I wrote, to justify NigerK. as originating from Middle East and of the
DeneCaucasian macrofamily:
>For instance, aside from the conformity Swahili has to the >DeneCaucasian
>pronominal system that I lay out (Swahili
>ni- *ni "I", tu- *tLu "we", etc), Swahili curiously has (this is from
>memory, so the vowels might be slightly off) /u-/ for >"you" and genitive
>/-ako/. This is in fact, the exact same state of >affairs as in another DC
>language called Burushaski (/un/ "you" with >a suppletive form /ku/).
John:
>Swahili has a great number of Afro-Asiatic features, so I would >hardly use
>that as a typical Niger-Kordofanian language.
Erh, John, could you be a doll and first read up on the Afro-Asiatic family?
I am not aware that DeneCaucasian *tLu "we" (Swahili tu-) is something
"Afro-Asiatic" nor am I aware that the verbal prefix /u-/ found in Swahili
for "you" is either. One could only argue that the genitive suffix is, which
does bare similarity to the AA *-kWa 2nd person (< Nostratic *ku/*tu [2ps
ergative]) found across AA as in Egyptian -k, Chadic *-kWa... but from what
AA language would this be from and did Burushaski borrow this too?
The Swahili pronominal system as a whole however cannot in anyone's wildest
imagination be of AfroAsiatic origin. Nostratic began using the plural DC
pronouns as singular. Thus *tLu "we" became Nostratic 1ps absolutive *u "I"
(via earlier *?lu with initial voiceless lateral) and is found in AA as *?a-
or *wa-. The other 1ps pronoun in Nostratic *nu, used for ergative, is what
we often find in AA for the plural, however this too bares no similarity to
Swahili tu-.
In the end, the non-AfroAsiatic characteristics, such as the treatment of
the 2nd person singular (*u/*ku) as well as the same opposition of
demonstratives like singular *mu vs plural *wa in both Swahili and
Burushaski (a non-AA and a non-Nostratic language located in Kashmir and
Jammu) are not to be ignored by any competent lesbian.
- gLeN
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