From: Dennis Poulter
Message: 2628
Date: 2000-06-11
----- Original Message -----
From: John Croft <jdcroft@...>
To: <cybalist@egroups.com>
Sent: Friday, 09 June, 2000 9:38 AM
Subject: [TIED] Re: AfroAsiatic
> --- In cybalist@egroups.com, "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...> wrote:
> >
> > John:
> > >Egyptian was a cognate with Semitic, the two languages split about
> > >5,800 BCE,
> >
> > You're dillusional. References, please. I don't see the EB saying
> anything
> > close to this. In fact, it considers Egyptian very different from
> Semitic.
> > Maybe you should take note.
>
> Agreed, but how different is different? Certainly by historic times,
> Semitic moved in one direction and Semitic had moved strongly in
> another. Of all the Afro-Asiatic languages, Egyptian is the one that
> is, I believe, closest to Semitic in linguistic structure and
> morphology.
>
> Dennis, am I right here?
>
> John
>
I think the opposite is probably the case here. More than 5000 years of
close and intimate contact between Egyptian and Semitic speakers, from
Naqada to the final extinction of Coptic as a spoken language (14thC CE?),
must have led to a degree of convergence rather than divergence.
Most linguists give dates ranging from 12000 to 8000BCE for the split of
AfroAsiatic languages, and I have seen nothing to suggest that there is any
subgrouping (other than perhaps Cushitic-Omotic) within this group.
As you say, how different is different?
Morphologically, it is very difficult to judge, as Egyptian writing gives no
clues to internal vowel modification, which is the primary means of word
derivation/creation within Semitic. All I can say is that Coptic seems to
show no evidence of Semitic style derivational processes.
Egyptian, again perhaps due to the writing system, and Coptic show no
evidence of case endings, which are a feature of Semitic.
In verb morphology, this really depends on the reconstructed proto-system,
and how one analyses Semitic forms such as "yaprus" or "yaktubu", i.e. is
this a reduced verbal auxiliary "ya" plus a nominal form "prus", "ktubu"?
This
kind of structure is evidenced in Egyptian and the other AfroAsiatic
families, e.g. Chadic (Hausa) and Cushitic.
But, judge for yourself. Below are ten common items of vocabulary. The only
criterion I have used is that these words appear to have cognates across
most of the IE languages, so one would expect a degree of similarity between
Egyptian and Semitic :
1.two snwy (Copt. Sesnawa) Tny (Ar. ?ithnaani, Ak.
Sena)
2.three xmtw (Copt. Som@...) TlT (Ar. TalaaTa, Ak.
SalaS)
3.four yfdw (Copt. ftow) rb3 (Ar.
?arba3a, Ak. erbe)
4.five dyw (Copt. tiw) xms (Ar. xamsa,
Ak. HamiS)
5.father ?t (Copt. eio:t) ?b(w) (Ar.
?ab(u))
6.sun Sw (Copt. Sa) Sms (Ar. Sams)
7.head d_3d_3 (Copt. go:g) r?s (Ar. ra?s)
8.heart ?b/h9ty (Copt. het/he:t) lbb/qlb (Ar.qalb, Ak.
libbu)
9.eye ?rt (Copt. eier/eiat) 3yn (Ar.3ayn)
10.tooth ?bx (Copt. obhe) snn (Ar.sinn, Ak.
Sinnu)
(Transcription : T, S = fricatives /th/, /sh/, x=guttural fricative /kh/,
d_ = Eg. /djed/, ?='aleph (glottal stop), 3 = voiced laryngeal /ayin/, H =
unvoiced laryngeal, 9 = Eg. 'double aleph', q = velar emphatic /k/).
So, all in all, I think that the split between all the AfroAsiatic
languages, including Egyptian and Semitic, is very deep, of the same time
scale perhaps as Glen's proto-Steppe, if not Eurasiatic.
Cheers
Dennis