W-deletion in Arabic

In Arabic, triliteral verbs starting with w- often drop the w- in the imperfect ("present"), and in a few related forms like the verbal noun: وجد wajada "he found" vs. يجد yajidu "he finds", وزن wazana "he weighed" vs. يزن yazinu "he weighs"... But not always: contrast وسن wasina "he fell asleep" vs. يوسن yawsanu "he falls asleep", وجز wajuza "it was brief" vs. يوجز yawjuzu "it becomes brief". Going through a dictionary, it becomes obvious that the primary determining factor is the vowel: verbs with an imperfect in -i- drop the w, while others keep it. (Proviso: verbs which originally had -i- turn it into -a- if the third consonant is "guttural", ie pharyngeal or glottal: thus وقع waqa3a "it happened" vs. يقع yaqa3u "it happens" from *yaqi3u, contrasting with وجع waja3a "it hurt" vs. يوجع yawja3u "it hurts" with original -a-.)

Empirically, this seems to work fine. But it doesn't make sense to me historically. Why should an i in the second syllable correlate with the absence of a w in the first syllable? Any ideas how such a sound change could plausibly have taken place?

Zenaga dialectal reflexes of ʔ, :

For the purposes of Berber historical linguistics, arguably the most important thing about Zenaga is its thoroughgoing retention of the glottal stop. Some Zenaga glottal stops derive from *q, corresponding to ɣ elsewhere in Berber, but many derive from *ʔ, lost without trace in most Berber varieties. When a rather carefully transcribed new source of dialectal Zenaga data comes to light, it thus seems logical to start by seeing how the glottal stop is reflected there. For convenience, I restrict this first pass to two of Ahmadou Ismail's wordlists: body parts, and herding vocabulary. The results are fairly clear.

In general, Taine-Cheikh's Vʔ corresponds regularly to Ismail's V:, with the length clearly marked, as distinct from Taine-Cheikh's short V, which Ismail consistently transcribes short. Thus:

	Ismail	Taine-Cheikh
young camel	awāra	äwaʔräh
waterbag	āga	äʔgäh
moustache	āya	aʔyäh
donkey m.	ājji	aʔž(ž)iy
donkey f.	tājil	taʔž(ž)əL
beard	tāmmart	taʔmmärt
camels	īyman	iʔymän
cows	tiššīđan	ətšiʔđaʔn / ətšiʔđän
lamb	hīmmar	iẕ̌iʔmär
donkey foal	īgiyu	iʔgiyi
shoulder(blade)	tūṛiḍ	toʔṛuḌ
donkeys	ūjjayan	uʔž(ž)äyän
shoulder(blade)s	tūrdin	tuʔṛäđän

There are only two contexts where this correspondence does not hold.  In the context / _C#, if C is a stop or fricative, Ismail retains the glottal stop; if C is a sonorant, it disappears without affecting vowel length.  (More examples of this context would be useful to confirm the exact conditioning.)

spring	taniʔđ	täniʔḏ
cow	taššiʔđ	täšši
head	iʔf	iʔf
camel	ayyim	äyiʔm
camel f.	tayyimt	täyi(ʔ)mt

Word-finally, the variety Taine-Cheikh describes has no overtly realised glottal stops (*ʔ > Ø / _#); the contrast, however, is maintained, since all originally vowel-final words now end in h (*V > Vh / _#). In Ismail's dialect, the latter change never happened:

waterbag	āga	äʔgäh
moustache	āya	aʔyäh
young camel	awāra	äwaʔräh
stomach	taxṣa	taḫs(s)äh
goat	tikši	təkših
ewe	tīyyi	tīyih

Nevertheless, the two classes have not completely merged; final *i remains i, but final *iʔ becomes u:

billy-goat	ahayu	äẕ̌äyi
mouth	immu	əmmi
tooth	awkšu	äwkši
tongue	itšu	ətši
donkey foal	īgiyu	iʔgiyi
calf	īrku	īrki

 
In the variety Taine-Cheikh describes, long vowels derive not from *Vʔ but from *Vh (ultimately *Vβ). Given that vowel length can be a reflex of a former glottal stop in Ismail's dialect, the next thing we need to check is what happens to *Vh there; it turns out that there too it yields long vowels:

small cattle	tākšin	tākšən
calf	īrku	īrki
ewe	tīyyi	tīyih
nostril	tīnhart	tīnẕ̌ärt
nose	tīnharin	tīnẕ̌ärän

The regularity of these correspondences is a testimony to the accuracy of both parties' work, and confirms the value of Zenaga as a data source for Berber historical phonology.

Songhay crows and Korandje ravens

In Niamey, where I went last week for a workshop on Songhay as a cross-border language, the crows do something I've never seen them do in any other country: they come to the window and start tapping on the glass, like something out of Edgar Allen Poe. The reaction of my fellow attendees taught me a new Songhay word - gaaru-gaaru "pied crow" (Heath 1998) - which in turn revealed a new Korandje etymology. In Korandje, "raven" is gạḍi. The shift of intervocalic *d to r in mainstream Songhay is well-established (Nicolaï 1981). But the vowels are more interesting.

Korandje ạ usually derives from *ar or *or. In several inherited Songhay words, however, ạ seems to derive from *a not followed by *r: thus kạṣ-əw "rough" < kas-ow, bạzu "skin bucket, waterbag" < baasu, hạmu "meat" < *hamu, kə̣kkạbu "key" < *karkabu. Yet *a otherwise usually yields a in similar contexts: contrast gani "louse" < *gani, akama "wheat" < *alkama, dzam-a "do it" < *dam-a. It looks as though the vowel in the following syllable is what makes the difference: if it's rounded, you get ạ, otherwise you get a (though one or two exceptions suggest that the story may be more complicated: notably, "difficult" is gab-ə̣w < *gab-ow.) Assuming this rule, *gaadu should regularly have yielded gaaru in mainstream Songhay and gạḍu in Korandje.

What we actually get, however, is gạḍi. Why? Well, Korandje has a rule of final high vowel deletion phrase-internally: if a word ends in i or u, its final vowel will be deleted unless it comes before a pause, ie most of the time. (Basically the opposite of Classical Arabic.) In a number of words, this seems to have led to confusion between original -i, -u, and consonant-final words. For instance, ạṣạnkri "skink" comes from Berber asrmkal, which should regularly have yielded ạṣạmkər; the i is unetymological (Souag 2015). In effect, speakers must have been hypercorrecting final high vowels - a fact which suggests that, if Korandje survives, it may be on its way towards phonologically losing them altogether, much as Classical Arabic did with final short vowels.

The Origin of Mid Vowels in Siwi

How does a language with a relatively small vowel system react to pressure from a language with a larger one?

Most northern Berber varieties have a simple four-vowel system: tense /a/, /i/, /u/, vs. lax schwa (/ə/, written e in the official orthography), the latter being mostly predictable and limited to closed syllables. In the eastern and southern Sahara, however, we tend to find slightly larger vowel systems, and it looks very much as though proto-Berber had a rather asymmetrical six-vowel system, close to modern Tuareg but missing /o/: it had tense /a/, /e/, /i/, /u/ vs. lax /ɐ/, /ə/.

Siwi Berber, in western Egypt, has a more symmetrical six-vowel system: tense /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/ vs. lax /ə/. All of these vowels occur in inherited vocabulary as well as in Arabic loanwords. It is obvious by inspection that, in almost all contexts, *ɐ merged into /ə/. But the distribution of /e/ shows little connection with that of *e: in fact, most instances of proto-Berber *e correspond to Siwi /i/. And the origin of /o/ is not immediately clear at all. How did this happen?

My latest article - written together with Marijn van Putten - proposes some answers. It turns out that proto-Berber */e/ was retained in Siwi only before word-final /n/. Most instances of /e/ and /o/ are found in Arabic loanwords. Within inherited vocabulary, almost all instances of /e/ - and all instances of /o/ - are phonetically conditioned innovations, arising from at least three distinct regular sound changes and one sporadic one. The net effect of this "conspiracy" of sound changes is to extend phonemes otherwise almost entirely restricted to Arabic loans into inherited Berber vocabulary.

If you want the full story, go read our article: The Origin of Mid Vowels in Siwi (published in Studies in African Linguistics 45:1-2 (2016), pp. 189-208).

Tigre between ejectives and pharyngealization

There is some debate over the original pronunciation of the "emphatic" consonants (Arabic ط ض ظ ص ق) in Semitic and more generally in Afroasiatic: were they ejective as in Amharic, or pharyngealized/uvular as in Arabic? For a number of reasons, such as that in proto-Semitic they did not show a voicing contrast, the general opinion is that they were glottalized. Yet pharyngealized consonants show up not just in Arabic and neo-Aramaic but even in Berber, which would on the face of it suggest that the feature predates proto-Semitic. Either we have to suppose independent parallel development, or we must assume that Berber ejectives turned into pharyngealized consonants under the influence of Arabic. The latter seems more probable, but only if we can show that it is indeed plausible for a language to make such a change as a result of widespread bilingualism in Arabic.

It turns out that Tigre, the main language of northern Eritrea, offers a concrete example of just that. The inland plateau dialect of the Mansa`, commonly considered as standard, is described by Raz (1983) as having four ejectives k' (usually [ʔ]), t', s', and č̣ , and no pharyngealized or uvular consonants. You can hear an example of standard Tigre here, which seems consistent with his description. The coastal Hirgigo dialect spoken around Massawa, however - as heard in these Learn Tigre YouTube videos, however, show a rather different situation. ḳ is simply [q] (as in "elbow", "neck", "thigh"), ṭ is [tˤ] (as in "goat"), ṣ is [sˤ] (as in "white", "black", "back"); only for č̣ can you occasionally hear a slightly ejective realization [tʃ] ~ [tʃ'] (as in "fingers" or "fingernails"). The result is a good deal easier for an Arabic speaker to pronounce! This should not be too surprising: the port of Massawa has had extensive contact with Arabic speakers for many centuries. In fact, it's said to be the place where some of the first Muslims, seeking refuge from the persecution they were suffering in Mecca, landed on their way to the Abyssinian court. Such a diversity of emphatic consonant realizations within a single language confirms in turn that it is plausible for the habit of pharyngealizing emphatic consonants to be transferred from a language to its neighbors.

Improbable regular cognates

In Zenaga (the Berber language of Mauritania), the word for "slave" is oʔḅḅäy.

In the "Shelha" Berber spoken near Touggourt, the word for "black" is aɣəggal. (In Tamasheq - Malian Tuareg - ɣǎggal means "to be brown".)

As you've probably guessed from the title, these are originally the same word. The semantic shift is sadly predictable, given Saharan history, but how can the consonants be related? Well:

Zenaga ʔ regularly corresponds to pan-Berber ɣ, eg iʔf "head" = iɣəf, iʔy "arm" = iɣil, iʔssi "bone" = iɣəs.

Proto-Berber *ww becomes bb in Zenaga and gg(ʷ) almost everywhere else in Berber, eg "year": Zenaga äššäbbaš = pan-Berber asəgg(ʷ)as.

Pan-Berber l becomes Zenaga y word-finally, eg ađ̣abbäy "male in-law" = pan-Berber aḍəgg(ʷ)al. But if you add the feminine ending -t, the resulting cluster lt becomes L. Sure enough, "slave (f.)" in Zenaga is toʔḅḅäL.

So if you're tired of repeating Armenian "erku" = English "two" every time you need an example of a non-trivial sound change, consider opting for a Berber example.

(All Zenaga data from Taine-Cheikh 2010; Tamasheq data from Heath 2006; Touggourt (specifically Tala n Aʕməṛ) data courtesy of a friend. The correspondences in question are discussed in more detail in Kossmann 1999.)

Metathesis everywhere

When two sounds exchange their positions (for example, clip > plik) we call it metathesis. In most languages, this doesn't seem particularly common, neither in historical changes nor in the grammar. Kwarandzie has no grammatically caused metathesis, but nonetheless is absolutely full of historically metathesised words, sometimes even coexisting with non-metathesised variants. Thus for palm spines, some speakers say taqaneft and others tanaqeft; "forget" is dnagh for some speakers, dghan for others; "irrigation channel" is variously qentret or qetrent... I've found tens of examples where either synchronic variation or transparent external comparison demonstrates metathesis (usually of non-adjacent consonants, though there are one or two cases with vowels, not counting standard North African schwa alternations), and hear new ones every couple of days. Does this remind anyone of anything they've seen, or is it just odd?

R-dropping

Most English speakers are familiar with the phenomenon of r-dropping; it divides the English-speaking world into Ireland, Scotland, and most of America (where r is kept throughout), and England, Wales, Australia, New Zealand, and the American South and New England (where r is lost after vowels.) Despite this broad distribution, r-dropping somehow seems emblematic of British English, so I was naively surprised to observe it in other languages; yet the same sound-change happens to be observable in Tarifit, the Berber dialect of northeastern Morocco, and seemingly in Korandje, a Songhai language brought from Timbuktu to a northern Saharan oasis, Tabelbala, along the trade route to Sijilmasa in Morocco. Some examples:

* Tarifit ddaa, live! = Kabyle dder (here e=schwa=ə)
* Tarifit thamoath, earth = Kabyle thamurth (th=θ)
* Tarifit adhvea, pigeon = Kabyle ithvir (dh=ð, v=β)
* Korandje bia, big = Timbuktu beer(i)
* Korandje lekhba, news = Arabic al-akhbaar (kh=x)

I wonder what other cases are out there?

PS: Thank you, Language Hat, for your kind welcome!