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Afroasiatic languages

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Template:Short description Template:Redirect2 Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox language family

The Afroasiatic languages (also known as Afro-Asiatic, Afrasian, Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic) are a language family (or "phylum") of about 400 languages spoken predominantly in West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahara and Sahel.Template:Sfn Over 500 million people are native speakers of an Afroasiatic language, constituting the fourth-largest language family after Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, and Niger–Congo.Template:Sfn Most linguists divide the family into six branches: Berber (Amazigh), Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, Omotic, and Semitic.Template:Sfn The vast majority of Afroasiatic languages are considered indigenous to the African continent, including all those not belonging to the Semitic branch (which originated in West Asia).

The five most spoken languages are; Arabic (of all varieties) which is by far the most widely spoken within the family, with around 411 million native speakers concentrated primarily in West Asia and North Africa,Template:Sfn the Chadic Hausa language with over 58 million in West Africa, the Cushitic Oromo language with 45 million native speakers, the Semitic Amharic language with 35 million, and the Cushitic Somali language with 24 million, all the latter three in the Horn of Africa. Other Afroasiatic languages with millions of native speakers include the Semitic Tigrinya, Tigre and Modern Hebrew, the Cushitic Beja, Sidama and Afar languages, the Berber languages (Shilha, Kabyle, Central Atlas Tamazight, Shawiya and Tarifit), and the Omotic Wolaitta language, though most languages within the family are much smaller in size.Template:Sfn

There are many well-attested Afroasiatic languages from antiquity that have since died or gone extinct, including Egyptian and the Semitic languages Akkadian, Biblical Hebrew, Phoenician, Amorite, and Ugaritic. There is no consensus among historical linguists as to precisely where or when the common ancestor of all Afroasiatic languages, known as Proto-Afroasiatic, was originally spoken. However, most agree that the Afroasiatic homeland was located somewhere in northeastern Africa, with specific proposals including the Horn of Africa, Egypt, and the eastern Sahara. A significant minority of scholars argues for an origin in the Levant.Template:Sfn Even the latest plausible dating for its proto-language makes Afroasiatic the oldest language family accepted by contemporary linguists.Template:Sfn Reconstructed timelines of when Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken vary extensively, with dates ranging from 18,000 BC to 8,000 BC.Template:Sfn

Comparative study of Afroasiatic is hindered by the massive disparities in textual attestation between its branches: while the Semitic and Egyptian branches are attested in writing as early as the fourth millennium BC, Berber, Cushitic, and Omotic languages were often not recorded until the 19th or 20th centuries.Template:Sfn While systematic sound laws have not yet been established to explain the relationships between the various branches of Afroasiatic, the languages share a number of common features. One of the most important for establishing membership in the branch is a common set of pronouns.Template:Sfn Other widely shared features include a prefix m- which creates nouns from verbs, evidence for alternations between the vowel "a" and a high vowel in the forms of the verb, similar methods of marking gender and plurality, and some details of phonology such as the presence of pharyngeal fricatives. Other features found in multiple branches include a specialized verb conjugation using suffixes (Egyptian, Semitic, Berber), a specialized verb conjugation using prefixes (Semitic, Berber, Cushitic), verbal prefixes deriving middle (t-), causative (s-), and passive (m-) verb forms (Semitic, Berber, Egyptian, Cushitic), and a suffix used to derive adjectives (Egyptian, Semitic).

NameEdit

In current scholarship, the most common names for the family are Afroasiatic (or Afro-Asiatic), Hamito-Semitic, and Semito-Hamitic.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Other proposed names that have yet to find widespread acceptance include Erythraic/Erythraean, Lisramic, Noahitic, and Lamekhite.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Friedrich Müller introduced the name Hamito-Semitic to describe the family in his {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (1876).Template:Sfn The variant Semito-Hamitic is mostly used in older Russian sources.Template:Sfn The elements of the name were derived from the names of two sons of Noah as attested in the Book of Genesis's Table of Nations passage: "Semitic" from the first-born Shem, and "Hamitic" from the second-born Ham (Genesis 5:32).Template:Sfn Within the Table of Nations, each of Noah's sons is presented as the common progenitor of various people groups deemed to be closely related: among others Shem was the father of the Jews, Assyrians, and Arameans, while Ham was the father of the Egyptians and Cushites. This genealogy does not reflect the actual origins of these peoples' languages: for example, the Canaanites are descendants of Ham according to the Table, even though Hebrew is now classified as a Canaanite language, while the Elamites are ascribed to Shem despite their language being totally unrelated to Hebrew.Template:Sfn The term Semitic for the Semitic languages had already been coined in 1781 by August Ludwig von Schlözer, following an earlier suggestion by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in 1710.Template:Sfn Hamitic was first used by Ernest Renan in 1855 to refer to languages that appeared similar to the Semitic languages, but were not themselves provably a part of the family.Template:Sfn The belief in a connection between Africans and the Biblical Ham, which had existed at least as far back as Isidore of Seville in the 6th century AD, led scholars in the early 19th century to speak vaguely of "Hamian" or "Hamitish" languages.Template:Sfn

The term Hamito-Semitic has largely fallen out of favor among linguists writing in English, but is still frequently used in the scholarship of various other languages, such as German.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Several issues with the label Hamito-Semitic have led many scholars to abandon the term and criticize its continued use. One common objection is that the Hamitic component inaccurately suggests that a monophyletic "Hamitic" branch exists alongside Semitic. In addition, Joseph Greenberg has argued that Hamitic possesses racial connotations, and that "Hamito-Semitic" overstates the centrality of the Semitic languages within the family.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn By contrast, Victor Porkhomovsky suggests that the label is simply an inherited convention, and does not imply a duality of Semitic and "Hamitic" any more than Indo-European implies a duality of Indic and "European".Template:Sfn Because of its use by several important scholars and in the titles of significant works of scholarship, the total replacement of Hamito-Semitic is difficult.Template:Sfn

While Greenberg ultimately popularized the name "Afroasiatic" in 1960, it appears to have been coined originally by Maurice Delafosse, as French {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, in 1914.Template:Sfn The name refers to the fact that it is the only major language family with large populations in both Africa and Asia.Template:Sfn Due to concerns that "Afroasiatic" could imply the inclusion of all languages spoken across Africa and Asia, the name "Afrasian" (Template:Langx) was proposed by Igor Diakonoff in 1980. At present it predominantly sees use among Russian scholars.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

The names Lisramic—based on the Afroasiastic root *lis- ("tongue") and the Egyptian word rmṯ ("person")—and Erythraean—referring to the core area around which the languages are spoken, the Red Sea—have also been proposed.Template:Sfn

Distribution and branchesEdit

File:Afroasiatic 6-Family Diagram.svg
A diagram of the six widely recognized branches of the Afroasiatic family, including some of the larger or more culturally significant languages in each branch.

Scholars generally consider Afroasiatic to have between five and eight branches. The five that are universally agreed upon are Berber (also called "Libyco-Berber"), Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, and Semitic.Template:Sfn Most specialists consider the Omotic languages to constitute a sixth branch.Template:Sfn Due to the presumed distance of relationship between the various branches, many scholars prefer to refer to Afroasiatic as a "linguistic phylum" rather than a "language family".Template:Sfn

M. Victoria Almansa-Villatoro and Silvia Štubňová Nigrelli write that there are about 400 languages in Afroasiatic;Template:Sfn Ethnologue lists 375 languages.Template:Sfn Many scholars estimate fewer languages; exact numbers vary depending on the definitions of "language" and "dialect".Template:Sfn

BerberEdit

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} The Berber (or Libyco-Berber) languages are spoken today by perhaps 16 million people.Template:Sfn They are often considered to constitute a single language with multiple dialects.Template:Sfn Other scholars, however, argue that they are a group of around twelve languages, about as different from each other as the Romance or Germanic languages.Template:Sfn In the past, Berber languages were spoken throughout North Africa except in Egypt;Template:Sfn since the 7th century CE, however, they have been heavily affected by Arabic and have been replaced by it in many places.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

There are two extinct languages potentially related to modern Berber.Template:Sfn The first is the Numidian language, represented by over a thousand short inscriptions in the Libyco-Berber alphabet, found throughout North Africa and dating from the 2nd century BCE onward.Template:Sfn The second is the Guanche language, which was formerly spoken on the Canary Islands and went extinct in the 17th century CE.Template:Sfn The first longer written examples of modern Berber varieties only date from the 16th or 17th centuries CE.Template:Sfn

ChadicEdit

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} Chadic languages number between 150 and 190, making Chadic the largest family in Afroasiatic by number of extant languages.Template:Sfn The Chadic languages are typically divided into three major branches, East Chadic, Central Chadic, and West Chadic.Template:Sfn Most Chadic languages are located in the Chad Basin, with the exception of Hausa.Template:Sfn Hausa is the largest Chadic language by native speakers, and is spoken by a large number of people as a lingua franca in Northern Nigeria.Template:Sfn It may have as many as 80 to 100 million first and second language speakers.Template:Sfn Eight other Chadic languages have around 100,000 speakers; other Chadic languages often have few speakers and may be in danger of going extinct.Template:Sfn Only about 40 Chadic languages have been fully described by linguists.Template:Sfn

CushiticEdit

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} There are about 30 Cushitic languages,Template:Sfn more if Omotic is included,Template:Sfn spoken around the Horn of Africa and in Sudan and Tanzania.Template:Sfn The Cushitic family is traditionally split into four branches: the single language of Beja (c. 3 million speakers), the Agaw languages, Eastern Cushitic, and Southern Cushitic.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Only one Cushitic language, Oromo, has more than 25 million speakers; other languages with more than a million speakers include Somali, Afar, Hadiyya, and Sidaama.Template:Sfn Many Cushitic languages have relatively few speakers.Template:Sfn Cushitic does not appear to be related to the written ancient languages known from its area, Meroitic or Old Nubian.Template:Sfn The oldest text in a Cushitic language probably dates from around 1770;Template:Sfn written orthographies were only developed for a select number of Cushitic languages in the early 20th century.Template:Sfn

EgyptianEdit

File:Peribsen2.JPG
Seal impression from the tomb of Seth-Peribsen (c. 2690 BCE), containing the first complete sentence in Ancient Egyptian.Template:Sfn

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} The Egyptian branch consists of a single language, Egyptian (often called "Ancient Egyptian"), which was historically spoken in the lower Nile Valley.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn Coptic is the only stage written alphabetically to show vowels, whereas Egyptian was previously written in Egyptian hieroglyphs, which only represent consonants.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn Egyptian was replaced by Arabic as the spoken language of Egypt,Template:Sfn but Coptic continues to be the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church.Template:Sfn

OmoticEdit

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} The c. 30 Omotic languages are still mostly undescribed by linguists.Template:Sfn They are all spoken in southwest Ethiopia except for the Ganza language, spoken in Sudan.Template:Sfn Omotic is typically split into North Omotic (or Damotic) and South Omotic (or Aroid), 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.Template:Sfn The two Omotic languages with the most speakers are Wolaitta and Gamo-Gofa-Dawro, with about 1.2 million speakers each.Template:Sfn

A majority of specialists consider Omotic to constitute a sixth branch of Afroasiatic.Template:Sfn Omotic was formerly considered part of the Cushitic branch;Template:Sfn some scholars continue to consider it part of Cushitic.Template:Sfn Other scholars have questioned whether it is Afroasiatic at all, due its lack of several typical aspects of Afroasiatic morphology.Template:Sfn

SemiticEdit

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} There are between 40 and 80 languages in the Semitic family.Template:Sfn Today, Semitic languages are spoken across North Africa, West 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.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Arabic, spoken in both Asia and Africa, is by far the most widely spoken Afroasiatic language today,Template:Sfn with around 300 million native speakers, while the Ethiopian Amharic language has around 25 million; collectively, Semitic is the largest branch of Afroasiatic by number of current speakers.Template:Sfn

Most authorities divide Semitic into two branches: East Semitic, which includes the extinct Akkadian language, and West Semitic, which includes Arabic, Aramaic, the Canaanite languages (including Hebrew), as well as the Ethiopian Semitic languages such as Geʽez and Amharic.Template:Sfn The classification within West Semitic remains contested. The only group with an African origin is Ethiopian Semitic.Template:Sfn The oldest written attestations of Semitic languages come from Mesopotamia, Northern Syria, and Egypt and date as early as c. 3000 BCE.Template:Sfn

Other proposed branchesEdit

There are also other proposed branches, but none has so far convinced a majority of scholars:Template:Sfn

Further subdivisionsEdit

Some proposed Afroasiatic subdivisionsTemplate:Efn
Template:Harvnb Template:Harvnb Template:Harvnb Template:Harvnb Template:Harvnb
Template:Tree list
    • Omotic
    • Afroasiatic

Template:Tree list/end

Template:Tree list
    • Omotic
    • Erythraean
      • Cushitic
      • North Erythrean
        • Chadic
        • Boreafrasian
          • Egyptian
          • Berber
          • Semitic

Template:Tree list/end

Template:Tree list
    • Omotic
    • Chadic
    • Central Afroasiatic
      • Egyptian
      • Macro-Cushtic
        • Berber
        • Cushitic
        • Semitic

Template:Tree list/end

Template:Tree list
    • East–West Afrasian
      • Semitic
      • Cushitic
      • Berber (Berbero-Libyan)
    • North-South Afrasian
      • Egyptian
      • Chadic
      • Omotic

Template:Tree list/end

Template:Tree list
    • Cushomotic
      • Cushitic
      • Omotic
    • North Afrasian
      • Semitic
      • African North Afrasian
        • Egyptian
        • Chado-Berber
          • Chadic
          • Berber

Template:Tree list/end

There is no agreement on the relationships between and subgrouping of the different Afroasiatic branches.Template:Sfn Whereas Marcel Cohen (1947) claimed he saw no evidence for internal subgroupings, numerous other scholars have made proposals,Template:Sfn with Carsten Peust counting 27 as of 2012.Template:Sfn

Common trends in proposals as of 2019 include using common or lacking grammatical features to argue that Omotic was the first language to branch off, often followed by Chadic.Template:Sfn In contrast to scholars who argue for an early split of Chadic from Afroasiatic, scholars of the Russian school tend to argue that Chadic and Egyptian are closely related,Template:Sfn and scholars who rely on percentage of shared lexicon often group Chadic with Berber.Template:Sfn Three scholars who agree on an early split between Omotic and the other subbranches, but little else, are Harold Fleming (1983), Christopher Ehret (1995), and Lionel Bender (1997).Template:Sfn In contrast, scholars relying on shared lexicon often produce a Cushitic-Omotic group.Template:Sfn Additionally, the minority of scholars who favor an Asian origin of Afroasiatic tend to place Semitic as the first branch to split off.Template:Sfn Disagreement on which features are innovative and which are inherited from Proto-Afroasiatic produces radically different trees, as can be seen by comparing the trees produced by Ehret and Igor Diakonoff.Template:Sfn

Responding to the above, Tom Güldemann criticizes attempts at finding subgroupings based on common or lacking morphology by arguing that the presence or absence of morphological features is not a useful way of discerning subgroupings in Afroasiatic, because it can not be excluded that families currently lacking certain features did not have them in the past; this also means that the presence of morphological features cannot be taken as defining a subgroup.Template:Sfn Peust notes that other factors that can obscure genetic relationships between languages include the poor state of present documentation and understanding of particular language families (historically with Egyptian, presently with Omotic).Template:Sfn Gene Gragg likewise argues that more needs to be known about Omotic still, and that Afroasiatic linguists have still not found convincing isoglosses on which to base genetic distinctions.Template:Sfn

One way of avoiding the problem of determining which features are original and which are inherited is to use a computational methodology such as lexicostatistics, with one of the earliest attempts being Fleming 1983.Template:Sfn This is also the method used by Alexander Militarev and Sergei Starostin to create a family tree.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Fleming (2006) was a more recent attempt by Fleming, with a different result from Militarev and Starostin.Template:Sfn Hezekiah Bacovcin and David Wilson argue that this methodology is invalid for discerning linguistic sub-relationship.Template:Sfn They note the method's inability to detect various strong commonalities even between well-studied branches of AA.Template:Sfn

Natufian Spread-Vector HypothesisEdit

It has been suggested that if the original Afro-Asiatic-speaking people did indeed originate from southern Egypt, Central Sudan and/or Ethiopia that they might have migrated upwards the Nile delta and intermingled with the Natufian population inhabiting the Levant and parts of the Sinai peninsula. This created a spread vector in and outside of Africa proper into the Levant, Middle East and Arabian peninsula which gave rise to a higher-order branch ancestral to both Cushitic and Semitic. As these populations would have "down-poured" down the coast of the Red Sea into the Arab peninsula some crossed over into what is now Djibouti and Ethiopia and also throughout the rest of the Horn of Africa creating yet another spread vector which became the Cushitic branch which better helps explain the seemingly dialectal disconnect between other branches on the African mainland and Cushitic who shares more affinities with the Semitic branch which wouldn't be the case if the original Proto-Cushitic speaking populations emerged directly from the Afro-Asiatic speakers of East-Central Africa or during a backwards migration from Egypt.Template:Sfn

Back on the other side of the Red Sea the original AA-speaking people would have experienced the next major schism with some migrating further west into the Sahara (presumably during its "green period") giving birth to a potential Berbero-Chadic branch which again had been split two fold between its original speakers and an intermingling population of darker-skinned sub-saharans. The variety spoken by those who stayed in the Northeast of the continent would have become Egyptian over time.Template:Sfn

Omotic might have been a divergent "south Cushitic" branch as originally proposed but in the light of this hypothesis and the aforementioned dialectal disconnect Omotic may have originated from peoples who migrated backwards up the (blue) Nile into Ethiopia before or after the initial Berbero-Chadic split thus potentially creating two branches - Omotic-Egyptian and Berbero-Chadic or Omotic and Berbero-Chadic-Egyptian.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Official StatusEdit

Language Branch Official status per country
Berber Berber Algeria, Morocco
Hausa Chadic Niger, Nigeria (national)
Afar Cushitic Ethiopia, Djibouti (national)
Oromo citation CitationClass=web

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CitationClass=web

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Somali Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti (national)
Amharic Semitic Ethiopia
Arabic Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Chad, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, UAE, Yemen, Israel (special status)
Hebrew Israel
Maltese Malta
Tigrinya Ethiopia, Eritrea (national)

Classification historyEdit

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.Template:Sfn The French orientalist Guillaume Postel had also pointed out similarities between Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic in 1538, and Hiob Ludolf noted similarities also to Geʽez and Amharic in 1701. This family was formally described and named "Semitic" by August Ludwig von Schlözer in 1781.Template:Sfn 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").Template:Sfn In the same year T.N. Newman suggested a relationship between Semitic and the Hausa language, an idea that was taken up by early scholars of Afroasiatic.Template:Sfn 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 Müller first described them as a "Hamito-Semitic" language family.Template:Sfn Müller assumed that there existed a distinct "Hamitic" branch of the family that consisted of Egyptian, Berber, and Cushitic.Template:Sfn He did not include the Chadic languages, though contemporary Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius argued for the relation of Hausa to the Berber languages.Template:Sfn Some scholars would continue to regard Hausa as related to the other Afroasiatic languages, but the idea was controversial: many scholars refused to admit that the largely unwritten, "Negroid" Chadic languages were in the same family as the "Caucasian" ancient civilizations of the Egyptians and Semites.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

File:Africa ethnic groups 1996.png
Distribution of ethnic groups in Africa (Afroasiatic/Hamito-Semitic-speaking in yellow)

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.Template:Sfn This theory connected the "Hamites", the originators of Hamitic languages, with (supposedly culturally superior) "Caucasians", who were assumed to have migrated into Africa and intermixed with indigenous "Negroid" Africans in ancient times.Template:Sfn The "Hamitic theory" would serve as the basis for Carl Meinhof's highly influential classification of African languages in his 1912 book {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}.Template:Sfn On one hand, the "Hamitic" classification was justified partially based on linguistic features: for example, Meinhof split the presently-understood Chadic family into "Hamito-Chadic", and an unrelated non-Hamitic "Chadic" based on which languages possessed grammatical gender.Template:Sfn On the other hand, the classification also relied on non-linguistic anthropological and culturally contingent features, such as skin color, hair type, and lifestyle.Template:Sfn Ultimately, Meinhof's classification of Hamitic proved to include languages from every presently-recognized language family within Africa.Template:Sfn

The first scholar to question the existence of "Hamitic languages" was Marcel Cohen in 1924,Template:Sfn with skepticism also expressed by A. Klingenheben and Dietrich Westermann during the 1920s and '30s.Template:Sfn However, Meinhof's "Hamitic" classification remained prevalent throughout the early 20th century until it was definitively disproven by Joseph Greenberg in the 1940s, based on racial and anthropological data.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Instead, Greenberg proposed an Afroasiatic family consisting of five branches: Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, and Semitic.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn Reluctance among some scholars to recognize Chadic as a branch of Afroasiatic persisted as late as the 1980s.Template:Sfn In 1969, Harold Fleming proposed that a group of languages classified by Greenberg as Cushitic were in fact their own independent "Omotic" branch—a proposal that has been widely, if not universally, accepted.Template:Sfn These six branches now constitute an academic consensus on the genetic structure of the family.Template:Sfn

Greenberg relied on his own method of mass comparison of vocabulary items rather than the comparative method of demonstrating regular sound correspondences to establish the family.Template:Sfn An alternative classification, based on the pronominal and conjugation systems, was proposed by A.N. Tucker in 1967.Template:Sfn As of 2023, widely accepted sound correspondences between the different branches have not yet been firmly established.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Nevertheless, morphological traits attributable to the proto-language and the establishment of cognates throughout the family have confirmed its genetic validity.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

OriginEdit

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}}

TimelineEdit

There is no consensus as to when Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken.Template:Sfn The absolute latest date for when Proto-Afroasiatic could have been extant is Template:Circa, after which Egyptian and the Semitic languages are firmly attested. However, in all likelihood these languages began to diverge well before this hard boundary.Template:Sfn The estimations offered by scholars as to when Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken vary widely, ranging from 18,000Template:NbspBCE to 8,000Template:NbspBCE.Template:Sfn An estimate at the youngest end of this range still makes Afroasiatic the oldest proven language family.Template:Sfn Contrasting proposals of an early emergence, Tom Güldemann has argued that less time may have been required for the divergence than is usually assumed, as it is possible for a language to rapidly restructure due to areal contact, with the evolution of Chadic (and likely also Omotic) serving as pertinent examples.Template:Sfn

LocationEdit

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} Likewise, no consensus exists as to where proto-Afroasiatic originated.Template:Sfn Scholars have proposed locations for the Afroasiatic homeland across Africa and West Asia.Template:Sfn Roger Blench writes that the debate possesses "a strong ideological flavor", with associations between an Asian origin and "high civilization".Template:Sfn An additional complicating factor is the lack of agreement on the subgroupings of Afroasiatic (see Further subdivisions) – this makes associating archaeological evidence with the spread of Afroasiatic particularly difficult.Template:Sfn Nevertheless, there is a long-accepted link between the speakers of Proto-Southern Cushitic languages and the East African Savanna Pastoral Neolithic (5,000 years ago), and archaeological evidence associates the Proto-Cushitic speakers with economic transformations in the Sahara dating c. 8,500 years ago, as well as the speakers of the Proto-Zenati variety of the Berber languages with an expansion across the Maghreb in the 5th century CE.Template:Sfn

An origin somewhere on the African continent has broad scholarly support,Template:Sfn and is seen as being well-supported by the linguistic data.Template:Sfn Most scholars more narrowly place the homeland near the geographic center of its present distribution,Template:Sfn "in the southeastern Sahara or adjacent Horn of Africa".Template:Sfn The Afroasiatic languages spoken in Africa are not more closely related to each other than they are to Semitic, as one would expect if only Semitic had remained in a West Asian homeland while all other branches had spread from there.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn Proponents of an origin of Afroasiatic within Africa assume the proto-language to have been spoken by pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherers,Template:Sfn arguing that there is no evidence of words in Proto-Afroasiatic related to agriculture or animal husbandry.Template:Sfn Christopher Ehret, S.O. Y. Keita, and Paul Newman also argue that archaeology does not support a spread of migrating farmers into Africa, but rather a gradual incorporation of animal husbandry into indigenous foraging cultures.Template:Sfn Ehret, in a separate publication, argued that the two principles in linguistic approaches for determining the origin of languages which are the principles of fewest moves and greatest diversity had put “beyond reasonable doubt” that the language family “had originated in the Horn of Africa”.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

A significant minority of scholars supports an Asian origin of Afroasiatic,Template:Sfn most of whom are specialists in Semitic or Egyptian studies.Template:Sfn The main proponent of an Asian origin is the linguist Alexander Militarev,Template:Sfn who argues that Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken by early agriculturalists in the Levant and subsequently spread to Africa.Template:Sfn 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 and pastoralist vocabulary indicates that Proto-AA must have been spoken in this area.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn

Phonological characteristicsEdit

File:Tamazightchelha.ogg
Speech sample in Shilha (Berber branch)
File:Assyriansample.ogg
Speech sample in the Semitic Neo-Aramaic language, a descendant of Old Aramaic
File:Shaxmednuradc1.ogg
Speech sample in Somali (Cushitic branch)
File:Poem by Abu 'ala al-Ma'arri ("I no longer steal from nature") read in Arabic.ogg
Speech sample in Classical Arabic (Semitic branch)

Afroasiatic languages share a number of phonetic and phonological features.Template:Sfn

Syllable structureEdit

Egyptian, Cushitic, Berber, Omotic, and most languages in the Semitic branch require every syllable to begin with a consonant (with the exception of some grammatical prefixes).Template:Sfn Igor Diakonoff argues that this constraint goes back to Proto-Afroasiatic.Template:Sfn Some Chadic languages allow a syllable to begin with a vowel;Template:Sfn however, in many Chadic languages verbs must begin with a consonant. In Cushitic and Chadic languages, a glottal stop or glottal fricative may be inserted to prevent a word from beginning with a vowel.Template:Sfn Typically, syllables begin with only a single consonant.Template:Sfn Diakonoff argues that proto-Afroasiatic did not have consonant clusters within a syllable.Template:Sfn

With the exception of some Chadic languages, all Afroasiatic languages allow both open syllables (ending in a vowel) and closed syllables (ending in a consonant); many Chadic languages do not allow a syllable to end in a consonant.Template:Sfn Most words end in a vowel in Omotic and Cushitic, making syllable-final consonant clusters rare.Template:Sfn

Syllable weight plays an important role in Afroasiatic, especially in Chadic; it can affect the form of affixes attached to a word.Template:Sfn

Consonant systemsEdit

Several Afroasiatic languages have large consonant inventories, and it is likely that this is inherited from proto-Afroasiatic.Template:Sfn All Afroasiatic languages contain stops and fricatives; some branches have additional types of consonants such as affricates and lateral consonants.Template:Sfn Afroasiatic languages tend to have pharyngeal fricative consonants, with Egyptian, Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic sharing ħ and ʕ.Template:Sfn In all Afroasiatic languages, consonants can be bilabial, alveolar, velar, and glottal, with additional places of articulation found in some branches or languages.Template:Sfn Additionally, the glottal stop ({{#invoke:IPA|main}}) usually exists as a phoneme, and there tends to be no phonemic contrast between [p] and [f] or [b] and [v].Template:Sfn In Cushitic, the Ethiopian Semitic language Tigrinya, and some Chadic languages, there is no underlying phoneme [p] at all.Template:Sfn

Most, if not all branches of Afroasiatic distinguish between voiceless, voiced, and "emphatic" consonants.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn The emphatic consonants are typically formed deeper in the throat than the others;Template:Sfn they can be realized variously as glottalized, pharyngealized, uvularized, ejective, and/or implosive consonants in the different branches.Template:Sfn This distinction between three manners of articulation is not generally reconstructed for continuant obstruents (such as fricatives), which are generally reconstructed as being only voiceless in Proto-Afroasiatic.Template:Sfn

A form of long-distance consonant assimilation known as consonant harmony is attested in Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, and Semitic: it usually affects features such as pharyngealization, palatalization, and labialization.Template:Sfn Several Omotic languages have "sibilant harmony", meaning that all sibilants (s, sh, z, ts, etc.) in a word must match.Template:Sfn

Consonant incompatibilityEdit

Examples of root consonant incompatibilities from Egyptian, after Template:Harvnb
consonant cannot occur with
p b, f, m, h
r ꜣ, b
ḫ h, ḥ, ẖ, q, k, g, ṯ, ḏ
s ḥ, z
t ꜥ, z, q, g, d, ḏ

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.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn Another widespread constraint is against two non-identical lateral obstruents, which can be found in Egyptian, Chadic, Semitic, and probably Cushitic.Template:Sfn Such rules do not always apply for nouns, numerals, or denominal verbs, and do not affect prefixes or suffixes added to the root.Template:Sfn 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.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

A set of constraints, developed originally by Joseph Greenberg on the basis of Arabic, has been claimed to be typical for Afroasiatic languages.Template:Sfn 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. 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.Template:Sfn Additionally, he showed that Proto-Semitic restricted a sequence of two identical consonants in the first and second position of the triliteral root.Template:Sfn These rules also have a number of exceptions:

  1. velar consonants can occur with pharyngeals or laryngeals;Template:Sfn
  2. dental consonants can co-occur with sibilants;Template:Sfn However, there are no Proto-Semitic verbal roots with ḍ and a sibilant, and roots with d and a sibilant are uncommon. In all attested cases of a dental and a sibilant, the sibilant occurs in first position and the dental in second.Template:Sfn

Similar exceptions can be demonstrated for the other Afroasiatic branches that have these restrictions to their root formation.Template:Sfn James P. Allen has demonstrated that slightly different rules apply to Egyptian: for instance, Egyptian allows two identical consonants in some roots, and disallows velars from occurring with pharyngeals.Template:Sfn

Vowel systemsEdit

There is a large variety of vocalic systems in Afroasiatic,Template:Sfn and attempts to reconstruct the vocalic system of Proto-Afroasiatic vary considerably.Template:Sfn 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. The quality of the underlying vowels varies considerably by language; the most common vowel throughout Afroasiatic is schwa.Template:Sfn In the different languages, central vowels are often inserted to break up consonant clusters (a form of epenthesis).Template:Sfn Various Semitic, Cushitic, Berber, and Chadic languages, including Arabic, Amharic, Berber, Somali, and East Dangla, also exhibit various types of vowel harmony.Template:Sfn

TonesEdit

The majority of Afroasiatic languages are tonal languages: phonemic tonality is found in Omotic, Chadic, and Cushitic languages, but absent in Berber and Semitic. There is no information on whether Egyptian had tones.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn In some Chadic and some Omotic languages every syllable has to have a tone, whereas in most Cushitic languages this is not the case.Template:Sfn Some scholars postulate that Proto-Afroasiatic may have had tone, while others believe it arose later from a pitch accent.Template:Sfn

Examples of tones marking lexical and morphological changes in some Afroasiatic languages, after Template:Harvnb
Language Examples
Somali (Cushitic) díbi bull, absolutive case dibi bull, nominative case dibí bull, genitive case
ínan, boy inán girl
Bench (Omotic) k'áyts' work! do it! (active imperative) k'àyts' be done! (passive imperative)
Hausa (Chadic) màatáa woman, wife máatáa women, wives
dáfàa to cook (infinitive) dàfáa cook! (imperative)

Similarities in grammar, syntax, and morphologyEdit

At present, there is no generally accepted reconstruction of Proto-Afroasiatic grammar, syntax, or morphology, nor one for any of the sub-branches besides Egyptian. This means that it is difficult to know which features in Afroasiatic languages are retentions, and which are innovations.Template:Sfn Moreover, all Afroasiatic languages have long been in contact with other language families and with each other, leading to the possibility of widespread borrowing both within Afroasiatic and from unrelated languages.Template:Sfn There are nevertheless a number of commonly observed features in Afroasiatic morphology and derivation, including the use of suffixes, infixes, vowel lengthening and shortening as a morphological change, as well as the use of tone changes to indicate morphology.Template:Sfn Further commonalities and differences are explored in more detail below.

General featuresEdit

Consonantal root structuresEdit

A widely attested feature in AA languages is a consonantal structure into which various vocalic "templates" are placed.Template:Sfn This structure is particularly visible in the verbs,Template:Sfn and is particularly noticeable in Semitic.Template:Sfn Besides for Semitic, vocalic templates are well attested for Cushitic and Berber,Template:Sfn where, along with Chadic, it is less productive; it is absent in Omotic.Template:Sfn For Egyptian, evidence for the root-and-template structure exists from Coptic.Template:Sfn In Semitic, Egyptian, Berber, verbs have no inherent vowels at all; the vowels found in a given stem are dependent on the vocalic template.Template:Sfn In Chadic, verb stems can include an inherent vowel as well.Template:Sfn

Most Semitic verbs are triliteral (have three consonants), whereas most Chadic, Omotic, and Cushitic verbs are biliteral (having two consonants).Template:Sfn The degree to which the Proto-AA verbal root was triliteral is debated.Template:Sfn It may have originally been mostly biconsonantal, to which various affixes (such as verbal extensions) were then added and lexicalized.Template:Sfn Although any root could theoretically be used to create a noun or a verb, there is evidence for the existence of distinct noun and verb roots, which behave in different ways.Template:Sfn

Examples of verbal templates in AA languages, after Template:Harvnb
Language Akkadian (Semitic) Berber Beja (Cushitic) Ron/Daffo (Chadic) Coptic (Egyptian)
Root p-r-s to divide k-n-f to roast d-b-l to gather m-(w)-t to die k-t to build
Templates iprus- (preterite) ǎknəf (aorist) -dbil- (past) mot (perfective) kôt (infintive)
iparras- (present) əknǎf (perfective) -i:-dbil- (aorist) mwaát (imperfective) kêt (qualitative)
iptaras (perfect) əkǎnnǎf (imperfective) i:-dbil- (modal)
əknəf (neg. perfective) da:n-bi:l (present sg)
əkənnəf (neg. imperfective) -e:-dbil- (present pl)
-dabi:l- (negative)

As part of these templates, the alternation (apophony) between high vowels (e.g. i, u) and a low vowel (a) in verbal forms is usually described as one of the main characteristics of AA languages: this change codes a variety of different functions.Template:Sfn It is unclear whether this system is a common AA trait;Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn

Word orderEdit

It remains unclear what word order Proto-Afroasiatic had.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Berber, Egyptian, and most Semitic languages are verb-initial languages, whereas Cushitic, Omotic and some Semitic subgroups are verb-final languages.Template:Sfn Proto-Chadic is reconstructed as having verb-initial word order,Template:Sfn but most Chadic languages have subject-verb-object word order.Template:Sfn

Reduplication and geminationEdit

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. Gemination in particular is one of the typical features of AA.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn

NounsEdit

Grammatical gender and numberEdit

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.Template:Sfn This sex-based gender system is widely agreed to derive from Proto-Afroasiatic.Template:Sfn In most branches, gender is an inherent property of nouns.Template:Sfn Additionally, even when nouns are not cognates, they tend to have the same gender throughout Afroasiatic ("gender stability").Template:Sfn In Egyptian, Semitic, and Berber, a feminine suffix -t is attested to mark feminine nouns; in some Cushitic and Chadic languages, a feminine -t suffix or prefix (lexicalized from a demonstrative) is used to mark definiteness.Template:Sfn In addition to these uses, -t also functions as a diminutive, pejorative, and/or singulative marker in some languages.Template:Sfn

Use of T on feminine nouns, using data from Template:Harvnb
Kabyle (Berber) Hausa (Chadic) Beja (Cushitic) Egyptian Arabic (Semitic)
wəl-t 'daughter' yārinyà-r̃ 'the girl' (r̃ < final -t)
 ʔo:(r)-t 'a daughter'
t-ʔo:r 'the daughter'		 zꜣ-t 'daughter' bin-t 'daughter'

Afroasiatic languages have a variety of ways of marking plurals; in some branches, nouns change gender from singular to plural (gender polarity),Template:Sfn while in others, plural forms are ungendered.Template:Sfn 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).Template:Sfn 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.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn Another common method of forming plurals is reduplication.Template:Sfn

Some examples of internal plurals in AA, using data from Template:Harvnb and Template:Harvnb
Language Meaning Singular Plural
Geʽez (Semitic) king nɨgus nägäs-t
Teshelhiyt (Berber) country ta-mazir-t ti-mizar
Afar (Cushitic) body galab galo:b-a
Hausa (Chadic) stream gulbi gulà:be:
Mubi (Chadic) eye irin aràn

Noun cases and statesEdit

Nouns cases are found in the Semitic, Berber, Cushitic, and Omotic branches. They are not found in Chadic languages, and there is no evidence for cases in Egyptian.Template:Sfn A common pattern in AA languages with case is for the nominative to be marked by -u or -i, and the accusative to be marked by -a.Template:Sfn However, the number and types of cases varies across AA and also within the individual branches.Template:Sfn Some languages in AA have a marked nominative alignment, a feature which may date back to Proto-Afroasiatic.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn 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. rather than the subject and object.Template:Sfn

Subject-Object case marking in some AA branches, using data in Template:Harvnb, Template:Harvnb and Template:Harvnb
Case Oromo (Cushitic) Berber Akkadian (Semitic) Wolaitta (Omotic)
Masculine Feminine Masculine Feminine Masculine Feminine Masculine Feminine
Nominative/bound nam-(n)i boy intal-t-i girl u-frux boy t-frux-t girl šarr-u-m king šarr-at-u-m queen keett-i house macci-yo woman
Accusative/absolutive/unbound nam-a intal-a a-frux t-a-frux-t šarr-a-m šarr-at-a-m keett-a macci-ya

A second category, which partially overlaps with case, is the AA linguistic category of "state". Linguists use the term "state" to refer to different things in different languages. In Cushitic and Semitic, nouns exist in the "free state" or the "construct state". 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).Template:Sfn Edward Lipiński refers to Semitic nouns as having four states: absolute (free/indeterminate), construct, determinate, and predicate.Template:Sfn Coptic and Egyptian grammar also refers to nouns having a "free" (absolute) state, a "construct state", and a "pronominal state". 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.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn

Noun states in different AA branches, using data from Template:Harvnb, Template:Harvnb, Template:Harvnb, and Template:Harvnb
Language Free/absolute state Construct State Additional state
Aramaic (Semitic) malkā(h) queen malkat Emphatic: malkətā
Coptic (Egyptian) jôj head jaj- Pronominal: jô-
Iraqw (Cushitic) afee mouths afé-r –
Riffian (Berber) a-ryaz man – Annexed: wə-ryaz

Modifiers and agreementEdit

There is no strict distinction between adjectives, nouns, and adverbs in Afroasiatic.Template:Sfn All branches of Afroasiatic have a lexical category of adjectives except for Chadic;Template:Sfn some Chadic languages do have adjectives, however. In Berber languages, adjectives are rare and are mostly replaced by nouns of quality and stative verbs.Template:Sfn In different languages, adjectives (and other modifiers) must either precede or follow the noun.Template:Sfn In most AA languages, numerals precede the noun.Template:Sfn

In those languages that have adjectives, they can take gender and number markings, which, in some cases, agree with the gender and number of the noun they are modifying.Template:Sfn However, in Omotic, adjectives do not agree with nouns: sometimes, they only take gender and number marking when they are used as nouns, in other cases, they take gender and number marking only when they follow the noun (the noun then receives no marking).Template:Sfn

A widespread pattern of gender and number marking in Afroasiatic, found on demonstratives, articles, adjectives, and relative markers, is a consonant N for masculine, T for feminine, and N for plural. This can be found in Semitic, Egyptian, Beja, Berber, and Chadic.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn A system K (masculine), T (feminine), and H (plural) can be found in Cushitic, Chadic, with masculine K also appearing in Omotic.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The feminine marker T is one of the most consistent aspects across the different branches of AA.Template:Sfn

Masculine, Feminine, Plural agreement patterns in N T N, using data from Template:HarvnbTemplate:Efn
Language meaning Masculine Feminine PluralTemplate:Efn
Old South Arabian (Semitic) this ð-n ð-t ʔl-n
Egyptian this (p-n) t-n n-n
Beja (Cushitic) this be-n be-t bal-īn
Tuareg (Berber) relative verb form ilkəm-ən təlkəm-ət ilkəm-ən-in
Hausa (Chadic) possessive base na- ta- na-

Verb formsEdit

Tenses, aspects, and moods (TAMs)Edit

There is no agreement about which tenses, aspects, or moods (TAMs) Proto-Afroasiatic might have had.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn The Egyptian verbal system diverges greatly from that found in the other branches.Template:Sfn Additionally, it is common in Afroasiatic languages for the present/imperfective form to be a derived (marked) form of the verb, whereas in most other languages and language families the present tense is the default form of the verb.Template:Sfn Another common trait across the family is the use of a suppletive imperative for verbs of motion.Template:Sfn

"Prefix conjugation"Edit

Conjugation of verbs using prefixes that mark person, number, and gender can be found in Semitic, Berber, and in Cushitic,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn where it is only found on a small set of frequent verbs.Template:Sfn These prefixes are clearly cognate across the branches, although their use within the verbal systems of the individual languages varies.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn Prefixes of ʔ- (glottal stop) for the first person singular and y- for the third person masculine can also be reconstructed.Template:Sfn 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.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Efn

The "prefix conjugation" in Afroasiatic, following Template:Harvnb
Number Person Gender Akkadian (Semitic) Berber Beja (Cushitic)
Preterite Present Aorist Imperfective "Old Past" "Old Present" "New Present"
Singular 1 a-prus a-parras ăknəf-ăʕ əkănnăf-ăʕ ʔ-i:-dbíl ʔ-a-dbíl ʔ-a-danbí:l
2 m ta-prus ta-parras t-ăknəf-ət t-əkănnăf-ət t-i:-dbíl-a t-i-dbíl-a danbí:l-a
f ta-prus-i: ta-parras-i t-i:-dbíl-i t-i-dbíl-i danbí:l-i
3 m i-prus i-parras y-ăknəf y-əkănnăf ʔ-i:-dbíl ʔ-i-dbíl danbí:l
f ta-prus ta-parras t-ăknəf t-əkănnăf t-i:-dbíl t-i-dbíl
Plural 1 ni-prus ni-parras n-ăknəf n-əkănnăf n-i:-dbíl n-i-dbíl n-e:-dbíl
2 m ta-prus-a: a-parras t-ăknəf-ăm t-əkănnăf-ăm t-i:-dbíl-na t-i-dbíl-na t-e:-dbíl-na
f ta-parras t-ăknəf-măt t-əkănnăf-măt
3 m i-prus-u: ta-parras-i: ăknəf-ăn əkănnăf-ăn ʔ-i:-dbíl ʔ-i-dbíl ʔ-e:-dbíl-na
f i-prus-a: i-parras ăknəf-năt əkănnăf-năt

"Suffix conjugation"Edit

Some AA branches have what is called a "suffix conjugation", formed by adding pronominal suffixes to indicate person, gender, and number to a verbal adjective.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn 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.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn While some scholars posit an AA origin for this form, it is possible that the Berber and Cushitic forms are independent developments,Template:Sfn as they show significant differences from the Egyptian and Semitic forms. The Cushitic forms in particular may be derived from morphology found in subordinate clauses.Template:Sfn

The "suffix conjugation" in Afroasiatic, following Template:Harvnb
Number Person Gender Akkadian (Semitic) Egyptian Berber Afar (Cushitic)
Singular 1 pars-a:ku sḏm-kw măttit-ăʕ miʕ-iyo-h
2 m pars-a:ta sḏm-tj măttit-ət miʕ-ito-h
f pars-a:ti
3 m paris sḏm-w măttit meʕ-e-h
f pars-at sḏm-tj măttit-ăt
Plural 1 pars-a:nu sḏm-wjn măttit-it miʕ-ino-h
2 m pars-a:tunu sḏm-tjwnj miʕ-ito:nu-h
f pars-a:tina
3 m pars-u: sḏm-wj moʕ-o:nu-h
f pars-a:

Common derivational affixesEdit

M-prefix noun derivationEdit

A prefix in m- is the most widely attested affix in AA that is used to derive nouns,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn and is one of the features Joseph Greenberg used to diagnose membership in the family. It forms agent nouns, place nouns, and instrument nouns.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn In some branches, it can also derive abstract nouns and participles.Template:Sfn Omotic, meanwhile, shows evidence for a non-productive prefix mV- associated with the feminine gender.Template:Sfn 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-.Template:Sfn Such an etymology is rejected by A. Zaborski and Gábor Takács, the latter of whom argues for a PAA *ma- that unites all or some of the meanings in the modern languages.Template:Sfn

Examples of m-prefix noun derivations, using data from Template:Harvnb, Template:Harvnb, and Template:Harvnb
Language Root Agent/Instrument Place/Abstract
Egyptian swr to drink m-swr drinking bowl –
Arabic (Semitic) k-t-b to write mu-katib-un writer ma-ktab-un school
Hausa (Chadic) hayf- to give birth má-hàif-íi father má-háif-áa birthplace
Beja (Cushitic) firi to give birth – mi-frey birth
Tuareg (Berber) äks to eat em-äks eater –

Verbal extensionsEdit

Many AA languages use prefixes or suffixes (verbal extensions) to encode various pieces of information about the verb.Template:Sfn Three derivational prefixes can be reconstructed for Proto-Afroasiatic: *s- 'causative', *t- 'middle voice' or 'reflexive', and *n- 'passive';Template:Sfn the prefixes appear with various related meanings in the individual daughter languages and branches.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn

Common verbal extensions in Afroasiatic, using data from Template:Harvnb, Template:Harvnb, and Template:Harvnb
Language Causative *s- Reflexive/middle *t- Passive *n-
Akkadian (Semitic) u-š-apris 'make cut' mi-t-gurum 'agree (with one another)' i-p-paris (> *i-n-paris) 'be cut'
Figuig (Berber) ssu-fəɣ 'let out' i-ttə-ska 'it has been built' mmu-bḍa 'divide oneself'
Beja (Cushitic) s-dabil 'make gather' t-dabil 'be gathered' m-dabaal 'gather each other'
Egyptian s-ꜥnḫ 'make live' pr-tj 'is sent forth'Template:Efn n-hp 'escape'Template:Efn

"Nisba" derivationEdit

The so-called "Nisba" is a suffix used to derive adjectives from nouns and, in Egyptian, also from prepositions.Template:Sfn It is found in Egyptian, Semitic, and possibly, in some relic forms, Berber.Template:Sfn The suffix has the same basic form in Egyptian and Semitic,Template:Sfn taking the form -i(y) in Semitic and being written -j in Egyptian. The Semitic and Cushitic genitive case in -i/-ii may be related to "nisba" adjective derivation.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

"Nisba" derivation in Semitic and Egyptian, using data from Template:Harvnb and Template:Harvnb
Language Noun/preposition Derived adjective
Hebrew (Semitic) yārēaḥ moon yərēḥī lunar
Egyptian nṯr god nṯr.j divine
ḥr upon ḥr.j upper, which is upon

Due to its presence in the oldest attested and best-known AA branches, nisba derivation is often thought of as a "quintessentially Afroasiatic feature".Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Christopher Ehret argues for its presence in Proto-Afroasiatic and for its attestation in some form in all branches, with a shape -*ay in addition to -*iy in some cases.Template:Sfn

Vocabulary comparisonEdit

PronounsEdit

The forms of the pronouns are very stable throughout Afroasiatic (excluding Omotic),Template:Sfn and they have been used as one of the chief tools for determining whether a language belongs to the family.Template:Sfn However, there is no consensus on what the reconstructed set of Afroasiatic pronouns might have looked like.Template:Sfn A common characteristic of AA languages is the existence of a special set of "independent" pronouns, which are distinct from subject pronouns. They can occur together with subject pronouns but cannot fulfill an object function.Template:Sfn Also common are dependent/affix pronouns (used for direct objects and to mark possession).Template:Sfn For most branches, the first person pronouns contain a nasal consonant (n, m), whereas the third person displays a sibilant consonant (s, sh).Template:Sfn Other commonalities are masculine and feminine forms used in both the second and third persons, except in Cushitic and Omotic.Template:Sfn These pronouns tend to show a masculine "u" and a feminine "i".Template:Sfn The Omotic forms of the personal pronouns differ from the others, with only the plural forms in North Omotic appearing potentially to be cognate.Template:Sfn

Pronouns in the Afroasiatic family, following Template:Harvnb
Meaning North Omotic (Yemsa) Beja Cushitic (Baniamer) East Cushitic (Somali) West Chadic (Hausa) East Chadic (Mubi) Egyptian East Semitic (Akkadian) West Semitic (Arabic) Berber (Tashelhiyt)
'I' (ind.) tá aní aní-ga ni: ndé jnk ana:ku ʔana nkki
'me, my' (dep.) -ná-
-tá-		 -u: -ʔe na ní -j
wj		 -i:
-ya		 -i:
-ni:		 -i
'we' (ind.) ìnno hinín anná-ga
inná-ga		 mu: ána
éné		 jnn ni:nu: naħnu nkkwni
'you' (masc. sing. ind.) né barú:k adí-ga kai kám nt-k at-ta ʔan-ta kiji
'you' (fem. sing. ind.) batú:k ke: kín nt-ṯ at-ti ʔan-ti kmmi (f)
'you' (masc. sing., dep.) -né- -ú:k(a) ku ka ká -k -ka -ka -k
'you' (fem. sing., dep.) -ú:k(i) ku ki kí -ṯ -ki -ki -m
'you' (plural, dep.) -nitì- -ú:kna idin ku ká(n) -ṯn -kunu (m)
-kina (f)		 -kum (m)
-kunna (f)		 -un (m)
-un-t (f)
'he' (ind.) bár barú:s isá-ga ši: ár nt-f šu huwa ntta (m)
'she' (ind.) batú:s ijá-ga ita tír nt-s ši hiya ntta-t
'he' (dep.) -bá- -ūs – ši à -f
sw		 -šu -hu -s
'she' (dep.) ta dì -s
sy		 -ša -ha:

NumeralsEdit

Unlike in the Indo-European or Austronesian language families, numerals in AA languages cannot be traced to a proto-system.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The Cushitic and Chadic numeral systems appear to have originally been base 5. The system in Berber, Egyptian, and Semitic, however, has independent words for the numbers 6–9.Template:Sfn 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.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn Some families show more than one word for a numeral: Chadic, Semitic, and Berber each have two words for two,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn and Semitic has four words for one.Template:Sfn 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".Template:Sfn

Another factor making comparisons of AA numeral systems difficult is the possibility of borrowing.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn In some Berber languages, the roots for one and two are also borrowed from Arabic.Template:Sfn Some South Cushitic numerals are borrowed from Nilotic languages, other Cushitic numerals have been borrowed from Ethiopian Semitic languages.Template:Sfn

Numerals from throughout Afroasiatic, using data from Template:Harvnb, Template:Harvnb, Template:Harvnb, and Template:Harvnb
Meaning Egyptian Tuareg (Berber) Akkadian (East Semitic) Arabic (West Semitic) Beja (North Cushitic) West Central Oromo (Cushitic) Lele (East Chadic) Gidar (Central Chadic) Bench (North Omotic)
One m. wꜥ yiwən, yan, iğ ištēn wāḥid gáal tokko pínà tákà mat'
f. wꜥ.t yiwət, išt ištiāt wāḥida gáat
Two m. sn.wj sin, sən šinā ʔiṯnāni máloob lama sò súlà nam
f. sn.tj snat, sənt šittā ʔiṯnatāni máloot
Three m. ḫmt.w ḵraḍ, šaṛḍ šalāšat ṯalāṯa mháy sadii súbù hókù kaz
f. ḫmt.t ḵraṭt, šaṛṭ šalāš ṯalāṯ mháyt
Four m. (j)fd.w kkuẓ erbet(t) ʔarbaʕa faḍíg afur pórìn póɗó od
f. (j)fd.t kkuẓt erba ʔarbaʕ faḍígt
Five m. dj.w səmmus, afus ḫamšat ḫamsa áy šani bày ɬé ut͡ʃ
f. dj.t səmmust ḫamiš ḫams áyt
Six m sjs.w sḍis šiššet sitta aságwir jaha ménéŋ ɬré sapm
f. sjs.t sḍist šiš(š) sitt asagwitt
Seven m sfḫ.w sa sebet(t) sabʕa asarámaab tolba mátàlíŋ bùhúl napm
f. sfḫ.t sat seba sabʕ asarámaat
Eight m. ḫmn.w tam samānat ṯamāniya asúmhay saddet jurgù dòdòpórò nyartn
f. ḫmn.t tamt samānē ṯamānin asúmhayt
Nine m. psḏ.w tẓa tišīt tisʕa aššaḍíg sagal célà váyták irstn
f. psḏ.t tẓat tiše tisʕ aššaḍígt
Ten m. mḏ.w mraw ešeret ʕašara támin kuḍan gòrò kláù tam
f. mḏ.t mrawt ešer ʕašr támint

CognatesEdit

Afroasiatic languages share a vocabulary of Proto-Afroasiatic origin to varying extents.Template:Sfn Writing in 2004, John Huehnergard notes the great difficulty in establishing cognate sets across the family.Template:Sfn 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.Template:Sfn Work is also hampered because of the poor state of documentation of many languages.Template:Sfn

There are two etymological dictionaries of Afroasiatic, one by Christopher Ehret, and one by Vladimir Orel and Olga Stolbova, both from 1995. Both works provide highly divergent reconstructions and have been heavily criticized by other scholars.Template:Sfn Andrzej Zaborski refers to Orel and Stolbova's reconstructions as "controversial", and Ehret's as "not acceptable to many scholars".Template:Sfn Tom Güldemann argues that much comparative work in Afroasiatic suffers from not attempting first to reconstruct smaller units within the individual branches, but instead comparing words in the individual languages.Template:Sfn Nevertheless, both dictionaries agree on some items and some proposed cognates are uncontroversial.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Such cognates tend to rely on relatively simple sound correspondences.Template:Sfn

Some widely recognized cognates in Afroasiatic, following Template:Harvnb, Template:Harvnb, and Template:HarvnbTemplate:Efn
Meaning Proto-Afroasiatic Omotic Cushitic Chadic Egyptian Semitic Berber
Template:HarvnbTemplate:Efn Template:Harvnb
to strike, to squeeze – *bak- Gamo bak- 'strike' Afar bak Wandala bak 'to strike, beat';

(possibly) Hausa bùgaː 'to hit, strike

bk 'kill (with a sword)' Arabic bkk 'to squeeze, tear' Tuareg bakkat 'to strike, pound'
blood *dîm-
*dâm-		 *dam- Kaffa damo 'blood';
Aari zomʔi 'to bleed'		 (cf. Oromo di:ma 'red') Bolewa dom (cf. jdmj 'red linen') Akkadian damu 'blood' Ghadames dəmm-ən 'blood'
food – *kamaʔ- / *kamay- – Afar okm- 'to eat' Hausa ka:ma:ma: 'snack';
Tumak ka:m 'mush'		 kmj 'food' – –
to be old, elder *gâd-/gûd- *gad- – Oromo gada 'age group, generation';
Burji gad-uwa 'old man'		 Ngizim gad'e 'old' – Arabic gadd- 'grandfather, ancestor' –
to say *geh- *gay- Sheko ge 'to say';
Aari gai- 'to say'		 – Hausa gaya 'to say' ḏwj 'to call, say' (cf. Hebrew gʕy 'to shout') –
tongue *lis'- 'to lick' *les- 'tongue' Kaffa mi-laso 'tongue' – Mwaghavul liis tongue,
Gisiga eles 'tongue

Hausa halshe(háɽ.ʃè) 'tongue'; lashe 'to lick'

ns 'tongue' Akkadian liša:nu 'tongue' Kabyle iləs 'tongue'
to die *maaw- *mawut- – Rendille amut 'to die, to be ill' Hausa mutu 'to die',
Mubi ma:t 'to die'		 mwt 'to die' Hebrew mwt, 'to die'
Geʽez mo:ta 'to die'		 Kabyle əmmət 'to die'
to fly, to soar *pîr- *pir- (cf. Yemsa fill- 'to jump';
Dime far 'to jump')		 Beja fir 'to fly' Hausa fi:ra 'to soar';
Mafa parr, perr 'bird's flight'		 pꜣ 'to fly';
prj 'to soar, rise'		 Ugaritic pr 'to flee';
Arabic frr 'to flee'		 Ahogar fərə-t 'to fly'
name *sǔm / *sǐm- *süm- – – Hausa su:na: 'name';
Sura sun 'name';
Ga'anda ɬim 'name'		 – Akkadian šumu 'name' Kabyle isəm 'name'
to sour *s'ăm- – Mocha č'àm- 'to be bitter' PEC *cam- 'to rot' *s'am 'sour'; Hausa (t)sʼáː.mí 'sour' smj 'curds' Arabic sumūț 'to begin to turn sour' –
to spit *tuf- *tuf- – Beja tuf 'to spit';
Kemant təff y- 'to spit';
Somali tuf 'to spit'		 Hausa tu:fa 'to spit' tf 'to spit' Aramaic tpp 'to spit';
Arabic tff 'to spit'		 –
to rend, tear *zaaʕ- – Gamo zaʔ 'to rend, split' Dahalo ḏaaʕ- 'to rend, to tear (of an animal tearing its prey)'
Kw'adza daʔ- 'to bite'Template:Efn		 Ngizim dáar- 'to cut into long strips' Arabic zaʕy- 'to snatch violently from, tear out' –
Abbreviations: PEC='Proto-Eastern Cushtic'.

See alsoEdit

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NotesEdit

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CitationsEdit

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Works citedEdit

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External linksEdit

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