Afro-Asiatic Research Articles

К РЕКОНСТРУКЦИИ ПОКАЗАТЕЛЯ ЕДИНИЧНОСТИ n- В ЧАДСКИХ ЯЗЫКАХ

The Afro-asiatic macro family includes Chadic, Semitic, Egyptian, Cushitic, Omotic, and Berber languages. The Chadic branch consists of about 170 languages spoken in Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad. The present paper continues a series of publications on Chadic diachronic morphology, focusing on prefixal derivation morphology. (For the velar prefix k- in different noun groups of Chadic languages and the verbalizing prefix ˀa-, see: [Stolbova 2015; 2018]. We propose a reconstruction of the singulative marker n- in Chadic nouns. As follows from our previous studies, lexicalized (or “frozen”) affixes are typical of unwritten Chadic languages; they can be uncovered only on the basis of lexical comparison. A careful analysis of singular forms derived from collective nouns denoting people, hoofed animals or insects suggests that the initial nasal in singular forms should be identified as a derivational prefix. We argue that in Chadic languages, n-forms precipitated the tendency to prenasalize primary singular nouns with the abovementioned semantics (people, animal, insect names). We also discuss external cognates pointing to the proto-Chadic origin of this prefix. Further research, on other Chadic noun groups (wild animals, birds, snakes) and especially on Semitic and Cushitic could clarify whether this morphological innovation was exclusive to Chadic or was shared by other Afro-asiatic languages.

Current Trends in Phonology: Theoretic Account of Amharic Spirintization

This paper intends to illustrate an analysis about one of the common phonological process known as spirantization in Amharic in the framework of Optimality and Feature Geometry. The theoretical models we have been assuming - known as the linear theory of representation-was quite successful in explaining a number of facts about sound systems. A defining characteristic of the theory is the view that segments are matrices of feature values, where every segment has a specification for each of the two dozen distinctive features. There were, however, phonological realms which the theory had largely ignored, and that were spirintization and assimilation. The process of these phonological processes in Amharic language can be shown and represented in Optimality Theory and Feature Geometry more clearly than in linear phonology. The method used in this research is analytical-descriptive. Six native speakers who were selected from different age groups that ranges from 30 to 50 and different educational levels were interviewed. Furthermore, free conversation and life stories were also included in the corpus. The data gathered is phonemically transcribed following the IPA conventions as revised to 2005 and analyzed using Optimality and Feature Geometry. Amharic, which is one of the most important languages of Ethiopia, is mainly spoken in Amhara regional state of Ethiopia. The language belongs to Transversal South-Ethio-Semitic group of the Afro-Asiatic language phylum. According to the 2007 Population Census, Census (2008) report, there are around 22 million Amharic native speakers and additional 7 million second language speakers. The language spoken in this region can be divided into four general regional dialects. The investigation of the major dialectal variations and isoglosses of Amharic are scanty. The available literature identifies four major dialects of Amharic: Gojjam, Gonder, Shewa and Wollo. Although the isoglosses and internal dialectal variations are hitherto not clearly established, the literature agrees on the mutual intelligibility among the dialects of this language. In Amharic, there are two consonants which engage in spirantization process. These consonants include /b, k / which are changed to the fricatives. Lenition patterns are expressed in terms of conflicts between the effort minimization constraint, LAZY, and on the other hand a class of lenition-blocking constraints. Spirantization, for example, is analyzed in terms of rankings where LAZY dominates IDENT (x). Under the opposite ranking, spirantization is blocked. There are three major feature groups, laryngeal features, manner features and place features, which Clements calls Class Nodes. In spirantization process, in the manner node, the feature (continuant) is added to a stop consonant, producing a fricative at the same place.

An argument for ezafe constructions and construct state in Zulu

Zulu (Niger-Congo, South Africa) exhibits a complicated interplay between morphological and phonological processes that, combined with an inherited, traditionalist approach to syntactic categories in the Nguni languages, obscures an overt phoneme that is argued to be common to all complex DPs. Here it is claimed that the traditional categories of adjective, relative, compound noun, possessive, and demonstrative can all be unified under a DP approach that takes this overt phoneme to be a functional marker that is analogous to those appearing in Persian ezafe constructions and construct state constructions in Afro-Asiatic languages. This approach reduces a variety of seemingly different Zulu-specific phenomena to a single, cross-linguistically established phenomenon.

The Negation of the so-called ‘the Second Tense’ in Middle Egyptian

In linguistic dictionaries (English, French, German, Arabic, etc..), there is no existence for the second tense, this term was established by Polotsky (Polotsky, H.J., Etudes de syntaxe copte, Publications de la Societe d' Archeologie Copte, Le Caire, 1944), according to his theory, the second tense is a nominalized verb form, and usually used as a noun clause; referring to the subject before the focused adverbial phrase. On one hand, the second tense form is a special case of ‘relative forms’ use. Therefore, on the other hand, it is actually not a tense, but rather use of grammar element. It is simple, one can say the second tense is equal to (Restriction form by innama) in Arabic. As for Arabic and Ancient Egyptian are relating to the same Language family ‘Afro-asiatic family’, one expected that they at least have more or less the same main linguistic terms. In the article, I try to give a general idea about the meaning of the so-called ‘Second Tense’, and its important usages. Moreover, the article focuses on the negation of the so-called Second Tense. The point of departure of the article was an investigation of the negative particles according to their appearance in various sentence patterns, I found that some particles are limited to negate the adverbial adjunct of the sentence, whereas others negate the verb itself.

Towards UNL-based machine translation for Moroccan Amazigh language

Amazigh languages, also called Berber, belong to the Afro-Asiatic languages (Hamito-Semitic) family. They are a family of similar and closely related languages and dialects indigenous to North Africa. They are spoken in Morocco, Algeria, and some populations in Libya, Tunisia, northern Mali, western and northern Niger, northern Burkina Faso, Mauritania, and in the Siwa Oasis of Egypt. Large Berber-speaking migrant communities have been living in Western Europe since the 1950s. In this paper, we study the Standard Moroccan Amazigh. It became a constitutionally official language of Morocco, in 2011. However, it is still considered as a less resourced language. So, it is time to develop linguistic resources and applications for processing automatically this language, in order to ensure its survival and promotion by integrating it into the new information and communication technologies (NICT). In this context and in the perspective to produce a Universal Networking Language (UNL) based machine translation system for this language, we have undertaken the creation of the Amazigh-UNL dictionary, as a first step of linguistic resources' development required by the UNL system to achieve translation. Thus, this paper is focused on presenting linguistic features' implementation such as morphological, syntactical and semantic information of the Amazigh language.

Morpho-Lexicon for standard Moroccan Amazigh

Standardized resources are key components for the development of applications related to human language technology. Therefore, it is important to adopt it for designing lexical resources, especially for less commonly resourced languages such Amazigh. This language is spoken by many North African communities, including Morocco. Due to historical, geographical and sociolinguistic factors, the Amazigh language is characterized by the proliferation of many intervarieties, which has led to a complex morphology. This latter poses significant challenge to NLP tasks, especially that Amazigh language belongs to the Afro-Asiatic language (Hamito-Semitic) family, known by its non-concatenative morphology based on root and pattern. Face to the scarcity of Amazigh language resources dealing with morphemes encoding, orthographic changes, and morphotactic variations, the elaboration of a standardized lexical resource will certainly ensure a large exchange and exploitation. In this context, this paper describes ongoing work for elaborating a morphological lexicon, based on inflected forms, for the standard Moroccan Amazigh language.

Investigation of the achievement scores of the people learning Turkish as a foreign language according to linguistic distance

In this study, predictor variables (age, gender, region and language family) affecting the scores of Turkish language learners are examined through multiple regression method. The study group consisted of 280 international students registered to Turkish Language Teaching Centers located at Gazi and Hacettepe Universities. The research data were obtained from the Turkish course completion exam papers and personal information forms. According to the results, the average scores of the students from the Afro-Asiatic, Indo-European, Bantu, Sino-Tibetan and Austronesian language families were lower than those from the Altai language family. Additionally, the writing scores of the students from the Afro-Asiatic and Austronesian language families; the speaking scores of the students from Afro-Asiatic, Indo-European language families; reading comprehension scores of the students from Afro-Asiatic, Indo-European, Bantu and Sino-Tibetan language families and grammar scores of the students from Sino-Tibetan and Austronesian language families were lower than the scores of the Altai language family. In addition, while the age variable was found to have a positive effect on speaking scores, it was observed that area and gender variables were not significant predicators of scores. Findings are discussed in the light of literature and suggestions for further research are provided.

ترجمة العهد الجدید من الیونانیة إلى العربیة فی ضوء الاختلاف بین اللغتین

تنتمي اللغة اليونانية إلى عائلة اللغات الهندو أوروبية، بينما تنتمي اللغة العربية إلى عائلة اللغات الأفرو أسيوية، ولذلک يوجد العديد من الاختلافات بين اللغتين، وتظهر لنا الدراسات التقابلية بين اللغتين مثل هذه الاختلافات. ومن يقوم بالترجمة من إحداهما إلى الأخرى لابد أن يواجه مثل هذه الاختلافات، وهذا ما حدث في ترجمة العهد الجديد من اللغة اليونانية القديمة إلى العربية، وفي هذه المقالة سوف أناقش - من خلال التطبيق على أشهر الترجمات العربية للعهد الجديد، وهي الترجمة المعروفة باسم فان دايک – أهم الاختلافات بين اللغة اليونانية القديمة واللغة العربية، على النحو التالي: 1- في الاستفهام الاستنکاري تستخدم اللغة اليونانية ظرف النفي (οὐ) عندما تکون الإجابة المتوقعة على السؤال هي الاثبات، بينما تستخدم الظرف (μή) عندما تکون الإجابة المتوقعة على السؤال هي النفي. بينما الترجمة العربية لا تميز بين الاثنين. 2- بعض الأفعال اليونانية تتبع بأکثر من حالة إعرابية للدلالة على المفعول به مثل فعل (ἀκούω) الذي يتبع بحالة النصب أو المضاف إليه. وفعل (προσκυνέω) الذي يتبع بحالة القابل أو النصب. ويختلف معنى الفعل حسب الحالة الإعرابية التي تتبعه کمفعول به، ومع ذلک فإن الترجمة العربية لا تظهر مثل هذا التغيير الذي يحدث للفعل وفقا للحالة الإعرابية التي تتبعه. 3- أحيانا تستخدم الترجمة العربية کلمة عربية واحدة لترجمة أکثر من مترادف في اللغة اليونانية، مثل أفعال: βλέπω, ὁράω, θeάομαι, θeωρέω التي تترجم کلها في اللغة العربية بلفظ أنظر دون ايضاح الفرق بين هذه المترادفات. 4- يوجد للفعل اليوناني سمات تصريفية لا توجد في اللغة العربية، مثل: صيغة الاحتمال Subjenctive، صيغة التمني Optative، عدد الأزمنة الستة، استخدام فعل الأمر في زمن الماضي، ومع الغائب، استخدام البناء للوسط... والترجمة العربية لا تظهر الوظائف الدلالية التي تحملها هذه السمات. 5- کثيرا ما تترجم الأفعال اليونانية المرکبة بمعناها الأول قبل أن تکون مرکبة. 6- التعبيرا الاصطلاحية في اللغة اليونانية (Idioms) کثيرا ما تترجم في العربية ترجمة حرفية لا تعبر عن عمق المعنى المقصود في اللغة اليونانية. 7- تستخدم اللغة اليونانية ظرفي النفي (οὐ μή) معا لتوکيد النفي، بينما الترجمة العربية تترجمها بنفي بسيط. The Greek language belongs to Indo-European family language, and the Arabic language belongs to the Afro-Asiatic family language, So there are many differences between these two languages, the contrastive analysis studies allowed us to recognize these differences clearly, and these differences will meet the translator from the one language to the other, and that what happened in the translation of The New Testament from Greek into Arabic. This paper discusses the most famous Arabic translation which known by the title Van Dyke Arabic Bible, and the common difference between Greek and Arabic in this translation as follows: 1- in interrogation, the Greek language uses οὐ when an affirmative answer is expected, andμή when a negative answer is expected, but the Arabic translation does not distinguish between the both. 2- some Greek verbs are followed by more than one case as a direct object (genitive and accusative like ἀκούω, dative and accusative like προσκυνέω). and the meaning of the verb is changed according to the case which comes with it as a direct object, but the Arabic translation does not shows this change in the meaning of the verb. And from the other different functions of the Greek cases, the Arabic translation is not always selects the suitable one. 3- The Arabic translation sometimes uses one than one Arabic word as a translation for many Greek synonyms like: βλέπω, ὁράω, θeάομαι, θeωρέω which were translated into Arabic by I seeأنظر، أرى = . the Arabic translation is not always selects the suitable Synonym of the Greek word. 4-The Greek verb has morphological features not found in Arabic, like the subjunctive and optative Moods, the six tenses, the aorist imperative, the middle voice. And the Arabic translation not always transfers these semantic functions of these features. 5- The Greek compound words sometimes were translated as uncompounded verbs. 6- the Greek Idioms sometimes were translated literally in Arabic. 7- the Greek uses The particles (οὐ μή) in combination augment the force of the negation, while it were always translated into Arabic in a simple negation.

A typological analysis of theChained-Aoristconstruction in Ayt Atta Tamazight (Berber)

Clause-linking mechanisms are subject to cross-linguistic variation. As far as non-subordinate clauses are concerned, any combination of two clauses may show two predicates mutually equal or different in terms of finiteness: these are known as co-ranking and clause-chaining structures, respectively (Longacre 2007: 375). Clause-chaining constructions show two structural possibilities, namely medial-final and initial-medial chaining, depending on whether the more-finite verb follows or precedes the less-finite one. Clause-chaining constructions are found in unrelated language families scattered across the globe, including Afroasiatic (Longacre 1990). However, the existing typological literature on the topic has totally neglected Berber, another Afroasiatic language. This work focuses on a clause-linking strategy found in Ayt Atta Tamazight (Berber, henceforth AAT) and in other Berber languages, the so-calledChained-Aoristconstruction (henceforth C-AOR). Stemming from my fieldwork on AAT, this paper provides an innovative typological analysis of C-AOR, analysing it in terms of initial-medial clause chaining.

Human ancestry correlates with language and reveals that race is not an objective genomic classifier

Genetic and archaeological studies have established a sub-Saharan African origin for anatomically modern humans with subsequent migrations out of Africa. Using the largest multi-locus data set known to date, we investigated genetic differentiation of early modern humans, human admixture and migration events, and relationships among ancestries and language groups. We compiled publicly available genome-wide genotype data on 5,966 individuals from 282 global samples, representing 30 primary language families. The best evidence supports 21 ancestries that delineate genetic structure of present-day human populations. Independent of self-identified ethno-linguistic labels, the vast majority (97.3%) of individuals have mixed ancestry, with evidence of multiple ancestries in 96.8% of samples and on all continents. The data indicate that continents, ethno-linguistic groups, races, ethnicities, and individuals all show substantial ancestral heterogeneity. We estimated correlation coefficients ranging from 0.522 to 0.962 between ancestries and language families or branches. Ancestry data support the grouping of Kwadi-Khoe, Kx’a, and Tuu languages, support the exclusion of Omotic languages from the Afroasiatic language family, and do not support the proposed Dené-Yeniseian language family as a genetically valid grouping. Ancestry data yield insight into a deeper past than linguistic data can, while linguistic data provide clarity to ancestry data.

A New Type of Floating Quantifiers: Tamazight Quantifier Kullu

This paper examines the Tamazight quantifier kullu ‘all,’ which displays a Q_NP and NP_Q+clitic alternation. Two major approaches to this alternation have been proposed in other Afro-Asiatic languages. Shlonsky (1991) argues that the NP_Q-clitic pattern is derived from Q_NP by moving the NP to [Spec, QP], while Benmamoun (1999) proposes that the two patterns have basically different structures. I argue in favor of the non-uniform approach but show that both previous approaches are inadequate in dealing with kullu preceding the NP, although kullu+clitic can be explained by Benmamoun’s claim that Q+clitic is an NP adjunct. I propose that kullu is a floating quantifier attracted to an overt functional category. Given that floating quantifiers are traditionally analyzed as either NP modifiers or VP modifiers, kullu brings a new perspective to floating quantifiers and raises the issue of typological variation in quantifier floating. (Chonnam National University)

On diminutives and plurals in Moroccan Arabic

In Moroccan Arabic, like in many other Afroasiatic languages, certain nouns may have more than one plural form. For instance, teswera ‘photo’ has plurals tsawer and tswerat. However, their diminutive systematically resorts to -at suffixation in the plural. The aim of this study is twofold. First, it presents an interface approach which aims to determine the structural location of number and capture the empirical contrast between broken and sound plurals. It is argued that the sound plurals are associated with the standard Num projection, whereas the broken plurals are associated lower in the structure with the n projection. Second, it provides a templatic analysis of the diminutive formation, showing that the diminutive and the internal plural markers compete for the same templatic position. External evidence for the analysis is drawn from the phenomenon of emphasis spread. The nP is presented as the maximal domain of emphasis spread in nouns.

Towards UNL based machine translation for Moroccan Amazigh language

Amazigh languages, also called Berber, belong to the Afro-Asiatic languages (Hamito-Semitic) family. They are a family of similar and closely related languages and dialects indigenous to North Africa. They are spoken in Morocco, Algeria, and some populations in Libya, Tunisia, northern Mali, western and northern Niger, northern Burkina Faso, Mauritania, and in the Siwa Oasis of Egypt. Large Berber-speaking migrant communities have been living in Western Europe since the 1950s. In this paper, we study the Standard Moroccan Amazigh. It became a constitutionally official language of Morocco, in 2011. However, it is still considered as a less resourced language. So, it is time to develop linguistic resources and applications for processing automatically this language, in order to ensure its survival and promotion by integrating it into the new information and communication technologies (NICT). In this context and in the perspective to produce a Universal Networking Language (UNL) based machine translation system for this language, we have undertaken the creation of the Amazigh-UNL dictionary, as a first step of linguistic resources' development required by the UNL system to achieve translation. Thus, this paper is focused on presenting linguistic features' implementation such as morphological, syntactical and semantic information of the Amazigh language.

Diversity of lactase persistence in African milk drinkers.

The genetic trait of lactase persistence is attributable to allelic variants in an enhancer region upstream of the lactase gene, LCT. To date, five different functional alleles, −13910*T, −13907*G, −13915*G, −14009*G and −14010*C, have been identified. The co-occurrence of several of these alleles in Ethiopian lactose digesters leads to a pattern of sequence diversity characteristic of a ‘soft selective sweep’. Here we hypothesise that throughout Africa, where multiple functional alleles co-exist, the enhancer diversity will be greater in groups who are traditional milk drinkers than in non-milk drinkers, as the result of this sort of parallel selection. Samples from 23 distinct groups from 10 different countries were examined. Each group was classified ‘Yes ‘or ‘No’ for milk-drinking, and ethnicity, language spoken and geographic location were recorded. Predicted lactase persistence frequency and enhancer diversity were, as hypothesised, higher in the milk drinkers than the non-milk-drinkers, but this was almost entirely accounted for by the Afro-Asiatic language speaking peoples of east Africa. The other groups, including the ‘Nilo-Saharan language speaking’ milk-drinkers, show lower frequencies of LP and lower diversity, and there was a north-east to south-west decline in overall diversity. Amongst the Afro-Asiatic (Cushitic) language speaking Oromo, however, the geographic cline was not evident and the southern pastoralist Borana showed much higher LP frequency and enhancer diversity than the other groups. Together these results reflect the effects of parallel selection, the stochastic processes of the occurrence and spread of the mutations, and time depth of milk drinking tradition.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00439-015-1573-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Goemai

Goemai is an Afroasiatic (Chadic, West Chadic A, Angas-Goemai group) language spoken in Central Nigeria. The name Goemai [ɡmi] is used by the speakers themselves to refer to both their language and their ethnic group. To outsiders, they are better known under the name Ankwe – a name that is also commonly found in the older linguistic, anthropological and historical literature. The Goemai live as farmers, fishermen and hunters in villages throughout the lowland savannah region south of the Jos Plateau and north of the Benue River, an area that is known geographically as the Great Muri Plains. The economy is based on agriculture (yam, millet, guineacorn, groundnut, beniseed) and is supplemented with fishing and hunting. Politically, the area belongs to Plateau State, and more specifically to the Local Government Areas Shendam and Qua’an Pan. Smaller Goemai-speaking communities are found in surrounding Local Government Areas as well as in Jos, the capital of Plateau State.

Edward Lipi ski, Lutz Edzard, Semitic and Afro-Asiatic: Challenges and Opportunities

Edward Lipi ski, Lutz Edzard, Semitic and Afro-Asiatic: Challenges and Opportunities

Palaeolinguistics and Ancient Eurasian Pulse Crops

Traditional pulse crops such as pea, lentil, field bean, bitter vetch and chickpea were a part of the human diet in hunter-gatherer communities and are one of the most ancient cultivated crops. It was found that the Proto-Indo-European language had the largest number of roots directly related to pulses, such as *arnk(')- (a leguminous plant), *bhabh- (field bean), *erəgw[h]- (a kernel of leguminous plant; pea), *ghArs- (a leguminous plant), *kek-, *k'ik'- (pea) and *lent- (lentil), confirming their essential place in the nutrition of Proto-Indo-Europeans. Pea was most important among the Proto-Uralic people, while pea and lentil were most significant among the Proto-Altaic people. Pea and field bean were common among Caucasians and Basques, and field bean and lentil among the Afro-Asiatic peoples. Palaeolinguistics may contribute to archaeobotany in understanding the role of traditional Eurasian pulse crops had in the everyday life of ancient Europeans together with plant scientists and archaeobotanists.

Lutz Edzard (ed.), Semitic and Afroasiatic: Challenges and Opportunities

Review

Ethnolinguistic structuring of sorghum genetic diversity in Africa and the role of local seed systems.

Sorghum is a drought-tolerant crop with a vital role in the livelihoods of millions of people in marginal areas. We examined genetic structure in this diverse crop in Africa. On the continent-wide scale, we identified three major sorghum populations (Central, Southern, and Northern) that are associated with the distribution of ethnolinguistic groups on the continent. The codistribution of the Central sorghum population and the Nilo-Saharan language family supports a proposed hypothesis about a close and causal relationship between the distribution of sorghum and languages in the region between the Chari and the Nile rivers. The Southern sorghum population is associated with the Bantu languages of the Niger-Congo language family, in agreement with the farming-language codispersal hypothesis as it has been related to the Bantu expansion. The Northern sorghum population is distributed across early Niger-Congo and Afro-Asiatic language family areas with dry agroclimatic conditions. At a finer geographic scale, the genetic substructure within the Central sorghum population is associated with language-group expansions within the Nilo-Saharan language family. A case study of the seed system of the Pari people, a Western-Nilotic ethnolinguistic group, provides a window into the social and cultural factors involved in generating and maintaining the continent-wide diversity patterns. The age-grade system, a cultural institution important for the expansive success of this ethnolinguistic group in the past, plays a central role in the management of sorghum landraces and continues to underpin the resilience of their traditional seed system.

Tashlhiyt Berber

Berber (or Tamazight) is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken by an estimated 15–25 million in North Africa. It is mainly spoken in Morocco, Algeria, and by the Touareg population in Niger and Mali. Berber is also a native language of populations living in Libya, Tunisia and Egypt, though their numbers are less significant. Large Berber communities also live in Diasporas mainly in France, Spain, Holland, and Belgium. Three varieties of Berber are spoken in Morocco: Tarifit, spoken in northern Morocco, Tamazight, spoken in the Middle-Atlas, and Tashlhiyt, spoken in southern Morocco. Tashlhiyt, the variety presented here, is sufficiently homogeneous for all native speakers, who number an estimated 7–9 million, to communicate without difficulties (Stroomer 2008). There is nonetheless a measure of sub-dialectal variation, which affects mainly the way some stop consonants are produced. Three subsystems, corresponding roughly to three distinct geographical locations, can be identified: the ‘occlusive’ subsystem spoken in Agadir and its suburbs, the ‘fricative’ subsystem spoken mainly in the High-Atlas area, which spirantizes noncoronal obstruents /bkg/ in some contexts, and the ‘sibilant’ subsystem spoken in the Anti-Atlas area, where /t/ and /d/ are realized in some contexts as [s] and [z], respectively (Boukous 1994). This study is based on the speech of Tashlhiyt speakers who originate from Agadir. The text of ‘The North Wind and the Sun’ was read by a 27-year-old female speaker.