AFRO-ASIATIC LANGUAGES

also called Afrasian languages, formerly called Hamito-Semitic, Semito-Hamitic, or Erythraean languages, family of genetically related languages that developed from a common parent language which presumably existed about the 6th8th millennium BC and was perhaps located in the present-day Sahara. The Afro-Asiatic group is the main language family of northern Africa and southwestern Asia and includes such languages as Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic, and Hausa. The total number of speakers is estimated to be more than 200,000,000. The term Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, was introduced by a German Egyptologist, Karl Richard Lepsius, in the 1860s. Although it has become traditional, it is an unfortunate label in suggesting that the family is divided into a group of Semitic and a group of Hamitic languages; in fact, the family has at least four other branches of the same order as the Semitic languages. The term Erythraean is inappropriate in implying that the family originated on both shores of the Red Sea, an assumption that cannot be proved; and Afro-Asiatic (proposed by an American linguist, Joseph Greenberg, in 1950) may be too comprehensive insofar as it suggests that all the languages of Africa and Asia are included. Igor Diakonoff, a Russian linguist, has suggested the term Afrasian, meaning half African, half Asiatic, which corresponds to the area of the actual distribution of the languages of this family since at least the 5th millennium BC. The languages belonging to this family can apparently be subdivided into branches representing dialects of the original parent languagenamely, Semitic, Egyptian, Berber, Cushitic, and Chadic. Some linguists deny the genetic affinity of the Chadic languages with the other branches of Hamito-Semitic, while others (e.g., Joseph Greenberg) accept it. Certain scholars have expressed doubts concerning the Hamito-Semitic character of some of the Chadic languages but not of others. Among the linguists who classify the Chadic languages as Hamito-Semitic there is some hesitation as to the degree and character of their affinity with the languages of the Cushitic branch, especially with West Cushitic. On the basis of the low percentage of vocabulary items held in common between the West Cushitic languages and the other Cushitic languages, some scholars classify West Cushitic as a separate branch of Hamito-Semitic, called Omotic. There is, however, a probability that the parent language common to Omotic and the Cushitic languages proper is not the Common Hamito-Semitic protolanguage but a later dialect (namely, Common Cushitic) and that Omotic (West Cushitic) is thus, nevertheless, a subgroup of Cushitic. Others connect Omotic with the Chadic group. Some linguists have suggested that the Hamito-Semitic languages are related to the Indo-European languages; others have favoured the existence of a superfamily, including the Hamito-Semitic, Indo-European, Altaic, Finno-Ugric (Uralic), Kartvelian, and Dravidian languages; but most scholars regard such far-flung genetic ties as unproven and, indeed, hardly provable. Because there has been a considerable difference of opinion as to the criteria to be applied when identifying a language as Hamito-Semitic, the basic principles of linguistic classification as applicable in this case should be stated. The only real criterion for classifying certain languages together as a family is the common origin of their most ancient vocabulary as well as of the word elements used to express grammatical relations. A common source language is revealed by a comparison of words from the supposedly related languages expressing notions common to all human cultures (and therefore not as a rule likely to have been borrowed from a group speaking another language) and also by a comparison of the inflectional forms (for tense, voice, case, or whatever). If, as a result of a step-by-step reconstruction of forms having existed at earlier periods, scholars arrive at an identical original phonological structure for each of the words or word elements compared in several different known languages, then such original forms can be ascribed to a common language, which, in the case of the languages here discussed, is conventionally termed Common Hamito-Semitic (or Proto-Hamito-Semitic). It also stands to reason that wherever one parent language has existed the daughter languages must to some degree reflect some of its grammatical characteristics. Despite the work of several scholars, only an approximate and provisional reconstruction of the parent language forms of Hamito-Semitic has so far been made. More work, however, has been done in comparing the language typologies. Additional reading General works There is still no general survey of the field (including bibliography) to replace I.M. Diakonoff, Semito-Hamitic Languages (1965; originally published in Russian, 1965); however, the developments in the field after 1965 have been considerable, as evidenced by, for example, James Bynon and Theodora Bynon (eds.), Hamito-Semitica (1975), papers from a colloquium. Among other general surveys are G.R. Castellino, The Akkadian Personal Pronouns and Verbal System in the Light of Semitic and Hamitic (1962), and T.W. Thacker, The Relationship of the Semitic and Egyptian Verbal Systems (1954).The theoretical problems of the Hamito-Semitic family have, until recently, been studied mostly on the basis of the Semitic branch alone. Especially important in this respect are I.J. Gelb, Sequential Reconstruction of Proto-Akkadian (1969); Jerzy Kurylowicz, L'Apophonie en smitique (1961); and Frithiof Rundgren, Intensiv und Aspektkorrelation (1959). Perhaps the most crucial problem of the Proto-Hamito-Semitic linguistic typology is the reconstruction of the verbal system, for which, besides the above-mentioned works, see also Marcel Cohen, Le Systme verbal smitique et l'expression du temps (1924); O. Roessler, Akkadisches und libysches Verbum, Orientalia, vol. 20 (1951); A. Klingenheben, Die Prfix- und die Suffixkonjugation des Hamitosemitischen, Mitteilungen des Instituts fr Orientforschung, vol. 2 (1957); and the critical, although certainly not final, review of some later ideas in Pelio Fronzaroli, Ricostruzione interna del verbo semitico in alcuni studi recenti, Accademia Toscana La Colombaria, pp. 7185 (1972). Another theoretical problem is broached in I.M. Diakonoff, Problems of Root Structure in Proto-Semitic, Archiv Orientln, 38:453480 (1970). The best general review of the Semitic branch of Hamito-Semitic is Gotthelf Bergstraesser, Einfhrung in die semitischen Sprachen (1928, reprinted 1963). See also Georgio Levi Della Vida (ed.), Semitic Linguistics: Present and Future (1961); Sabatino Moscati, An Introduction to the Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Languages (1964); and I.M. Diakonoff, Jazyki drevnej Perednej Azii (1967), on languages of the ancient Middle East, including Semitic and a survey of Common Hamito-Semitic. Recent developments are evaluated in Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.), Current Trends in Linguistics, vol. 6, Linguistics in South West Asia and North Africa (1970), with a comprehensive bibliography. Joshua Blau, The Renaissance of Modern Hebrew and Modern Standard Arabic (1981), is a comparative study. Akkadian Wolfram von Soden, Grundriss der akkadischen Grammatik, 2nd ed. (1969), and Akkadisches Handwrterbuch (1959 ); Erica Reiner, A Linguistic Analysis of Akkadian (1966); The Assyrian Dictionary, published by the Oriental Institute, the University of Chicago (1956 ). Northern Central Semitic C.H. Gordon, Ugaritic Textbook, 2nd ed. (1965); Joseph Aistleitner, Wrterbuch der ugaritischen Sprache (1963); I.J. Gelb, La lingua degli Amoriti, Rendiconti d. Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 13:143164 (1958); Giovanni Garbini, Il Semitico di Nord-Ovest (1960); Z.S. Harris, Development of the Canaanite Dialects (1939); Johannes Friedrich, Phnizisch-punische Grammatik (1951); Georg Beer and Rudolf Meyer, Hebrische Grammatik, 2 vol. (195255); Wilhelm Gesenius and Gotthelf Bergstraesser, Hebrische Grammatik, 29th ed., 2 vol. (191829); Hans Bauer and Pontus Leander, Historische Grammatik der Hebrischen Sprache des Alten Testamentes (1922); H.B. Rosen, A Textbook of Israeli Hebrew, 2nd ed. (1966); Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, Lexicon in Veteris Testamenti Libros (1958); E. Ben Yehuda, Thesaurus totius Hebraitatis (190858); Franz Rosenthal, Die aramaistische Forschung seit Th. Nldeke's Verffentlichungen (1939), and A Grammar of Biblical Aramaic (1961); Pontus Leander, Lautund Formenlehre des gyptisch-Aramischen (1928, reprinted 1966); Jean Cantineau, Le Nabaten, 2 vol. (193032); Harris Birkeland, The Language of Jesus (1954); E.Y. Kutscher, Studies in Galilean Aramaic (1952); Theodor Noeldeke, Kurzgefasste syrische Grammatik (1880, reprinted 1966); Carl Brockelmann, Syrische Grammatik, 8th ed. (1960); Rudolf Macuch, Handbook of Classical and Modern Mandaic (1965); Konstantin Cereteli, Abriss der vergleichenden Phonetik der modernen assyrischen Dialekte, in Franz Altheim, Geschichte der Hunnen, vol. 3 (1961), pp. 218266; Irene Garbell, The Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Persian Azerbaijan (1965); Charles F. Jean and Jacob Hoftijzer, Dictionnaire des inscriptions smitiques de l'Ouest (196065); Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, The Talmud Babli and Jerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature, 2 vol. (1950); Robert Payne Smith, Thesaurus Syriacus, 2 vol. (18681901); E.S. Drower and Rudolf Macuch, A Mandaic Dictionary (1963). Southern Central Semitic, or Arabic Chaim Rabin, Ancient West Arabian (1951); Henri Fleisch, L'Arabe classique (1956); Jean Cantineau, Cours de phontique arabe (1960) and La Dialectologie arabe (1955); A. Sutcliffe, Grammar of the Maltese Language (1936); E.W. Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon, 8 vol. (186393). Southern Peripheral Semitic A.F.L. Beeston, A Descriptive Grammar of Epigraphic South Arabian (1962); Maria Hoefner, Altsdarabische Grammatik (1943); Ewald Wagner, Syntax der Mehri-Sprache (1953); Wolf Leslau, Lexique soqotri (1938); M. Bittner, Charakteristik der Sprache der Insel Soqotra, Anzeiger der Wiener Akademie der Wissenschaften, Ph.-hist. Kl., vol. 55 (1918)the same author has published a number of studies on the important languages Mahri and Shahri (Shkhauri) in the Sitzungsberichte of the Wiener Akademie between 1909 and 1917; Christian Dillmann, Ethiopic Grammar, 2nd ed. (1907), and Lexicon linguae Aethiopicae (1865); Wolf Leslau, tude descriptive et comparative du Gafat (1956) and Etymological Dictionary of Harari (1963); Edward Ullendorff, The Semitic Languages of Ethiopia: A Comparative Phonology (1955). Igor Mikhailovich Diakonoff Semitic languages Languages of the group The Semitic languages can be subdivided into four groups: the Northern Peripheral, the Northern Central, the Southern Central, and the Southern Peripheral. Northern Peripheral Semitic The Northern Peripheral group, from the Ancient to Middle Stage, includes Akkadian with its dialects of Babylonian and Assyrian, spoken in Mesopotamia from about 3200 BC to the beginning of the Christian Era. Typical features are stative verb forms conjugated with suffixes and two verbal forms with a prefixed actor marker for the imperfective and perfective (with full and reduced vowel schemes, respectively; later a new perfect with an infixed -ta- in the stem developed). Originally there were five cases of the noun, plus an unmarked form for the nominal predicate and the noun without grammatical relations. Later three cases remained but were lost in the 1st millennium BC. Loss of the gh, h, ', and h sounds occurred from c. 2000 BC. The vowels were a, e, i, u (both long and short).