--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Arnaud Fournet"
<fournet.arnaud@...> wrote:
> Chamito-Semitic is __now__ unconnected with the Bible.
> It's just a scientific word.
> It does not have to justify what it stands for.
There appears to be no problem with the use of 'Semitic' as a
taxonomic unit. 'Semitic' appears to be a valid taxon, both
synchronically (cf. the relatedness of modern Arabic and modern
Hebrew) and diachronically (cf. the relatedness of modern Arabic and
Old Akkadian).
But what about 'Hamitic', the first member of the hyphenated
compound adjective 'Hamito-Semitic'? Does it represent a valid taxon?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afro-Asiatic_languages
"The term 'Afroasiatic' was coined by Joseph Greenberg to replace
the earlier term 'Hamito-Semitic' after his demonstration that
Hamitic is not a valid language family (Greenberg 1963:50)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamitic
"The Hamitic hypothesis is rejected by most scholars today on a
multitude of grounds. Most 'scientific' observations of the time
were heavily culturally biased and generally returned results that
suited Europeans. Many observations of the time have been corrected
since then to reveal a much more complex picture of ethnic groups
than was initially conceived... Today, the Hamitic concepts have
been widely discredited, and are often referred to as the Hamitic
Myth [Peter Rohrbacher, 'Die Geschichte des Hamiten-Mythos.'
(Veröffentlichungen der Institute für Afrikanistik und Ägyptologie
der Universität Wien; 96 Beiträge zur Afrikanistik; Bd. 71). Wien:
Afro-Pub, 2002.] The Hamitic language group is no longer considered
by most scholars to be a useful concept, though the phrase 'Hamito-
Semitic' is a dated term for the Afro-Asiatic linguistic group."
IMO, it is on this ground *only* that the phrase 'Hamito-Semitic
language family' must be rejected as a descriptive taxonomic label.
For instance, if I look at a map of the distribution of Afroasiatic
languages such as that at
http://starling.rinet.ru/maps/maps/Afro-Asiatic.gif ,
I can easily locate the areas where Semitic languages are presently
spoken, but I can see no 'Hamitic'-speaking areas.
Regards,
Francesco