An Encyclopedia of Language. [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. [100], All or most branches of AA have a contrast between voiceless, voiced, and "emphatic" consonants. [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. The construct state is a special, usually reduced form of a noun, which is used when the noun is possessed by another noun (Semitic) or is modified by an adjective or relative clause (Cushitic). in East Africa. sing. the ancient Egypto-Semitic evidence. Mimi-D [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. [6][7], with the latter two having fallen out of favor in English but still seeing frequent usage in other languages, such as German. innovation: move > move toward), (probably demon., root #767+ *l n./adj. The Egyptian prefix has a middle voice/intransitive/or passive meaning. Some features observed in most or all Afroasiatic languages include: It remains unclear what word order Proto-Afroasiatic had. Egyptian is classified as a distinct language and the other sub-groups are: Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Omotic, and Semitic (Voegelin, p.12). "[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. [141] However, the number and types of cases varies across AA and also within the individual branches. as denom. * "Revising the Consonant Inventory of Proto-Eastern Cushitic," Studies in African Linguistics 22, 3 (1991): 211-275. [26] The second is the Guanche language, which was formerly spoken on the Canary Islands and went extinct in the 17th century CE. [124] Other scholars argue that Proto-AA had a pitch accent and some branches subsequently developed tone. 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). You guys might disagree with the results form the Shum Laka paper but don't distort their own interpretations of their findings. [20] Omotic was formerly considered part of the Cushitic branch;[46] some scholars continue to consider it part of Cushitic. [34] The Cushitic family is traditionally spit into four branches: the single language of Beja (c. 3 million speakers), the Agaw languages, Eastern Cushitic, and Southern Cushitic. ; PS, Eg., Ch. shared innovation: 'move, take' > 'take hold of'), (Cush., Ch., Eg., Sem. rather than the subject and object. [184] Only some Berber languages maintain the native Berber numeral system, with many using Arabic loans for higher numbers and some from any numeral beyond two. [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. ), to fit on top of, go above or in front of, (Eg., Sem. p-Yoruboid PSom-III. p-Nilotic (p-E. Niloticp-S. Nilotic) [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. p-Tuu [174] It is found in Egyptian, Semitic, and possibly, in some relic forms, Berber. (root #311+old Afroasiatic pl. . Continue Reading 5 Brian Collins [17] The name refers to the fact that this is the only major language family with members in both Africa and Asia. If you are not satisfied with 225345861639 [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. p-Katloid 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. 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. p-Igboid The Proto-Afrasian Phonological System Unlike the comparative-historical study of the Indo-European languagefamily, which has a long history, the comparative-historical study of the Afrasian language familyis still not far advanced, though enormous progress has been made in recent years. Originally Posted by gihanga.rwanda. suff. Root Structure Patterning in Proto-Kartvelian. p-Ring innovation: 'send' > 'direct,' hence 'command, rule'), (Agaw *a allows PAA vowel reconstructions *a, *aa, *o, or *e), (Sem., Eg. [121] In contemporary Omotic, Chadic, and Cushitic languages, tone is primarily a grammatical feature: it encodes various grammatical functions, only differentiating lexical roots in a few cases. [31], A majority of specialists consider Omotic to constitute a sixth branch of Afroasiatic. p-Cushitic [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. (abbrev. Gule p-Agaw 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 . [169] As there is no evidence for the "prefix conjugation" in Omotic, Chadic, or Egyptian, it is unclear whether this was a Proto-Afroasiatic feature that has been lost in those branches or is a shared innovation among Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic. p-N. Jos [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. BLACK ATHENA The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization - V - $57.73. Semitic and Berber are quite closely related, and both are more distantly connected to Cushitic. Due to isolation, Icelandic has changed the least and is most similar to Old Norse, and therefore probably also to Proto-Germanic. In addition to the languages spoken today, Afroasiatic includes many ancient languages, such as Egyptian, which forms a distinct branch of the family; and within the Semitic family, Akkadian, Hebrew, Phoenician, other Canaanite languages, Amorite, Ugaritic and Aramaic. The Afroasiatic language family is thought to have originated in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula around 15,000 years ago. Proto-Afro-Asiatic is proposed to have been spoken 18,000 years ago near the Horn of Africa (eastern Africa). [175] In Egyptian, it takes the forms -j, whereas in Semitic it takes the form -i(y);[138] it thus has the same form in both language families. London, Bloomsbury, 1998. p-Jen Proto-Cushitic Roots (Additional to those presented in Ehret 1987) Appendix 3. [92] Diakonoff argues that Proto-Afroasiatic syllables disallowed consonant clusters or vowels at the end of a syllable. In Afro-Asiatic, there are five main families. [103] Igor M. Diakonoff proposed that Proto-AA had a three vowel system of long and short a, i, and u. ), (root seen also in #984 + *n non-fin. ); 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. suff. [168] Prefixes of - (glottal stop) for the first person singular and y- for the third person masculine can also be reconstructed. Yendang Meredith Holt
Since there is written data available from this region, it is easier to reconstruct ancient roots and find common characteristics (ELL, p.51). [27] The first longer written examples of modern Berber varieties only date from the 16th or 17th centuries CE. These classifications of language sub-sets vary according to different texts. 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'. 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). Archaeology and the study of oral traditions helps linguists find connections between language families. Benfys title was later inverted to make Hamito-Semitic but over time racial connotations were applied to this name (Voegelin, p.13). [166] There is a general pattern in which n- is used for the first person plural, whereas t- is used for all forms of the second person regardless of plurality or gender, as well as feminine singular. Laal p-Potou-Akanic These three groups are classified as being in Africa while Afro-Asiatic is listed under the term Eurasia (Atlas, p.74). FOR SALE! [54][73][9] The reluctance of some scholars to recognize Chadic as a member of Afroasiatic persisted as late as the 1980s. A set of constraints, developed originally by Joseph Greenberg on the basis of Arabic, has been claimed to be typical for Afroasiatic languages. The prefixes ti and it mean she. The speakers of Boreafrasian migrated north to an arid Sahara climate, then eventually pushed on west and east. suff. 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. [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. [25][26], There are two extinct languages potentially related to modern Berber. *iw- 'cow') (Eg., Sem. [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. ), (root #695 + *f iter.? stretching out of arms), (Sem, Eg., Ch., Cush, innovation: 'set on top of' > 'cover'), (Sem., Eg. [19] Additionally, a majority of specialists consider the Omotic languages to constitute a sixth branch. [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. [121], As part of these templates, the alternation (apophony) between high vowels (e.g. [147][148] Berber instead contrasts between the "free state" and the "annexed state," the latter of which is used for a variety of purposes, including for subjects placed after a verb and after certain prepositions. 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 Fifteen are glossed as names of plants or loose categories of plants. innovation: as synonym for #505), (vowel reconstruction uncertain: PAA *u, *ee, or *oo are also possible here; contrary to earlier views, this is surely a distinct root from #503), (Eg., Sem. [179] However, there is no consensus on what the reconstructed set of Afroasiatic pronouns might have looked like. p-Guang Forms that do not follow the pattern are in parentheses. [166], The so-called "Nisba" is a suffix used to derive adjectives from nouns and, in Egyptian, also from prepositions. p-Khoe The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic (Proto-Afrasian): Vowels, Tone, Consonants, and Vocabulary. Great variety is incorporated in one family and this makes Afro-Asiatic an interesting topic of study. Anaang Kadu Defaka innovation: added meaning 'firm,' hence, figuratively, 'firmly established, strong'), to intertwine, to bind by twining together, to be above, be at the top, form the tip or peak, (Sem., Ch. All branches of Afroasiatic have a limited number of underlying vowels (between two and seven), but the number of phonetic vowels can be much larger. 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. p-Akokoid [89] In Cushitic and Chadic languages, a glottal stop or glottal or fricative may be inserted to prevent a word from beginning with a vowel. 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. [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. * "The Origins of Third Consonants in Semitic Roots: An Internal Reconstruction (Applied to Arabic)," Journal of Afroasiatic Languages 3, 2 (1989): 109-202. [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. [40] Coptic is the only stage written alphabetically to show vowels, whereas Egyptian was previously written in Egyptian hieroglyphs, which only represent consonants. < v. in #918 by V > VV; occurrence of PSC *ee (or *e?) While this is not the first attempt to demonstrate that Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Afroasiatic are genetically related, it is the first to use the radical revision of the Proto-Indo-European consonantal system proposed by Thomas V. Gamkrelidze, Paul J. Hopper, WCh WOT innovation: 'increase' > 'grow in size'), (root #838 + * part. Greenberg, 1958 D. Cohen,. innovation: 'to rub' > 'to scrape'), (* and *a are reconstructed because they are required in derived root #651 below), (#649 + *r diffus. 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. [130][164] In Akkadian, Egyptian, Berber, and Cushitic this forms a "stative conjugation", used to express the state or result of an action; the same endings as in Akkadian and Egyptian are also present in the West Semitic perfective verb form. [99] In all AA languages, consonants can be bilabial, alveolar, velar, and glottal, with additional places of articulation found in some branches or languages. ; short vowel required by derived verb #399), calabash (used as container, utensil, etc. crcst test prep; crcst free test questions; paid test; crcst exam prep notes; subscribe ; SC semantics: early beads were made of shell), (root of #48 + *c extend. innovation: addition of * concisive to denote short, concentrated outflow, hence vomiting), (Sem., Eg. suff. [121] For Egyptian, evidence for the root-and-template structure exists from Coptic. 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. *kop-sole (of foot . [135] In addition to marking plurals via a number of affixes (with the suffixes -*uu/-*w and -*n(a) widely attested), several AA languages make use of internal vowel change (apophony) and/or insertion (epenthesis). Shabo Central Sudanic (p-Central Sudanicp-Sara-Bongo-BagirmiSinyarBirrip-Mangbetu) 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. redup. Nara Proto-Afroasiatic, sometimes also referred to as Proto-Afrasian, is the reconstructed proto-language from which all modern Afroasiatic languages are descended. [34], The Egyptian branch consists of a single language, Ancient Egyptian, which was historically spoken in the lower Nile Valley. Africa is divided by geographical features, including the Sahara desert and the Ethiopian mountains. It typically comprises Kartvelian, Indo-European, and Uralic languages; some languages from the disputed Altaic family; the Afroasiatic languages spoken in North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and the Near East; and the Dravidian languages of the Indian Subcontinent (sometimes also Elamo-Dravidian, which connects India and the velar consonants can occur with pharyngeals or laryngeals; This page was last edited on 4 March 2023, at 01:29. p-Plateau (p-Tarokoid) [128] In most branches, gender is an inherent property of nouns. Dictionary - Vladimir E. Orel 2015-11-02 This dictionary is a fundamental source of information on the extinct proto-language of the ancient Hamito-Semites, the Proto-Hamito-Semitic language, and . 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. [150] Christopher Ehret has argued that this prefix is a later development that was not present in Proto-Afro-Asiatic, but rather derived from a PAA indefinite pronoun *m-. [131] This sex-based gender system is widely agreed to derive from Proto-Afroasiatic. Mao [190] Some South Cushitic numerals are borrowed from Nilotic languages, other Cushitic numerals have been borrowed from Ethiopian Semitic languages. 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. [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. [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. [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. 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. [191], The Cushitic and Chadic numeral systems appear to have originally been base 5. Afrasian. About us. [109] Additionally, he showed that Proto-Semitic restricted a sequence of two identical consonants in the first and second position of the triliteral root. Map of Afro-Asiatic languages distribution (click to enlarge it) [78] An additional complicating factor is the lack of agreement on the subgroupings of Afroasiatic (see Subgrouping) - this makes associating archaeological evidence with the spread of Afroasiatic particularly difficult. *t: . Archaeologists and anthropologists have long viewed the Bible as mankind's best guide to prehistoric religion, however, archaeologist Klaus Schmidt had no reason to . 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. 'be, exist'), (root seen also in #983 + probably *s caus. See . Lafofa, p-Afroasiatic [116], There is a large variety of vocalic systems in AA. suff. 6), (Eg., Sem., Cush. [29] The Chadic languages are typically divided into three major branches, East Chadic, Central Chadic, and West Chadic. of proto-Afroasiatic cultivation. Proto-Afroasiatic) was spoken, most agree that it was located within a region of Northeast Africa. Such evidence may reveal plants known to early Afroasiatic speakers; but it does not diagnose whether they were cultivated or wild. *kns-loins: 326. [29] Eight other Chadic languages have around 100,000 speakers; other Chadic languages often have few speakers and may be endangered of going extinct. SOm stat. West Semitic brought forth such languages as Canaanite, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Arabic (EL, p.906). ), (Sem., Eg. p-Ijaw The languages that evolved from Proto-Arabic have around 313 million native speakers, concentrated primarily in the Middle East and North Africa.[5]. show more [66], Meinhof's version of the "Hamitic theory" remained prevalent until the 1940s, when it was definitively disproved by Joseph Greenberg. [127], Afroasiatic Languages use the processes of reduplication and gemination (which often overlap in meaning) to derive nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs throughout the AA language family. to domestic animals in general, then narrowing in PS and Eg. I.2.1. in *n, as also in #210), (Sem., Eg. . There are approximately 400 Afroasiatic languages, either living or recorded but extinct. *y: attributive noun and attributive deverbative suffix: 2a. This can be found in Semitic, Egyptian, Beja, Berber, and Chadic. [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. [107] Another widespread constraint is against two non-identical lateral obstruents, which can be found in Egyptian, Chadic, Semitic, and probably Cushitic. Dictionary of Languages. [130], Many AA languages use prefixes or suffixes (verbal extensions) to encode various pieces of information about the verb. North of the Sahara and the Ethiopian mountains are the Afro-Asiatic languages. Jalaa 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. The following list of Proto-Afroasiatic reconstructions is from Ehret (1995). [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. Proto-Afroasiatic, sometimes also referred to as Proto-Afrasian, is the reconstructed proto-language from which all modern Afroasiatic languages are descended. [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. Pp. p-Gbe (Fongbe) 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. (Though I found no mention of the origin of Semito-, it is possible that this name comes from Shem, another son of Noah). [99] In Cushitic, the Ethiopian Semitic language Tigrinya, and some Chadic languages, there is no underlying phoneme [p] at all. 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. [91] Typically, syllables only begin with a single consonant. [33] Only about 40 Chadic languages have been fully described by linguists. [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. [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. [34] Cushitic does not appear to be related to the attested ancient languages known from its area, Meroitic or Old Nubian. infix [also tonal shift as found in Chadic cases]), (this root is included because #871 following derives from it), (sing. [174] The Semitic genitive case in -i is probably related to "nisba" adjective derivation. [79], An African origin has broad scholarly support,[75] and is favored by most linguists on the basis of the linguistic data. Temein 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 ). C. [21] They are often considered to constitute a single language with multiple dialects. London: Routledge, 1990. NE Sudanic Kunama suff. BLACK ATHENA: THE Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (The Fabrication, - $16.27. [6] p-Mumuye [75] Consequently, scholars have offered estimates for when Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken that range between 18,000 and 8,000 BCE. Looking at present languages and going backward helps us know what languages were like anciently (Atlas, p.75). The Proto-Afroasiatic Vowel System. [90] Some Chadic languages allow a syllable to begin with a vowel. Both works provide highly divergent reconstructions and have been heavily criticized by other scholars. shared innovation: n. for 'clay'), great (especially in size but also in number), (Ch., Eg., Sem. He later added Semitic and Beja to Chadic-Berber-Egyptian and tentatively proposed, Alexander Militarev (2000), on the basis of. innovation: addition of *b extend., imputing meaning 'to count'), to show, bring to (ones) notice or attention, (Ch., Berber, and Eg. 2.10. innovation: derivation of v. 'to sleep' by addition of *n non-fin. S. SC Sem. [44], The c. 30 Omotic languages are still mostly undescribed by linguists. innovation: integration of *t dur. p-Central Togo At the same time, linguistic similarities such as vowel changes help show relationships among languages. in a word must match. [40] The latest possible date for the existence of Proto-Afroasiatic is c. 4000 BCE, after which Egyptian and the Semitic languages are first attested; however, the languages must have diverged and evolved for some time before this. The "t-stem" may be reflected in some forms in Hausa; however may also derive from a language internal development and has no cognates elsewhere in Chadic. [159] The Egyptian verbal system diverges greatly from that found in the other branches. innovation: addition of *w inchoative to stem), (root #866 with *-u- tr. except for Semitic, which is also spoken in the Middle-East and Malta, all branches of the It is very difficult to reconstruct ancient Proto-Afroasiatic (PAA) vocabulary, and still more difficult to reconstruct a common morphosyntax. [112] Greenberg divided Semitic consonants into four types: "back consonants" (glottal, pharyngeal, uvular, laryngeal, and velar consonants), "front consonants" (dental or alveolar consonants), liquid consonants, and labial consonants. p-Kuliak (Ik) Classification and Index of the Worlds Languages. To the south lay the other language families of Africa: Niger-Kordofanian, Nilo-Saharan, and Khoisan (Atlas,p74). !Kung, Bangime ), (Eg., Sem. Nilo-Saharan Each aspect of these reconstructions is substantiated in detail in an extensive etymological vocabulary of more than 1000 roots. [99] Various Semitic, Cushitic, Berber, and Chadic languages, including Arabic, Amharic, Berber, Somali, and East Dangla, also exhibit various types of vowel harmony. [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). The Proto-Afroasiatic Vowel System" In The Nostratic Macrofamily: A Study in Distant Linguistic Relationship, 105-108. Additional Proposed PAA Roots; Appendix 4. Afroasiatic languages have over 500 million native speakers, which is the fourth-largest number of native speakers of any language family (after Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, and NigerCongo). [139], Nouns cases are found in the Semitic, Berber, Cushitic, and Omotic. The only group with an African origin is Ethiopian Semitic. Proto-Afroasiatic is a reconstructed language. [32] It may have as many as 80 to 100 million first and second language speakers. The quality of the underlying vowels varies considerably by language; the most common vowel throughout AA is schwa. New York: Elsevier, 1977. [10][11], Friedrich Mller introduced the name "Hamito-Semitic" to describe the family in his Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft, published in 1876. [30] For most branches, the first person pronouns contain a nasal consonant (n, m), whereas the third person displays a sibilant consonant (s, sh). *-kep-to cease, no longer function: 327. [183][184] In the Chadic family alone, there are two different roots for "two,"[185] and Berber and Semitic likewise have two different branch-internal roots for "two". Afro-Asiatic is divided into six branches: Semitic, Berber, Egyptian, Cushitic, Chadic and Omotic. This family was formally described and named "Semitic" by August Ludwig von Schlzer in 1781. [2] With the exception of its Semitic branch, all branches of the Afroasiatic family are exclusively native to the African continent. Afroasiatic(Afro-Asiatic), also known as Afrasianand in older sources as Hamito-Semitic(Chamito-Semitic)[3]or Semito-Hamitic,[4]is a large language familyof about 300 languages.