Proto-Afroasiatic
ca. 16,000–10,000 BC
Dating[edit]
There is no consensus as to when Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken.[3] The absolute latest date for when Proto-Afroasiatic could have been extant is c. 4000 BCE, after which Egyptian and the Semitic languages are firmly attested. However, in all likelihood these languages began to diverge well before this hard boundary.[4] The estimations offered by scholars as to when Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken vary widely, ranging from 18,000 BCE to 8,000 BCE.[3] An estimate at the youngest end of this range still makes Afroasiatic the oldest proven language family.[5] 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.[1]
Problems of reconstruction[edit]
At present, there is no commonly accepted reconstruction of Afroasiatic morphology, grammar, syntax, or phonology.[6][7] Because of the great amount of time since Afroasiatic split into branches, there are limits to what scholars can reconstruct.[8] Cognates tend to disappear from related languages over time.[9] There are currently not many widely accepted Afroasiatic cognates,[10] and it is difficult to derive sound correspondence rules from a small number of examples.[8] The most convincing cognates in Afroasiatic often have the same or very similar consonants but very different vowels, a fact which has not yet been explained.[11] Additionally, it is not always clear which words are cognates,[8] as some proposed cognates may be chance resemblances.[9] Moreover, at least some cognates are likely to have been altered irregularly due to analogical change, making them harder to recognize.[8] As words change meaning over time, the question of which words might have originally meant the same thing is often difficult to answer.[12] As a result, Robert Ratcliffe suggests that Proto-Afroasiatic may never be reconstructed in the same way that Proto-Indo-European has been.[2]
The current state of reconstruction is also hindered by the fact that the Egyptian and Semitic branches of Afroasiatic are attested as early as 3000 BCE, while the languages of the Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, and Omotic branches are only attested much later, sometimes in the 20th century.[13] The long history of scholarship of the Semitic languages compared to other branches is another obstacle in reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic; typical features of Semitic have often been projected back to the proto-language, despite their cross-linguistic rarity and lack of correspondences in other branches.[1][14] Like cognates, shared morphological features tend to disappear over time, as can be demonstrated within Afroasiatic by comparing Old Egyptian (2600–2000 BCE) with Coptic (after 200 CE).[15] Yet it is also possible for forms closer to PAA to be preserved in languages recorded later, while languages recorded earlier may have forms that diverge more from PAA.[16] In order to provide a more accurate reconstruction of Afroasiatic, it will be necessary to first reconstruct the proto-forms of the individual branches,[17] a task which has proven difficult. As of 2023, there is only the beginning of a consensus on the reconstruction of Proto-Semitic, and no widely accepted reconstruction of any of the other branches' proto-forms.[18] Current attempts at reconstructing Afroasiatic often rely on comparing individual words or features in the daughter languages, which leads to results that are not convincing to many scholars.[19][13]
Phonology[edit]
Consonants[edit]
There is currently no consensus on the consonant phonemes of Afroasiatic or on their correspondences in the individual daughter languages.[7][20] Most reconstructions agree that PAA had three series of obstruents (plosives, fricatives, and affricates) and that the continuants were all voiceless.[21] There is also general agreement that obstruents were organized in triads of voiceless, voiced, and "emphatic" (possibly glottalized) consonants, and that PAA included pharyngeal and laryngeal consonants.[22] Disagreement exists about whether there were labialized velar consonants.[21]
Several Afroasiatic languages have large consonant inventories, and it is likely that this is inherited from proto-Afroasiatic.[22] Vladimir Orel and Olga Stolbova (1995) reconstruct 32 consonant phonemes,[23] while Christopher Ehret reconstructs 42.[24] Of these, twelve in both reconstructions rely on the same sound correspondences, while an additional eighteen rely on more or less the same sound correspondences.[25]
Morphosyntax[edit]
Biradical and triradical roots[edit]
The degree to which the Proto-AA verbal root was originally triradical (having three consonants) or biradical (having two consonants) is debated.[1] Among the modern branches, most Semitic roots are triradical, whereas most Chadic, Omotic, and Cushitic roots are biradical.[48] The "traditional theory" argues for original triradicalism in the family, as is the case in Semitic.[49] In this theory, almost all biradical roots are the result of the loss of a third consonant.[50][51] As early as the Middle Ages, however, grammarians had noticed that some triradical roots in Arabic differed in only one consonant and had related meanings.[52] According to supporters of original triradicalism such as Gideon Goldenberg, these variations are common in language and inconclusive for the matter. He compares phonetic similarity between words with similar meanings in English such as glow, gleam, glitter, glaze, and glade.[53]
Other scholars argue that the PAA root may have originally been mostly biradical, to which a third radical was then added.[42] Christopher Ehret argues that the third consonants were derivational affixes, proposing as many as thirty-seven separate verbal extensions that subsequently became fossilized as third consonants.[54] 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.[55] An alternative model was proposed by Georges Bohas, who argued that the third consonants were added to differentiate roots of similar meaning but without the third consonant having a particular meaning itself.[56] Biradical verbs may also have been made triradical on the model of so-called "weak verbs," which have a final radical y or w.[52]
Many scholars do not argue for the original nature of either biradical or triradical roots, instead arguing that there are original triradical roots, original biradical roots, and triradical roots resulting from the addition of a consonant.[50] Not all triradical roots can be convincingly explained as coming from biradicals, and there are cases where triradical roots with similar meanings appear to differ in one consonant due to root-internal changes or derivation via rhyme.[52] Andréas Stauder argues that the evidence from Ancient Egyptian shows that both tri- and biradical verbs were probably present in Proto-Afroasiatic.[57] Igor Diakonoff, in contrast, argued that the PAA root was originally biradical but saw the biradical roots outside of Semitic as largely the result of losing a third consonant.[58]
Root-and-pattern-morphology[edit]
Afroasiatic languages feature a "root-and-pattern" (nonconcatenative) system of morphology, in which the root consists of consonants alone and vowels are inserted via apophony according to "templates" to create words.[42][59] A "template" consists of one or more vowels and sometimes a consonant; consonants included in the pattern often involve gemination.[60]
If root-and-pattern morphology originated in Proto-Afroasiatic, then an explanation must be found for why it has mostly disappeared in the Omotic and Chadic branches; if it was not present in PAA, then an explanation must be found for why it developed independently in the Semitic, Egyptian, and Cushitic branches.[61]
Case alignment[edit]
Hans-Jürgen Sasse proposed that Proto-Afroasiatic was a marked nominative language, in which the nominative case is only used to mark the subject of a verb, whereas an absolutive case is the citation form of the noun and also marks the object.[62] Evidence for marked nominative alignment comes primarily from the use of cases in Cushitic and the so-called "states" of the noun in Berber languages; additionally, Helmut Satzinger has argued that the forms of the pronouns in the other branches show evidence of marked nominative alignment.[63]
Igor Diakonoff instead argued that Proto-Afroasiatic was an ergative-absolutive language, in which the ergative case marks the subject of transitive verbs and the absolutive case marks both the object of transitive verbs and the subject of intransitive verbs.[64] Satzinger suggests that Proto-Afroasiatic may have developed from ergative-absolutive to a marked nominative language.[65] However, Abdelaziz Allati notes that, if PAA was originally ergative-aligned, it is unclear why both the attested ancient languages and modern AA languages predominantly have nominative-accusative alignment.[66]
Word order[edit]
Proto-Afroasiatic word order has not yet been established.[67] Igor Diakonoff proposed that PAA had verb-subject-object word order (VSO word order), meaning that the verb would come first in most sentences.[55] Carsten Peust likewise supports VSO word order, as this is found in the two oldest attested branches, Egyptian and Semitic.[68] However, Ronny Meyer and H. Ekkehard Wolff argue that this proposal does not concord with Diakonoff's suggestion that PAA was an ergative-absolutive language, in which subject and object are not valid categories.[69] Zygmont Frajzyngier and Erin Shay further note that, if Proto-Afroasiatic had VSO word order, then an explanation must be found for why two of its branches, Omotic and Cushitic, show subject–object–verb word order (SOV word order).[55] Both sets of scholars argue that this area needs more research.[55][69]
Nouns and adjectives[edit]
Grammatical gender[edit]
A system of sex-based male and female grammatical gender is widely agreed to have been present in Proto-Afroasiatic.[70] However, Russell Schuh argues that there was no gender distinction in the plural, as this feature is found only in Semitic and Berber (see also personal pronouns).[71] Christopher Ehret argues against the consensus that grammatical gender existed in Proto-Afroasiatic, arguing that its development is an isogloss separating all other Afroasiatic languages from Omotic, which alone preserves the original, genderless grammar of the proto-language.[72] Other scholars such as Lionel Bender argue that Omotic has lost grammatical gender despite originally having had it.[73]
A feminine morpheme -Vt is found widely in Afroasiatic languages.[74] Lameen Souag argues that this feminine ending -t is probably a case of a grammaticalized demonstrative, as this feature has also independently developed in some Chadic and Cushitic languages.[75] Diakonoff argued that the original gender system of Afroasiatic had masculine endings *-y/*-w (later *-Vy/*-Vw) and feminine endings *-H/*-y (later *-āʔ/*-āy), the later of which was later ousted by feminine *-(a)t on nouns.[76] Marijn van Putten has reconstructed a feminine ending *-ay/*-āy from Semitic and Berber evidence: he argues that this ending comes down from the last common ancestor of Berber and Semitic, which may be Proto-Afroasiatic.[77] Despite arguing that Proto-Afroasiatic had no grammatical gender, Ehret argues that there is evidence for natural gender in all branches, including Omotic, perhaps marked originally by an opposition of PAA *-u (masculine) and *-i (feminine), as also found in the second person singular pronouns.[72]
In addition to grammatical gender, Igor Diakonoff argues that Afroasiatic languages show traces of a nominal classification system, which was already unproductive in the Proto-Afroasiatic stage. In particular, he noted a suffix *-Vb- used to mark harmful animals.[78] Vladimir Orel also attests less well-defined uses for this suffix,[79] while Ehret takes this as a suffix to mark animals and parts of the body.[80]
Number[edit]
Afroasiatic languages today clearly distinguish singular and plural.[42] One of the first features of Proto-Afroasiatic proposed by Joseph Greenberg was the existence of "internal-a plurals" (a type of broken plural): a pluralizing morpheme in which a vowel *a was inserted between the two final consonants of the root, possibly replacing another vowel via apophony.[81] However, Paul Newman has argued that while plurals via vowel alteration are frequent in Chadic, they cannot be reconstructed back to Proto-Chadic or Proto-Afroasiatic.[82] Andréas Stauder likewise argues that Coptic and Egyptian plurals via vowel change may have developed independently.[83] Lameen Souag argues that while some form of vowel-changing plural likely goes back to Proto-Afroasiatic, many of the templates found in the branches likely do not.[84]
Several Afroasiatic languages of the Semitic, Chadic, and Cushitic branches attest pluralization via reduplication, a feature which has often been assumed to go back to Proto-Afroasiatic.[85] Robert Ratcliffe has instead argued that this reduplicating pattern originated after PAA, as a way to allow biradical nouns to insert "internal-a," a process which then became generalized to other roots in some languages; as an alternative hypothesis, they may have developed from forms with plural suffixes.[86] Afroasiatic languages also use several pluralizing affixes – few of these, however, are present in more than a few branches, making them difficult to reconstruct.[87]
In addition to a singular and plural, Egyptian and Semitic attest a dual, the endings of which can be reconstructed respectively as Ancient Egyptian: *-a(y) and Semitic *-ā (nominative) and *-ay (oblique).[88] These endings are very similar to each other,[83] and due to the dual's attestation in the two earliest attested branches of Afroasiatic it is also usually reconstructed for the proto-language.[89][90] The loss of the dual in the other branches over time is a well attested feature in languages, including within the Egyptian and Semitic branches themselves.[88]
Pronouns[edit]
Personal pronouns[edit]
The forms of the personal pronouns are very stable throughout Afroasiatic (excluding Omotic),[69] but there is no consensus on what the reconstructed set of Afroasiatic pronouns might have looked like.[114] Most modern branches have an independent / absolute pronoun, an object pronoun, and a suffix /possessive pronoun.[115] According to Igor Diakonoff, the suffix/possessive pronoun was originally used as the object of verbs and to show a possessive relationship, the "independent" pronoun served to show emphasis, and the "object" pronoun was used to mark the subject of intransitive verbs and the direct object of transitive verbs.[116]
All Afroasiatic branches differentiate between masculine and feminine third person singular pronouns, and all except for Cushitic and Omotic also differentiate between second person singular masculine and feminine pronouns.[69] Semitic and Berber also differentiate between masculine and feminine second and third person plural, but there is no evidence for this in Ancient Egyptian, Cushitic, or Chadic, perhaps indicating that there was no gender distinction in the plural in Proto-Afroasiatic.[117] Chadic has both an inclusive and exclusive form of "we", which Igor Diakonoff and Václav Blažek reconstruct also for Proto-Afroasiatic.[118][119]
Helmut Satzinger has argued that Proto-Afroasiatic only distinguished between the "object" and "possessive" pronouns, deriving the independent pronouns via various processes in the branches.[120] He argues that the independent pronouns derive from various strategies combining pronominal elements with different nominal or pronominal bases.[121] Václav Blažek reconstructs an original set of independent pronouns but argues that the ones found in most current Afroasiatic languages arose by a process of suppletion similar to that argued by Satzinger.[122] An example of one such process is the use of the prefix *ʔan-/*ʔin-, which appears in the Semitic and Old Egyptian first person independent pronouns, the Old Egyptian, Cushitic, and Semitic second person singular and plural pronouns, and the Old Egyptian and Berber third person singular and plural independent pronouns.[123] While Ehret reconstructs this as the original form of the first person singular pronoun,[124] other scholars argue that this element either represents a form of the copula 'to be' or a particle meaning 'self'.[125]
Unlike in the Indo-European or Austronesian language families, numerals in AA languages cannot be traced to a proto-system.[195][196] 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.[197] Igor Diakonoff has suggested that many of the Afroasiatic languages' numerals derive transparently from counting on fingers (e.g. Cushitic/Omotic *lam 'two' = 'index finger'; Semitic *ḫams- 'five' = 'handful').[198]
In some instances, the same numeral has more than one root within a single branch. Within the Semitic language family alone, Edward Lipiński counts four different roots meaning "one".[199] Aren Wilson-Wright suggests that the root for 'one' has been replaced at least three times throughout the history of Afroasiatic, and points to parallels in the Indo-European Greek and Tocharian languages.[200] The Semitic, Chadic, and Berber branches likewise show evidence for different branch-internal roots for two;[201][202] Ehret et al. (2023) argue that such differences could arise from different words for ordinal and cardinal numbers or from the use of different words for counting and adjectival forms of numbers.[203]
An additional difficulty in comparing numeral sets is that they often have irregular sound correspondences, as can be seen in Indo-European by comparing Latin quattuor quinque to the Greek cognates tettares pente (both 'four' 'five').[204]
The following cognates are discussed for the numerals 2–4:
The following cognate sets from 6–8 are also commonly accepted,[227] although each contains inconsistent sound correspondences:[228]
Lastly: