Afro-Asian languages

The Afro-Asian languages , or Hamito-Semitic , belong to a family of language spoken in the Middle East and in Africa. This family generally cuts out in four branches: The Berber , the old Egyptian (old, néo and copte), the couchitic (bedja, agaw, afar-saho, somali, etc) and the Semitic (akkadien, ougaritic, etc).

Evolution of the Afro-Asian one

The typological classification of the languages is to be distinguished from their genetic classification. However, for a few years research on the Afro-Asian model has diversified, in particular in direction of historical linguistics, with authors like Lionel Bender and Christopher Ehret. One can also announce the existence of theses defended by some authors, like Gabor Takacs or Alain Anselin, which support the idea of a purely African origin of the Afro-Asian one. These theses remain however very marginal, and only are taken again very little by the other specialists.

These authors conceive the Afro-Asian one as being primarily a African “macro-phylum”, with Asian ramifications, precisely of the Semitic languages of Asia. Thus, according to Anselin: All would occur as if the new speakers of African language a “at the beginning” had preserved part of their vocabulary of origin, and had triconsonnantisé systematically well beyond its own tendencies (cf C. Ehret, 1989), the African lexicon itself. traditional examples do not miss: couchitic: *kVr- , tchadic: *kVl- , dog, Semitic: k-l-b ; couchitic: *k' Vc- , tchadic: *gVs- , small, Semitic: q-t-n , etc. Other authors, such as the Somali linguist Mohamed Ndiriye Abdullahi, go until calling into question the name even of “Afro-Asian” or “afrasian”, in particular by: Semites emigrated from the Africa side off the Red Sea anyway and exported year African language to Asia where they puts Asians (...). This is only logical way to account for the presence off year African branch in has place where it is surrounded by unrelated languages. (...) It would make direction to changes the name off the group to something like Ethiopic gold Ethio-Chadic.

Philological typology

The Afro-Asian family gathers spoken languages in Africa septentrional and Saharan, with the the Middle East and the Middle East.

In seeing the list in this other article.

Two languages would be of dubious position: the béja, generally considered as couchitic, and the ongota.

Common properties

Common properties of the Afro-Asian languages are :

two kind S in the singular, the female one marked by its /t/, and a plural epicene (Berbère S, béja, Egyptian, and Semitic distinguishes the kind in the plural);
syntactic typology VSO with tendency SVO;
a whole of emphatic consonants, carried out like glottalized , pharyngalized or implosive ;
a morphology in which the words are bent by means of internal changes ( introflexion ) and the use of many others Affixe S.

Root S communes

Here related radicals :

b-n- “to build”, attested into tchadic, Arab ( *bny ), omotic and Hebrew (bana);
MT “to die”, attested into tchadic (haoussa mutu ), Egyptian, Berber ( mel , yemmut ), Arabic (* mwt ) and Hebrew (puts);
Sn “to know”, attested into tchadic, Berber, and Egyptian;
l-s “language”, attested in Arabic (* lasaan/lisaan ), Egyptian ( NS , coptic tired ), Berber ( islands ), tchadic (haoussa harshe ) and Hebrew (" lashon") ;
Sm “name”, attested in Arabic (* ism ), Berber ( isem ), tchadic (haoussa suna ), couchitic, Hebrew (shem), and omotic ( it is considered that the Berber form, isem , and the omotic form, sunts , could be borrowed from the Semitic one (?) ;
DM “blood”, attested into Berber ( idammen ), Arab
(* prejudice ), tchadic, Hebrew (prejudice) and perhaps omotic.

Random links: