tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post2470034303424935760..comments2024-03-23T01:31:13.502+01:00Comments on Jabal al-Lughat: Genetic and linguistic perspectives on AfroasiaticLameen Souag الأمين سواقhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00773164776222840428noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-50417681695272149342012-04-17T09:58:18.025+02:002012-04-17T09:58:18.025+02:00John: Egyptian probably absorbed all its nearest r...John: Egyptian probably absorbed all its nearest relatives in the course of becoming the only Afroasiatic language of the Nile Valley; Semitic and Berber had probably already split off by the early dynastic period.<br /><br />Malam: True for Siwa, but the Siwis genetically look completely different from other Berber groups. To figure out the whole story we'll need Libyan data, and not much of that has come out yet.<br /><br />Michael: It's not quite that simple; the linguistic (as opposed to ethnographic) evidence for Berber presence at this period seems to be much weaker than commonly thought, as noted in <a href="http://lughat.blogspot.fr/2011/01/berber-words-in-roman-times-and-ghomara.html" rel="nofollow">an earlier post</a>.Lameen Souag الأمين سواقhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00773164776222840428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-90971541952541410342012-03-09T18:06:02.463+01:002012-03-09T18:06:02.463+01:00@John: I forgot to mention: There has been some sp...@John: I forgot to mention: There has been some speculation that an Egyptian-speaking tribe lived in the Western Desert in the 3rd millenium B.C., cf.<br /><br />Gerhard Fecht, Die Ḥ3.tjw-ˁ von Ṯḥnw, eine ägyptische Völkerschaft in der Westwüste, in: Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft Band 106, Heft 1 1956 (=Neue Folge Band 31) Steiner, Wiesbaden 1956. p. 37-60<br /><br />By the end of the 2nd millenium B.C., the Western Desert was definitely populated by Berber-speaking tribes, as shown by Berber names and titles in the Egyptian sources. So I would assume that the Egyptian branch was originally spoken in the Nile valley and the adjacent desert regions until they were replaced by the migration of Berber tribes. This would presumably also be compatible with some archaeologically motivated ideas about early migrations of Egyptians and Berbers.Michael Hahnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17815836241154280105noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-26487282677569619882012-03-09T12:05:38.698+01:002012-03-09T12:05:38.698+01:00I could imagine that the Hausa speakers might perh...I could imagine that the Hausa speakers might perhaps be not so indicative, as it is a widely used lingua franca and probably absorbed speakers of other, non-AA languages. Maybe the genes of speakers of smaller Chadic languages would be more interesting.<br /><br />@John: I agree, that's somewhat puzzling. But I think all the differences (at least in morphology) can be attributed to loss. The only area where Egyptian is definitely different (we don't know about the a-plural and case) is verbal conjugation, while it shares with Semitic (and Berber) a lot of features that Chadic and Omotic lack, e.g., the PAA suffix conjugation, absolute pronouns, the dual in -y, the genitive/nisba ending -i/y, .... So I think it's quite plausible that Egyptian radically changed its verbal system, but preserved many innovations which Chadic and Omotic maybe never had.Michael Hahnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17815836241154280105noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-16231813802622608042012-03-06T10:40:16.314+01:002012-03-06T10:40:16.314+01:00Berber languages are related to chadic ,so does Be...Berber languages are related to chadic ,so does Berber peoples to chadic peoples.<br />The R-V88 found among chadic people was also found in high velocity among Siwa Berber of western Egypt.Malamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03108957421251778462noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-42552735746548805542012-01-22T22:37:13.178+01:002012-01-22T22:37:13.178+01:00I have nothing to add to this (other than surprise...I have nothing to add to this (other than surprise at the expectation that anything could be told of languages that split that far back), but I just wanted to say I found this very interesting to read.Michael Granthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01587177931720715561noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-1875664810603775992012-01-16T20:16:36.282+01:002012-01-16T20:16:36.282+01:00What has always seemed strange to me in AA is the ...What has always seemed strange to me in AA is the status of Egyptian. It's geographically central, adjoining Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic; it was the first to be written and the first to be the bearer of a high civilization. And yet while it is distinctively AA, it is an isolate within AA, the usual fate of marginal and peripheral languages.<br /><br />One might argue that all of its immediate relatives were lost without trace, replaced by (Standard) Egyptian, I suppose. But why is it so different from the other AA families? The only thing I discover from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afroasiatic_languages#Subgrouping" rel="nofollow">Wikipedia</a> is that nobody agrees even on what its nearest relatives <i>are</i>: all of Semitic, Chado-Semitic, Semito-Berber, and Chado-Berber have been proposed as sister groups.John Cowanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11452247999156925669noreply@blogger.com