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The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic subregions of United Nations geoscheme for Asia#Western_Asia, Western Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahara/Sahel. With the exception of its Semitic branch, all branches of the Afroasiatic family are exclusively native to the Africa, African continent.
Afroasiatic languages have over 500 million native speakers, which is the fourth-largest number of native speakers of any language family (after Indo-European languages, Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan languages, Sino-Tibetan, and Niger–Congo languages, Niger–Congo). The phylum has six branches: Berber languages, Berber, Chadic languages, Chadic, Cushitic languages, Cushitic, Egyptian language, Egyptian, Semitic languages, Semitic, and Omotic languages, Omotic. The most widely spoken modern Afroasiatic language or dialect continuum by far is Arabic, a ''de facto'' group of Varieties of Arabic, distinct language varieties within the Semitic branch. The languages that evolved from Proto-Arabic language, Proto-Arabic have around 313 million native speakers, concentrated primarily in the Middle East and North Africa.
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 language, Akkadian, Hebrew, Phoenician language, Phoenician, other Canaanite languages, Amorite language, Amorite, Ugaritic and Aramaic. While there is no consensus among historical linguistics, historical linguists concerning the Afroasiatic languages#Afroasiatic Urheimat, original homeland of the Afroasiatic family or the period when the parent language (i.e. Proto-Afroasiatic language, Proto-Afroasiatic) was spoken, most agree that it was located within a region of Northeast Africa. Proposed specific locations include the Horn of Africa, Egypt, the eastern Sahara, and the Levant.
Scholars generally treat the Afroasiatic language family as including at least the following five branches:
* Berber languages, Berber
* Chadic languages, Chadic
* Cushitic languages, Cushitic
* Egyptian language, Egyptian
* Semitic languages, Semitic
A sixth family's inclusion in Afroasiatic is disputed by a minority of scholars:
* Omotic languages, Omotic
Although there is general agreement on these six families, linguistics, linguists who study Afroasiatic raise some points of disagreement, in particular:
* The Omotic language branch is the most controversial member of Afroasiatic because the grammatical formatives to which most linguists have given the greatest weight in classifying languages in the family "are either absent or distinctly wobbly" (Hayward 1995). Greenberg (1963) and others considered it a subgroup of Cushitic, whereas others have raised doubts about its being part of proper Afroasiatic at all (e.g. Theil 2006).
* The Afroasiatic identity of Ongota language, Ongota is also broadly questioned, as is its position within Afroasiatic among those who accept it, due to the "mixed" appearance of the language and a paucity of research and data. Harold C. Fleming, Harold Fleming (2006) proposes that Ongota constitutes a separate branch of Afroasiatic. Bonny Sands (2009) finds the proposal by Savà and Tosco (2003) the most convincing: namely that Ongota is an East Cushitic language with a Nilo-Saharan languages, Nilo-Saharan substratum. In other words, it would appear that the Ongota people once spoke a Nilo-Saharan language, then shifted to speaking a Cushitic language but retained some characteristics of their earlier Nilo-Saharan language.
* Beja language, Beja, sometimes listed as a separate branch of Afroasiatic, is more often included in the Cushitic branch, which has a substantial degree of internal diversity.
* There is no consensus on the interrelationships of the five non-Omotic branches of Afroasiatic (see #Subgrouping, § Subgrouping below). This situation is not unusual, even among long-established language families: scholars also frequently disagree on the internal classification of the Indo-European languages, for instance.
* The extinct Meroitic language has been proposed (Bruce Trigger, 1964,Trigger, Bruce G., ''‘Meroitic and Eastern Sudanic: A Linguistic Relationship?’'', Kush 12, 1964, 188–194. 1977Trigger, Bruce, G.,''‘The Classification of Meroitic: Geographical Considerations’'', Schriften zur Geschichte und Kultur des Alten Orients 13, 1977, 421–435.) as an unclassified Afroasiatic language, because it shares the phonotactics characteristic of the family, but there is not enough evidence to secure a classification (Fritz Hintze, 1974,Hintze, Fritz, ''‘Some Problems of Meroitic Philology’'', Abdel Gadir Mahmoud Abdalla (ed.), Studies of the Ancient Languages of the Sudan, Sudanese Studies 3, Khartoum University Press, Khartoum, 1974, 73–78.)
* The classification of Kujargé language, Kujargé within Afroasiatic is not agreed upon. Blench (2008) notes that much of the basic vocabulary looks Cushitic languages, Cushitic, and speculates that Kujargé could even be a conservative language transitional between Chadic and Cushitic.
In 1912, Carl Meinhof published ''Die Sprachen der Hamiten'' ("The Languages of the Hamites"), in which he expanded Lepsius's model, adding the Fula language, Fula, Maasai language, Maasai, Bari language, Bari, Nandi languages, Nandi, Sandawe language, Sandawe and Hadza language, Hadza languages to the Hamitic group. Meinhof's model was widely supported in the 1940s. Meinhof's system of classification of the Hamitic languages was based on a belief that "speakers of Hamitic became largely coterminous with cattle herding peoples with essentially Caucasian origins, intrinsically different from and superior to the 'Negroes of Africa'." However, in the case of the so-called Nilo-Hamitic languages (a concept he introduced), it was based on the typological feature of gender and a "fallacious theory of mixed language, language mixture". Meinhof did this although earlier work by scholars such as Lepsius and Johnston had substantiated that the languages which he would later dub "Nilo-Hamitic" were in fact Nilotic languages, with numerous similarities in vocabulary to other Nilotic languages.
Leo Reinisch (1909) had already proposed linking Cushitic and Chadic while urging their more distant affinity with Egyptian and Semitic. However, his suggestion found little acceptance. Marcel Cohen (1924) rejected the idea of a distinct "Hamitic" subgroup and included Hausa language, Hausa (a Chadic language) in his comparative Hamito-Semitic vocabulary. Finally, Joseph Greenberg's 1950 work led to the widespread rejection of "Hamitic" as a language category by linguists. Greenberg refuted Meinhof's linguistic theories and rejected the use of racial and social evidence. In dismissing the notion of a separate "Nilo-Hamitic" language category, in particular, Greenberg was "returning to a view widely held a half-century earlier". He consequently rejoined Meinhof's so-called Nilo-Hamitic languages with their appropriate Nilotic siblings. He also added (and sub-classified) the Chadic languages, and proposed a new name, "Afroasiatic", for the family. Almost all scholars have accepted this classification as the new and continued consensus.
Greenberg developed his model fully in his book ''The Languages of Africa'' (1963), in which he reassigned most of Meinhof's additions to Hamitic to other language families, notably Nilo-Saharan. Following Isaac Schapera and rejecting Meinhof, he classified the Hottentot language, Khoekhoe language as a member of the Khoisan languages, a grouping that has since proven inaccurate and excessively motivated on the presence of Click consonant, click sounds. To Khoisan he also added the Tanzanian Hadza language, Hadza and Sandawe language, Sandawe, though this view has been discredited as linguists working on these languages regard them as Language isolate, linguistic isolates. Despite this, Greenberg's classification remains a starting point for modern work on many languages spoken in Africa, and the Hamitic category (and its extension to Nilo-Hamitic) has no part in this.
Since the three traditional branches of the Hamitic languages (Berber, Cushitic and Egyptian) have not been shown to form an exclusive (Monophyly, monophyletic) phylogenetic unit of their own, separate from other Afroasiatic languages, linguists no longer use the term in this sense. Each of these branches is instead now regarded as an independent subgroup of the larger Afroasiatic family.
In 1969, Harold C. Fleming, Harold Fleming proposed that what had previously been known as Western Cushitic is an independent branch of Afroasiatic, suggesting for it the new name Omotic languages, "Omotic". This proposal and name have met with widespread acceptance.
Based on typological differences with the other Cushitic languages, Robert Hetzron proposed that Beja has to be removed from Cushitic, thus forming an independent branch of Afroasiatic. Most scholars, however, reject this proposal, and continue to group Beja as the sole member of a Northern branch within Cushitic.
''Glottolog'' does not accept that the inclusion or even unity of Omotic has been established, nor that of Ongota or the unclassified Kujarge. It therefore splits off the following groups as small families: South Omotic languages, South Omotic, Mao languages, Mao, Dizoid languages, Dizoid, Gonga–Gimojan languages, Gonga–Gimojan (North Omotic apart from the preceding), Ongota language, Ongota, and Kujarge language, Kujarge.
There is no definitive agreement on when or where the original homeland of the language family existed, but some link the first speakers to the first farmers in the Levant who would later spread to North and East Africa. Others argue the first speakers were pre-agricultural and based in Northeast Africa.
Shared features with Indo-European languages in West Asia related to food production are suggested by some scholars to support a Levantine origin for Afroasiatic languages. The Levantine hypothesis does not account for the domestication of plants endemism, endemic to the Horn of Africa such as teff, Ensete ventricosum, ensete, and Guizotia abyssinica, niger seed or for the lack of evidence for intrusive agricultural populations or the cultivation of wheat, barley, or sorghum there prior to 3000 BC. A Northeast African origin is supported by the majority of scholars today. The region includes the majority of the diversity of the Afroasiatic language family and has very diverse groups in close geographic proximity, which is sometimes considered a telltale sign for a linguistic geographic origin. Igor M. Diakonoff placed the origin of the Afro-Asiatic languages in northeast Africa, with older strands south of Egypt, and newer elements straddling the Nile Delta and Sinai. Christopher Ehret argues that Proto-Afroasiatic speakers in Northeast Africa developed subsistence patterns of intensive plant collection and pastoralism, which gave the population an economic advantage that impelled the expansion of the Afroasiatic languages. Ehret suggests that a Proto-Semitic- or Proto-Semito-Berber-speaking population migrated from Northeast Africa to the Levant during the late Paleolithic and eventually gave rise to the Natufian culture. The linguist Roger Blench proposed southwestern Ethiopia as the most likely homeland of Afroasiatic, in part because of the high internal diversification of the Omotic branch spoken in that region.
Various scholars have hypothesized on the origins of Afroasiatic based on genetic evidence. Haplogroup E-M215 (Y-DNA), Y Haplogroup E-M215 is common among modern Afroasiatic-speaking groups and has been associated with an ancestral Afroasiatic population in Northeast Africa. In a 2014 autosomal DNA study, Hodgson et al. postulate that the Afroasiatic languages may have been spread by an ancestral population(s) carrying a newly-identified non-African genetic component, which the researchers dub the "Ethio-Somali". The genetic component is prevalent among modern Afroasiatic-speaking populations and is found at its highest levels among those in the Horn of Africa. The researchers suggest that the original Ethio-Somali carrying population(s) probably migrated from the Near East to Northeast Africa in the pre-agricultural period (~12–23 ka) and that a descendant population migrated back to the Levant prior to 4000 BC and developed the Semitic branch of Afroasiatic.
Abstract
of "The lessons of deep-time historical-comparative reconstruction in Afroasiatic: reflections on ''Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic: Vowels, Tone, Consonants, and Vocabulary'' (U.C. Press, 1995)", paper delivered at the Twenty-fifth Annual Meeting of the North American Conference on Afro-Asiatic Linguistics, held in Miami, Florida, on 21–23 March 1997. *Finnegan, Ruth H. 1970. "Afro-Asiatic languages West Africa". ''Oral Literature in Africa'', pg 558. *Fleming, Harold C. 2006. ''Ongota: A Decisive Language in African Prehistory.'' Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. *Greenberg, Joseph H. 1950
"Studies in African linguistic classification: IV. Hamito-Semitic."
''Southwestern Journal of Anthropology'' 6, 47–63. *Greenberg, Joseph H. 1955. ''Studies in African Linguistic Classification.'' New Haven: Compass Publishing Company. (Photo-offset reprint of the ''SJA'' articles with minor corrections.) *Greenberg, Joseph H. 1963. ''The Languages of Africa''. Bloomington: Indiana University. (Heavily revised version of Greenberg 1955.) *Greenberg, Joseph H. 1966. ''The Languages of Africa'' (2nd ed. with additions and corrections). Bloomington: Indiana University. *Greenberg, Joseph H. 1981. "African linguistic classification." ''General History of Africa, Volume 1: Methodology and African Prehistory'', edited by Joseph Ki-Zerbo, 292–308. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. *Greenberg, Joseph H. 2000–2002. ''Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family, Volume 1: Grammar, Volume 2: Lexicon.'' Stanford: Stanford University Press. *Hayward, R. J. 1995. "The challenge of Omotic: an inaugural lecture delivered on 17 February 1994". London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. *Heine, Bernd and Derek Nurse. 2000. ''African Languages'', Chapter 4. Cambridge University Press. *Hodge, Carleton T. (editor). 1971. ''Afroasiatic: A Survey.'' The Hague – Paris: Mouton. *Hodge, Carleton T. 1991. "Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic." In Sydney M. Lamb and E. Douglas Mitchell (editors), ''Sprung from Some Common Source: Investigations into the Prehistory of Languages'', Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 141–165. *Huehnergard, John. 2004. "Afro-Asiatic." In R.D. Woodard (editor), ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World’s Ancient Languages'', Cambridge – New York, 2004, 138–159. *Militarev, Alexander. "Towards the genetic affiliation of Ongota, a nearly-extinct language of Ethiopia," 60 pp. In ''Orientalia et Classica: Papers of the Institute of Oriental and Classical Studies'', Issue 5. Moscow. (Forthcoming.) *Newman, Paul. 1980. ''The Classification of Chadic within Afroasiatic.'' Leiden: Universitaire Pers Leiden. *Theil, R. 2006
Is Omotic Afro-Asiatic?
Proceedings from the David Dwyer retirement symposium, Michigan State University, East Lansing, 21 October 2006. * * * *Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2020). Revivalistics, ''Revivalistics: From the Genesis of Israeli to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond''
Oxford University Press
/
Afro-Asiatic
at the Linguist List MultiTree Project (not functional as of 2014): Genealogical trees attributed to Delafosse 1914, Greenberg 1950–1955, Greenberg 1963, Fleming 1976, Hodge 1976, Orel & Stolbova 1995, Diakonoff 1996–1998, Ehret 1995–2000, Hayward 2000, Militarev 2005, Blench 2006, and Fleming 2006
presented by Alexander Militarev at his talk "Genealogical classification of Afro-Asiatic languages according to the latest data" at the conference on the 70th anniversary of V.M. Illich-Svitych, Moscow, 2004
short annotations of the talks given there
The prehistory of a dispersal: the Proto-Afrasian (Afroasiatic) farming lexicon
by Alexander Militarev in "Examining the Farming/Language Dispersal Hypothesis", eds. P. Bellwood & C. Renfrew. (McDonald Institute Monographs.) Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2002, p. 135–50.
Once More About Glottochronology And The Comparative Method: The Omotic-Afrasian case
by Alexander Militarev in "Aspects of Comparative Linguistics", v. 1. Moscow: RSUH Publishers, 2005, pp. 339–408.
Root Extension And Root Formation In Semitic And Afrasian
by Alexander Militarev in "Proceedings of the Barcelona Symposium on comparative Semitic", 19-20/11/2004. Aula Orientalis 23/1-2, 2005, pp. 83–129.
Akkadian-Egyptian lexical matches
by Alexander Militarev in "Papers on Semitic and Afroasiatic Linguistics in Honor of Gene B. Gragg." Ed. by Cynthia L. Miller. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 60. Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 2007, p. 139–145.
A comparison of Orel-Stolbova's and Ehret's Afro-Asiatic reconstructions
"Is Omotic Afro-Asiatic?"
by Rolf Theil (2006)
NACAL
The North American Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics, now in its 35th year
of Roger Blench (wit
family tree
. {{DEFAULTSORT:Afroasiatic Languages Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic peoples, * Language families Ethnic groups in Africa Ethnic groups in Asia Ethnic groups in Europe
Etymology
In the early 19th century, linguists grouped the Berber languages, Berber, Cushitic languages, Cushitic and Egyptian language, Egyptian languages within a "Hamitic" phylum, in acknowledgement of these languages' genetic relationship (linguistics), genetic relation with each other and with those in the Semitic languages, Semitic phylum. The terms "Hamitic" and "Semitic" were etymologically derived from the Book of Genesis, which describes various Biblical tribes descended from Ham (son of Noah), Ham and Shem, two sons of Noah. By the 1860s, the main constituent elements within the broader Afroasiatic family had been worked out. Friedrich Müller (linguist), Friedrich Müller introduced the name "Hamito-Semitic" for the entire language family in his ''Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft'' (1876). Maurice Delafosse (1914) later coined the term "Afroasiatic" (often now spelled "Afro-Asiatic"). However, it did not come into general use until Joseph Greenberg (1950) formally proposed its adoption. In doing so, Greenberg sought to emphasize the fact that 'Hamitic' was not a valid group and that language cladistics did not reflect race. In current scholarly usage, the most commonly used names are "Afroasiatic", "Hamito-Semitic", and "Semito-Hamitic". Individual scholars have also called the family "Erythraean" (Tucker 1966) and "Lisramic" (Hodge 1972). In lieu of "Hamito-Semitic", the Russian linguist Igor Diakonoff later suggested the term "Afrasian", meaning "half African, half Asiatic", in reference to the geographic distribution of the family's constituent languages.Distribution and branches
Scholars generally treat the Afroasiatic language family as including at least the following five branches:
* Berber languages, Berber
* Chadic languages, Chadic
* Cushitic languages, Cushitic
* Egyptian language, Egyptian
* Semitic languages, Semitic
A sixth family's inclusion in Afroasiatic is disputed by a minority of scholars:
* Omotic languages, Omotic
Although there is general agreement on these six families, linguistics, linguists who study Afroasiatic raise some points of disagreement, in particular:
* The Omotic language branch is the most controversial member of Afroasiatic because the grammatical formatives to which most linguists have given the greatest weight in classifying languages in the family "are either absent or distinctly wobbly" (Hayward 1995). Greenberg (1963) and others considered it a subgroup of Cushitic, whereas others have raised doubts about its being part of proper Afroasiatic at all (e.g. Theil 2006).
* The Afroasiatic identity of Ongota language, Ongota is also broadly questioned, as is its position within Afroasiatic among those who accept it, due to the "mixed" appearance of the language and a paucity of research and data. Harold C. Fleming, Harold Fleming (2006) proposes that Ongota constitutes a separate branch of Afroasiatic. Bonny Sands (2009) finds the proposal by Savà and Tosco (2003) the most convincing: namely that Ongota is an East Cushitic language with a Nilo-Saharan languages, Nilo-Saharan substratum. In other words, it would appear that the Ongota people once spoke a Nilo-Saharan language, then shifted to speaking a Cushitic language but retained some characteristics of their earlier Nilo-Saharan language.
* Beja language, Beja, sometimes listed as a separate branch of Afroasiatic, is more often included in the Cushitic branch, which has a substantial degree of internal diversity.
* There is no consensus on the interrelationships of the five non-Omotic branches of Afroasiatic (see #Subgrouping, § Subgrouping below). This situation is not unusual, even among long-established language families: scholars also frequently disagree on the internal classification of the Indo-European languages, for instance.
* The extinct Meroitic language has been proposed (Bruce Trigger, 1964,Trigger, Bruce G., ''‘Meroitic and Eastern Sudanic: A Linguistic Relationship?’'', Kush 12, 1964, 188–194. 1977Trigger, Bruce, G.,''‘The Classification of Meroitic: Geographical Considerations’'', Schriften zur Geschichte und Kultur des Alten Orients 13, 1977, 421–435.) as an unclassified Afroasiatic language, because it shares the phonotactics characteristic of the family, but there is not enough evidence to secure a classification (Fritz Hintze, 1974,Hintze, Fritz, ''‘Some Problems of Meroitic Philology’'', Abdel Gadir Mahmoud Abdalla (ed.), Studies of the Ancient Languages of the Sudan, Sudanese Studies 3, Khartoum University Press, Khartoum, 1974, 73–78.)
* The classification of Kujargé language, Kujargé within Afroasiatic is not agreed upon. Blench (2008) notes that much of the basic vocabulary looks Cushitic languages, Cushitic, and speculates that Kujargé could even be a conservative language transitional between Chadic and Cushitic.
Demographics
In descending order of the number of speakers, widely-spoken Afroasiatic languages include: * Arabic (Semitic languages, Semitic), the most widely spoken Afroasiatic language today, has over 300 million native speakers; additionally, Classical Arabic, an archaic form of the language, is the liturgical language of Islam, the world's second-largest religion. * Hausa language, Hausa (Chadic languages, Chadic), the dominant language of northern Nigeria and southern Niger, spoken as a first language by over 40 million people and used as a ''lingua franca'' by another 20 million across West Africa and the Sahel. * Oromo language, Oromo (Cushitic languages, Cushitic), spoken in Ethiopia and Kenya by around 34 million people. * Amharic (Semitic languages, Semitic), official working language of Ethiopia, with over 25 million native speakers in addition to millions of other Ethiopians speaking it as a lingua franca, second language. * Somali language, Somali (Cushitic), spoken by 21.8 million people in Somalia, Djibouti, Somali Region, eastern Ethiopia and North Eastern Province (Kenya), northeastern Kenya. * Tigrinya language, Tigrinya (Semitic), spoken by around 9.73 million people in Eritrea and Tigray Region of Ethiopia. *Afar language, Afar (Cushitic), spoken by around 7.5 million people in Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Eritrea. *Shilha language, Shilha (Berber languages, Berber), spoken by around 7 million people in Morocco. *Kabyle language, Kabyle (Berber), spoken by around 5.6 million people in Algeria. *Hebrew language, Hebrew (Semitic), spoken by around 5 million native speakers, and additionally by 4 million second-language speakers in Israel and the Jewish diaspora; Biblical Hebrew is the liturgical language of Judaism and of Samaritanism. *Central Atlas Tamazight (Berber), spoken by around 4.6 million people in Morocco. *Riffian language, Riffian (Berber), spoken by around 4.2 million people in Morocco. * Gurage languages (Semitic), a group of languages spoken by more than 2 million people in Ethiopia. *Tigre language, Tigre (Semitic), spoken by around 2 million people in Eritrea. *Wolaitta language, Wolaitta (Omotic), spoken by around 1.6 million people in Ethiopia. *Maltese language, Maltese (Semitic), spoken by around half a million people in Malta and the Emigration from Malta, Maltese diaspora. It descended from Siculo-Arabic independently from modern Varieties of Arabic, Arabic dialects, features Romance languages, Romance Stratum (linguistics), superstrates and has been written in the Latin script since at least the 14th century. *Assyrian Neo-Aramaic (Semitic), a variety of modern Aramaic, spoken by more than 500,000 people in the Assyrian diaspora.Classification history
In the 9th century the Hebrew grammarian Judah ibn Kuraish, Judah ibn Quraysh of Tiaret in Algeria became the first to link two branches of Afroasiatic together; he perceived a relationship between Berber and Semitic. He knew of Semitic through his study of Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic. In the course of the 19th century, Europeans also began suggesting such relationships. In 1844, Theodor Benfey proposed a language family consisting of Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic (he called the latter "Ethiopic"). In the same year T.N. Newman suggested a relationship between Semitic and Hausa, but this would long remain a topic of dispute and uncertainty. Friedrich Müller (linguist), Friedrich Müller named the traditional Hamito-Semitic family in 1876 in his ''Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft'' ("Outline of Linguistics"), and defined it as consisting of a Semitic group plus a "Hamitic" group containing Egyptian, Berber, and Cushitic; he excluded the Chadic group. It was the Egyptology, Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius (1810–1884) who restricted Hamitic to the non-Semitic languages in Africa, which are characterized by a grammatical Grammatical gender, gender system. This "Hamitic language group" was proposed to unite various, mainly North-African, languages, including the Ancient Egyptian language, the Berber languages, the Cushitic languages, the Beja language, and the Chadic languages. Unlike Müller, Lepsius saw Hausa language, Hausa and Nama language, Nama as part of the Hamitic group. These classifications relied in part on non-linguistic anthropological and racial arguments. Both authors used the skin-color, mode of subsistence, and other characteristics of native speakers as part of their arguments for grouping particular languages together.
In 1912, Carl Meinhof published ''Die Sprachen der Hamiten'' ("The Languages of the Hamites"), in which he expanded Lepsius's model, adding the Fula language, Fula, Maasai language, Maasai, Bari language, Bari, Nandi languages, Nandi, Sandawe language, Sandawe and Hadza language, Hadza languages to the Hamitic group. Meinhof's model was widely supported in the 1940s. Meinhof's system of classification of the Hamitic languages was based on a belief that "speakers of Hamitic became largely coterminous with cattle herding peoples with essentially Caucasian origins, intrinsically different from and superior to the 'Negroes of Africa'." However, in the case of the so-called Nilo-Hamitic languages (a concept he introduced), it was based on the typological feature of gender and a "fallacious theory of mixed language, language mixture". Meinhof did this although earlier work by scholars such as Lepsius and Johnston had substantiated that the languages which he would later dub "Nilo-Hamitic" were in fact Nilotic languages, with numerous similarities in vocabulary to other Nilotic languages.
Leo Reinisch (1909) had already proposed linking Cushitic and Chadic while urging their more distant affinity with Egyptian and Semitic. However, his suggestion found little acceptance. Marcel Cohen (1924) rejected the idea of a distinct "Hamitic" subgroup and included Hausa language, Hausa (a Chadic language) in his comparative Hamito-Semitic vocabulary. Finally, Joseph Greenberg's 1950 work led to the widespread rejection of "Hamitic" as a language category by linguists. Greenberg refuted Meinhof's linguistic theories and rejected the use of racial and social evidence. In dismissing the notion of a separate "Nilo-Hamitic" language category, in particular, Greenberg was "returning to a view widely held a half-century earlier". He consequently rejoined Meinhof's so-called Nilo-Hamitic languages with their appropriate Nilotic siblings. He also added (and sub-classified) the Chadic languages, and proposed a new name, "Afroasiatic", for the family. Almost all scholars have accepted this classification as the new and continued consensus.
Greenberg developed his model fully in his book ''The Languages of Africa'' (1963), in which he reassigned most of Meinhof's additions to Hamitic to other language families, notably Nilo-Saharan. Following Isaac Schapera and rejecting Meinhof, he classified the Hottentot language, Khoekhoe language as a member of the Khoisan languages, a grouping that has since proven inaccurate and excessively motivated on the presence of Click consonant, click sounds. To Khoisan he also added the Tanzanian Hadza language, Hadza and Sandawe language, Sandawe, though this view has been discredited as linguists working on these languages regard them as Language isolate, linguistic isolates. Despite this, Greenberg's classification remains a starting point for modern work on many languages spoken in Africa, and the Hamitic category (and its extension to Nilo-Hamitic) has no part in this.
Since the three traditional branches of the Hamitic languages (Berber, Cushitic and Egyptian) have not been shown to form an exclusive (Monophyly, monophyletic) phylogenetic unit of their own, separate from other Afroasiatic languages, linguists no longer use the term in this sense. Each of these branches is instead now regarded as an independent subgroup of the larger Afroasiatic family.
In 1969, Harold C. Fleming, Harold Fleming proposed that what had previously been known as Western Cushitic is an independent branch of Afroasiatic, suggesting for it the new name Omotic languages, "Omotic". This proposal and name have met with widespread acceptance.
Based on typological differences with the other Cushitic languages, Robert Hetzron proposed that Beja has to be removed from Cushitic, thus forming an independent branch of Afroasiatic. Most scholars, however, reject this proposal, and continue to group Beja as the sole member of a Northern branch within Cushitic.
''Glottolog'' does not accept that the inclusion or even unity of Omotic has been established, nor that of Ongota or the unclassified Kujarge. It therefore splits off the following groups as small families: South Omotic languages, South Omotic, Mao languages, Mao, Dizoid languages, Dizoid, Gonga–Gimojan languages, Gonga–Gimojan (North Omotic apart from the preceding), Ongota language, Ongota, and Kujarge language, Kujarge.
Subgrouping
Little agreement exists on the subgrouping (linguistics), subgrouping of the five or six branches of Afroasiatic: Semitic, Egyptian, Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, and Omotic. However, Christopher Ehret (1979), Harold Fleming (1981), and Joseph Greenberg (1981) all agree that the Omotic branch split from the rest first. Otherwise: * Paul Newman (linguist), Paul Newman (1980) groups Berber with Chadic and Egyptian with Semitic, while questioning the inclusion of Omotic in Afroasiatic. Rolf Theil (2006) concurs with the exclusion of Omotic but does not otherwise address the structure of the family. * Harold Fleming (1981) divides non-Omotic Afroasiatic, or "Erythraean", into three groups, Cushitic, Semitic, and Chadic-Berber-Egyptian. He later added Semitic and Beja to Chadic-Berber-Egyptian and tentatively proposed Ongota language, Ongota as a new third branch of Erythraean. He thus divided Afroasiatic into two major branches, Omotic and Erythraean, with Erythraean consisting of three sub-branches, Cushitic, Chadic-Berber-Egyptian-Semitic-Beja, and Ongota. * Like Harold Fleming, Christopher Ehret (1995: 490) divides Afroasiatic into two branches, Omotic and Erythrean. He divides Omotic into two branches, North Omotic and South Omotic. He divides Erythrean into Cushitic, comprising Beja, Agaw, and East-South Cushitic, and North Erythrean, comprising Chadic and "Boreafrasian." According to his classification, Boreafrasian consists of Egyptian, Berber, and Semitic. * Vladimir Orel and Olga Stolbova (1995) group Berber with Semitic and Chadic with Egyptian. They split up Cushitic into five or more independent branches of Afroasiatic, viewing Cushitic as a Sprachbund rather than a language family. * Igor M. Diakonoff (1996) subdivides Afroasiatic in two, grouping Berber, Cushitic, and Semitic together as East-West Afrasian (ESA), and Chadic with Egyptian as North-South Afrasian (NSA). He excludes Omotic from Afroasiatic. * Lionel Bender (linguist), Lionel Bender (1997) groups Berber, Cushitic, and Semitic together as "Macro-Cushitic". He regards Chadic and Omotic as the branches of Afroasiatic most remote from the others. * Alexander Militarev (2000), on the basis of lexicostatistics, groups Berber with Chadic and both more distantly with Semitic, as against Cushitic and Omotic. He places Ongota in South Omotic.Date of Afroasiatic
The earliest written evidence of an Afroasiatic language is an Egyptian language, Ancient Egyptian inscription dated to c. 3400 BC (5,400 years ago). Symbols on Gerzeh culture, Gerzean (Naqada II) pottery resembling Egyptian hieroglyphs#History and evolution, Egyptian hieroglyphs date back to c. 4000 BC, suggesting an earlier possible dating. This gives us a minimum date for the age of Afroasiatic. However, Ancient Egyptian is highly divergent from Proto-Afroasiatic language, Proto-Afroasiatic, and considerable time must have elapsed in between them. Estimates of the date at which the Proto-Afroasiatic language was spoken vary widely. They fall within a range between approximately 7500 BC (9,500 years ago), and approximately 16,000 BC (18,000 years ago). According to Igor M. Diakonoff (1988: 33n), Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken wikt:circa, c. 10,000 BC. Christopher Ehret (2002: 35–36) asserts that Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken c. 11,000 BC at the latest, and possibly as early as c. 16,000 BC. These dates are older than those associated with other proto-languages.Afroasiatic Urheimat
The Afroasiatic ''urheimat'', the hypothetical place where Proto-Afroasiatic language speakers lived in a single linguistic community, or complex of communities, before the original language dispersed geographically and divided into distinct languages, is unknown. Afroasiatic languages are today primarily spoken in Western Asia, West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahel. Their distribution seems to have been influenced by the Sahara pump theory, Sahara pump operating over the last 10,000 years.
There is no definitive agreement on when or where the original homeland of the language family existed, but some link the first speakers to the first farmers in the Levant who would later spread to North and East Africa. Others argue the first speakers were pre-agricultural and based in Northeast Africa.
Shared features with Indo-European languages in West Asia related to food production are suggested by some scholars to support a Levantine origin for Afroasiatic languages. The Levantine hypothesis does not account for the domestication of plants endemism, endemic to the Horn of Africa such as teff, Ensete ventricosum, ensete, and Guizotia abyssinica, niger seed or for the lack of evidence for intrusive agricultural populations or the cultivation of wheat, barley, or sorghum there prior to 3000 BC. A Northeast African origin is supported by the majority of scholars today. The region includes the majority of the diversity of the Afroasiatic language family and has very diverse groups in close geographic proximity, which is sometimes considered a telltale sign for a linguistic geographic origin. Igor M. Diakonoff placed the origin of the Afro-Asiatic languages in northeast Africa, with older strands south of Egypt, and newer elements straddling the Nile Delta and Sinai. Christopher Ehret argues that Proto-Afroasiatic speakers in Northeast Africa developed subsistence patterns of intensive plant collection and pastoralism, which gave the population an economic advantage that impelled the expansion of the Afroasiatic languages. Ehret suggests that a Proto-Semitic- or Proto-Semito-Berber-speaking population migrated from Northeast Africa to the Levant during the late Paleolithic and eventually gave rise to the Natufian culture. The linguist Roger Blench proposed southwestern Ethiopia as the most likely homeland of Afroasiatic, in part because of the high internal diversification of the Omotic branch spoken in that region.
Various scholars have hypothesized on the origins of Afroasiatic based on genetic evidence. Haplogroup E-M215 (Y-DNA), Y Haplogroup E-M215 is common among modern Afroasiatic-speaking groups and has been associated with an ancestral Afroasiatic population in Northeast Africa. In a 2014 autosomal DNA study, Hodgson et al. postulate that the Afroasiatic languages may have been spread by an ancestral population(s) carrying a newly-identified non-African genetic component, which the researchers dub the "Ethio-Somali". The genetic component is prevalent among modern Afroasiatic-speaking populations and is found at its highest levels among those in the Horn of Africa. The researchers suggest that the original Ethio-Somali carrying population(s) probably migrated from the Near East to Northeast Africa in the pre-agricultural period (~12–23 ka) and that a descendant population migrated back to the Levant prior to 4000 BC and developed the Semitic branch of Afroasiatic.
Similarities in grammar and syntax
Widespread (though not universal) features of the Afroasiatic languages include: * A set of emphatic consonants, variously realized as glottalized, pharyngealized, or implosive. * Verb–subject–object, VSO linguistic typology, typology with subject–verb–object, SVO tendencies. * A two-grammatical gender, gender system in the singular, with the feminine marked by the sound /t/. * All Afroasiatic subfamilies show evidence of a causative affix ''s''. * Semitic, Berber, Cushitic (including Beja), and Chadic support possessive suffixes. * Arabic nouns and adjectives#Nisba, Nisba derivation in ''-j'' (earlier Egyptian) or ''-ī'' (Semitic) * Morphology (linguistics), Morphology in which words inflect by changes within the root (vowel changes or gemination) as well as with prefixes and suffixes. One of the most remarkable shared features among the Afroasiatic languages is the prefixing verb conjugation (see the table at right), with a distinctive pattern of prefixes beginning with /ʔ t n j/, and in particular a pattern whereby third-singular masculine /j-/ is opposed to third-singular feminine and second-singular /t-/. According to Ehret (1996), tonal languages appear in the Omotic and Chadic branches of Afroasiatic, as well as in certain Cushitic languages. The Semitic, Berber and Egyptian branches generally do not use tones phoneme, phonemically. The Berber and Semitic branches share certain grammatical features (e.g. alternative feminine endings *-ay/*-āy; corresponding vowel templates for verbal conjugations) which can be reconstructed for a higher-order proto-language (provisionally called "Proto-Berbero-Semitic" by Kossmann & Suchard (2018) and Van Putten (2018)). Whether this proto-language is ancestral to Berber and Semitic only, or also to other branches of Afroasiatic, still remains to be established.Shared vocabulary
The following are some examples of Afroasiatic cognates, including ten pronouns, three nouns, and three verbs. :'' Source:'' Christopher Ehret, ''Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic'' (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). :''Note:'' Ehret does not make use of Berber in his etymologies, stating (1995: 12): "the kind of extensive reconstruction of proto-Berber lexicon that might help in sorting through alternative possible etymologies is not yet available." The Berber cognates here are taken from the previous version of the table in this article and need to be completed and referenced. :''Abbreviations:'' NOm = 'North Omotic', SOm = 'South Omotic'. MSA = 'Modern South Arabian', PSC = 'Proto-Southern Cushitic', PSom-II = 'Proto-Somali, stage 2'. masc. = 'masculine', fem. = 'feminine', sing. = 'singular', pl. = 'plural'. 1s. = 'first person singular', 2s. = 'second person singular'. :''Symbols:'' Following Ehret (1995: 70), a caron ˇ over a vowel indicates rising Tone (linguistics), tone, and a circumflex ^ over a vowel indicates falling tone. V indicates a vowel of unknown quality. Ɂ indicates a glottal stop. * indicates Linguistic reconstruction, reconstructed forms based on Comparative method (linguistics), comparison of related languages. There are two etymological dictionaries of Afroasiatic, one by Christopher Ehret, and one by Vladimir Orel and Olga Stolbova. The two dictionaries disagree on almost everything. The following table contains the thirty roots or so (out of thousands) that represent a fragile consensus of present research:Etymological bibliography
Some of the main sources for Afroasiatic etymologies include: * Cohen, Marcel. 1947. ''Essai comparatif sur le vocabulaire et la phonétique du chamito-sémitique.'' Paris: Champion. * Diakonoff, Igor M. et al. 1993–1997. "Historical-comparative vocabulary of Afrasian," ''St. Petersburg Journal of African Studies'' 2–6. * Ehret, Christopher. 1995. ''Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic (Proto-Afrasian): Vowels, Tone, Consonants, and Vocabulary'' (= ''University of California Publications in Linguistics'' 126). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. * Orel, Vladimir E. and Olga V. Stolbova. 1995. ''Hamito-Semitic Etymological Dictionary: Materials for a Reconstruction.'' Leiden: Brill. .See also
* Afroasiatic phonetic notation * Languages of Africa * Languages of Asia * Proto-Afroasiatic language * Nostratic languages * Borean languagesReferences
Works cited
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *General references
*Anthony, David. 2007. ''The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World.'' Princeton: Princeton University Press. * *Bender, Lionel et al. 2003. ''Selected Comparative-Historical Afro-Asiatic Studies in Memory of Igor M. Diakonoff.'' LINCOM. * *Bomhard, Alan R. 1996. ''Indo-European and the Nostratic Hypothesis.'' Signum. *Diakonoff, Igor M. 1988. ''Afrasian Languages.'' Moscow: Nauka. *Diakonoff, Igor M. 1996. "Some reflections on the Afrasian linguistic macrofamily." ''Journal of Near Eastern Studies'' 55, 293. *Diakonoff, Igor M. 1998. "The earliest Semitic society: Linguistic data." ''Journal of Semitic Studies'' 43, 209. *Dimmendaal, Gerrit, and Erhard Voeltz. 2007. "Africa". In Christopher Moseley, ed., ''Encyclopedia of the world's endangered languages''. *Ehret, Christopher. 1995. ''Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic (Proto-Afrasian): Vowels, Tone, Consonants, and Vocabulary.'' Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. *Ehret, Christopher. 1997Abstract
of "The lessons of deep-time historical-comparative reconstruction in Afroasiatic: reflections on ''Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic: Vowels, Tone, Consonants, and Vocabulary'' (U.C. Press, 1995)", paper delivered at the Twenty-fifth Annual Meeting of the North American Conference on Afro-Asiatic Linguistics, held in Miami, Florida, on 21–23 March 1997. *Finnegan, Ruth H. 1970. "Afro-Asiatic languages West Africa". ''Oral Literature in Africa'', pg 558. *Fleming, Harold C. 2006. ''Ongota: A Decisive Language in African Prehistory.'' Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. *Greenberg, Joseph H. 1950
"Studies in African linguistic classification: IV. Hamito-Semitic."
''Southwestern Journal of Anthropology'' 6, 47–63. *Greenberg, Joseph H. 1955. ''Studies in African Linguistic Classification.'' New Haven: Compass Publishing Company. (Photo-offset reprint of the ''SJA'' articles with minor corrections.) *Greenberg, Joseph H. 1963. ''The Languages of Africa''. Bloomington: Indiana University. (Heavily revised version of Greenberg 1955.) *Greenberg, Joseph H. 1966. ''The Languages of Africa'' (2nd ed. with additions and corrections). Bloomington: Indiana University. *Greenberg, Joseph H. 1981. "African linguistic classification." ''General History of Africa, Volume 1: Methodology and African Prehistory'', edited by Joseph Ki-Zerbo, 292–308. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. *Greenberg, Joseph H. 2000–2002. ''Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family, Volume 1: Grammar, Volume 2: Lexicon.'' Stanford: Stanford University Press. *Hayward, R. J. 1995. "The challenge of Omotic: an inaugural lecture delivered on 17 February 1994". London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. *Heine, Bernd and Derek Nurse. 2000. ''African Languages'', Chapter 4. Cambridge University Press. *Hodge, Carleton T. (editor). 1971. ''Afroasiatic: A Survey.'' The Hague – Paris: Mouton. *Hodge, Carleton T. 1991. "Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic." In Sydney M. Lamb and E. Douglas Mitchell (editors), ''Sprung from Some Common Source: Investigations into the Prehistory of Languages'', Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 141–165. *Huehnergard, John. 2004. "Afro-Asiatic." In R.D. Woodard (editor), ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World’s Ancient Languages'', Cambridge – New York, 2004, 138–159. *Militarev, Alexander. "Towards the genetic affiliation of Ongota, a nearly-extinct language of Ethiopia," 60 pp. In ''Orientalia et Classica: Papers of the Institute of Oriental and Classical Studies'', Issue 5. Moscow. (Forthcoming.) *Newman, Paul. 1980. ''The Classification of Chadic within Afroasiatic.'' Leiden: Universitaire Pers Leiden. *Theil, R. 2006
Is Omotic Afro-Asiatic?
Proceedings from the David Dwyer retirement symposium, Michigan State University, East Lansing, 21 October 2006. * * * *Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2020). Revivalistics, ''Revivalistics: From the Genesis of Israeli to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond''
Oxford University Press
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External links
Afro-Asiatic
at the Linguist List MultiTree Project (not functional as of 2014): Genealogical trees attributed to Delafosse 1914, Greenberg 1950–1955, Greenberg 1963, Fleming 1976, Hodge 1976, Orel & Stolbova 1995, Diakonoff 1996–1998, Ehret 1995–2000, Hayward 2000, Militarev 2005, Blench 2006, and Fleming 2006
presented by Alexander Militarev at his talk "Genealogical classification of Afro-Asiatic languages according to the latest data" at the conference on the 70th anniversary of V.M. Illich-Svitych, Moscow, 2004
short annotations of the talks given there
The prehistory of a dispersal: the Proto-Afrasian (Afroasiatic) farming lexicon
by Alexander Militarev in "Examining the Farming/Language Dispersal Hypothesis", eds. P. Bellwood & C. Renfrew. (McDonald Institute Monographs.) Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2002, p. 135–50.
Once More About Glottochronology And The Comparative Method: The Omotic-Afrasian case
by Alexander Militarev in "Aspects of Comparative Linguistics", v. 1. Moscow: RSUH Publishers, 2005, pp. 339–408.
Root Extension And Root Formation In Semitic And Afrasian
by Alexander Militarev in "Proceedings of the Barcelona Symposium on comparative Semitic", 19-20/11/2004. Aula Orientalis 23/1-2, 2005, pp. 83–129.
Akkadian-Egyptian lexical matches
by Alexander Militarev in "Papers on Semitic and Afroasiatic Linguistics in Honor of Gene B. Gragg." Ed. by Cynthia L. Miller. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 60. Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 2007, p. 139–145.
A comparison of Orel-Stolbova's and Ehret's Afro-Asiatic reconstructions
"Is Omotic Afro-Asiatic?"
by Rolf Theil (2006)
NACAL
The North American Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics, now in its 35th year
of Roger Blench (wit
family tree
. {{DEFAULTSORT:Afroasiatic Languages Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic peoples, * Language families Ethnic groups in Africa Ethnic groups in Asia Ethnic groups in Europe