On 2008-02-22 04:28, Patrick Ryan wrote:
> What would you prefer to use to designate the non-Semitic/non-Egyptian
> languages of Afrasian then?
Why should we want to treat them as a unit if they don't constitute a
well-defined subfamily within AA? It's like asking what we should call
the non-Indo-Iranian, non-Greek and non-Italic memebers of IE.
Currently, there's no consensus on the subdivision of AA. If there's
anything most experts agree on, it's a primary split of AA into Omotic
and non-Omotic (Flemming's Erythraean), with some uncertainty about the
classification of Ongota (Omotic, Erythraean, more basal than either or
non-AA at all?). Within "Erythraean", Chadic has been regarded as the
sister of Berber, of Egyptian, or as an outlier against the rest of the
group (again with some uncertainty as to the position of Beja).
Piotr