linguistic Diversity: Commemorating the Centenary of the Birth of Morris Swadesh. p. 73.
  22. John A. Hall, I. C. Jarvie (2005). Transition to Modernity: Essays on Power, Wealth and Belief. p. 27.

Bibliography

External links

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