Афроазиятски говоры

Афроазиятски
Земеписанной урын:	Полночна Африка, полночна Серьодня Африка, полночна Глубнична Африка, Полуденно-глубнична Азия
Заветна четовка:	С самокляшшых говорных семьинов белово света
Постати:	Берберски Чадски Египетской Семитски Кушитски Омотски
Урын афроазиятшыны выказанной жолтым

Афроазиятски говоры супоют говорну семьину, в каку вхоют 375 говоров и боле чем 300 мильонов говорильников по всьой Полночной Африке, и по Восходной Африке, и по Полуденно-глубничной Азие (посередь их 200 мильонов говорильников на арабским говоре).

Ета семьина включат таки подсемьины:

• Берберски говоры
• Чадски говоры
• Египетской говор
• Семитски говоры
• Кушитски говоры
• Беджайской говор
• Омотски говоры

Особливоси

Обнакновенны крапицы афроазиятский говоров таки:

• два рода в водинсвенном числе, а бабской род тамговатса зыком /t/
• VSO - типологгя,
• арава емфатических соголосных, обнакновенно глоттализованных, фарингализовнных, али имплозивных
• в говорогороде новы колыби получаютса нутренними ментовками купно с приставками и послеставками.

Some cognates include:

• b-n- "build" (Ehret: *bĭn), attested in Chadic, Semitic (*bny), Cushitic (*mĭn/*măn "house") and Omotic (Dime bin- "build, create");
• m-t "die" (Ehret: *maaw), attested in Chadic (for example, Hausa mutu), Egyptian (mwt *muwt, mt, Coptic mu), Berber (mmet, pr. yemmut), Semitic (*mwt), and Cushitic (Proto-Somali *umaaw/*-am-w(t)- "die"). (Also similar to the PIE base *mor-/mr-. "die", evidence in favor of both the Afro-Asiatic and Indo-European language families' classification in the hypothetical Nostratic superfamily.)
• s-n "know", attested in Chadic, Berber, and Egyptian;
• l-s "tongue" (Ehret: *lis' "to lick"), attested in Semitic (*lasaan/lisaan), Egyptian (ns *ls, Coptic las), Berber (ils), Chadic (for example, Hausa harshe), and possibly Omotic (Dime lits'- "lick");
• s-m "name" (Ehret: *sŭm / *sĭm), attested in Semitic (*sm), Berber (ism), Chadic (for example, Hausa suna), Cushitic, and Omotic (though some see the Berber form, ism, and the Omotic form, sunts, as Semitic loanwords.) The Egyptian smi "report, announce" offers another possible cognate.
• d-m "blood" (Ehret: *dîm / *dâm), attested in Berber (idammen), Semitic (*dam), Chadic, and arguably Omotic. Compare Cushitic *dîm/*dâm, "red".

In the verbal system, Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic (including Beja) all provide evidence for a prefix conjugation:

English	Arabic (Semitic)	Kabyle (Berber)	Saho (Cushitic; verb is "kill")	Beja (verb is "arrive")
he dies	yamuutu	yemmut	yagdifé	iktim
she dies	tamuutu	temmut	yagdifé	tiktim
they (m.) die	yamuutuuna	mmuten	yagdifín	iktimna
you (m. sg.) die	tamuutu	temmuteḍ	tagdifé	tiktima
you (m. pl.) die	tamuutuuna	temmutem	tagdifín	tiktimna
I die	ˀamuutu	mmuteγ	agdifé	aktim
we die	namuutu	nemmut	nagdifé	niktim

All Afro-Asiatic subfamilies show evidence of a causative affix s, but a similar suffix also appears in other groups, such as the Niger-Congo languages.

Semitic, Berber, Cushitic (including Beja), and Chadic support possessive pronoun suffixes.

Classification history

Medieval scholars sometimes linked two or more branches of Afro-Asiatic together; as early as the 9th century the Hebrew grammarian Judah ibn Quraysh of Tiaret in Algeria perceived a relationship between Berber and Semitic (the latter group known to him through Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic).

In the course of the 19th century Europeans also began suggesting such relationships; thus in 1844 Th. Benfey suggested a language family containing 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, and 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. (See also Hamitic hypothesis.)

Leo Reinisch (1909) proposed to link Cushitic and Chadic, while urging a more distant affinity with 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 languages, and proposed the new name Afro-Asiatic for the family; almost all scholars accepted his classification. In 1969 Harold Fleming proposed the recognition of Omotic as a fifth branch, rather than (as previously believed) a subgroup of Cushitic, and this has met with general acceptance. Several scholars, including Harold Fleming and Robert Hetzron, have since questioned the traditional inclusion of Beja in Cushitic, but this view has yet to gain general acceptance.

Little agreement exists on the sub-classification of the five or six branches mentioned; however, Christopher Ehret (1979), Harold Fleming (1981), and Joseph Greenberg (1981) all agree that the Omotic branch to split from the rest first. Otherwise:

• Ehret groups Egyptian, Berber, and Semitic together in a North Afro-Asiatic subgroup;
• Paul Newman (1980) groups Berber with Chadic and Egyptian with Semitic, while questioning the inclusion of Omotic;
• Fleming (1981) divided non-Omotic Afroasiatic, or "Erythraean", into three groups, Cushitic, Semitic, and Chadic-Berber-Egyptian; he later added Semitic and Beja to the latter, and proposed Ongotá as a tentative new third branch of Erythraean;
• Lionel Bender (1997) advocates a "Macro-Cushitic" consisting of Berber, Cushitic, and Semitic, while regarding Chadic and Omotic as the most remote branches;
• Vladimir Orel and Olga Stolbova (1995) group Berber with Semitic, group Chadic with Egyptian, and split Cushitic into five or more independent branches of Afro-Asiatic, seeing Cushitic as a Sprachbund rather than a valid family;
• Alexander Militarev (2000), on the basis of lexicostatistics, groups Berber with Chadic and both, more distantly, with Semitic, as against Cushitic and Omotic.

See also

• African languages

Etymological bibliography

Some of the main sources for Afro-Asiatic etymologies include:

• Marcel Cohen, Essai comparatif sur la vocabulaire et la phonétique du chamito-sémitique, Champion, Paris 1947.
• Igor M. Diakonoff et al., "Historical-Comparative Vocabulary of Afrasian", St. Petersburg Journal of African Studies Nos. 2-6, 1993-7.
• Christopher Ehret. Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic (Proto-Afrasian): Vowels, Tone, Consonants, and Vocabulary (University of California Publications in Linguistics 126), California, Berkeley 1996.
• Vladimir E. Orel and Olga V. Stolbova, Hamito-Semitic Etymological Dictionary: Materials for a Reconstruction, Brill, Leiden 1995. ISBN 90-04-10051-2. [1]

Sources

• Bernd Heine and Derek Nurse, African Languages, Cambridge University Press, 2000 - Chapter 4
• Merritt Ruhlen, A Guide to the World's Languages, Stanford University Press, Stanford 1991.
• Lionel Bender et al., Selected Comparative-Historical Afro-Asiatic Studies in Memory of Igor M. Diakonoff, LINCOM 2003.
• Ethnologue
• Russell G. Schuh, Chadic Overview.
• African Language History (pdf), Roger Blench

External links

• NACAL The North American Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics, now in its 35th year.
• A comparison of Orel-Stolbova's and Ehret's Afro-Asiatic reconstructions
• The Origins of Afroasiatic by Paul Newman (Requires Science Magazine subscription)
• Afro-Asiatic and Semitic genealogical trees, presented by Alexander Militarev at his talk “Genealogical classification of Afro-Asiatic languages according to the latest data” (at the conference on the 70th anniversary of V.M. Illich-Svitych, Moscow, 2004; short annotations of the talks given thereХев:Ru icon)
• family tree at ethnologue.com