posted                         

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Originally posted by Quetzalcoatl:

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Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
[ Millet was probably cultivated over 5000 years ago.

The earliest sites for the cultivation of millet lie in the Sahara . Here the earliest archaeological evidence has been found for African millets.

The major grain exploited by Saharan populations was rice ,the yam and pennisetum. McIntosh and McIntosh (1988) has shown that the principal domesticate in the southern Sahara was bulrush millet (pennisetum). Millet impressions have been found on Mande ceramics from both Karkarchinkat in the Tilemsi Valley of Mali, and Dar Tichitt in Mauritania between 4000 and 3000 BP. (McIntosh & McIntosh 1983a,1988; Winters 1986b; Andah 1981)

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These dates contradict each other.

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In summary, population pressure in the Sahara during a period of increasing hyperaridity forced hunter/gather/fisher Proto-Dravidian people to first domesticate animals and then crops. The linguistic evidence discussed above indicate that the Proto-Dravidians migrated out of Africa to Harappan sites with millet, yam and rice already recognized as principal domesticated crop.

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Animal domestication took place a long time before 4000 BP and a long way from Dar Tichitt.

The claim is that about 3500 years ago the Proto-Dravidians migrated from Dar Tichitt in Mauritania all the way to India and did not show anyone else on the way how to cultivate millet. Right. I've think we have already been through the genetics, but exactly what genetic markers do the Mande and Dravidians share? [/QB]

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You're getting old and can't read. I said the Dravidians and Mande lived in the Nile Valley, I did not say that Dravidian speakers lived at Dar Tichitt.




This map makes it clear that Dravidians and Africans share haplotypes RxR1 and K. The present inhabitants of Mesopotamia and Persia and Africans according to this map carry the H,A and K haplotypes. . For example, the H1 haplotype is found among many Dravidians (26% in a study by Sengupta et al 2006).

The haplotype M173 is derived from M9. This M9 is mainly found in Eurasia.
The haplotype M9 is related to haplogroups K to R and are often associated with Eurasians or non-African people (Cruciani et al, 2002;Coia, 2004). Coia et al (2004) believe that Asians migrated to Cameroon and passed on R1*M173 to Africans.

It is interesting to note that haplogroup R1*M173 has its highest frequency in Africa, not Eurasia (Cruciani et al, 2002; Coia, 2004). In Cameroon the frequency of R1*M173 is between 7%-95% and averages 39% (Coia, 2004). This suggest that this haplogroup may have originated in Africa, not Asia.


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Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

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quote:

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Originally posted by Clyde Winters:

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Originally posted by rasol:
^ And, it is through the comparisons of these languages, we can determine the areas in which any particular African language had previously occupied.

What areas of the Nile Valley were previously occupied by Bantu speakers, proto-Bantu speakers, or Proto-Niger Congo speakers?

What is your chronology for the spread of said langauges from the Nile Valley?

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Wm. E. Welmers identified the Niger Congo home land. Welmers in "Niger-Congo Mande", Current trends in Linguistics 7 (1971), pp.113-140,explained that the Niger-Congo homeland was in the vicinity of the upper Nile valley (p.119). He believes that the Westward migration began 5000 years ago.

In support of this theory he discusses the dogs of the Niger-Congo speakers. This is the unique barkless Basenji dogs which live in the Sudan and Uganda today, but were formerly recorded on Egyptian monuments (Wlemers,p.119). According to Welmers the Basanji, is related to the Liberian Basenji breed of the Kpelle and Loma people of Liberia. Welmers believes that the Mande took these dogs with them on their migration westward. The Kpelle and Loma speak Mande languages.

He believes that the region was unoccupied when the Mande migrated westward. In support of this theory Welmers' notes that the Liberian Banji dogs ,show no cross-breeding with dogs kept by other African groups in West Africa, and point to the early introduction of this cannine population after the separation of the Mande from the other Niger-Congo speakers in the original upper Nile homeland for this population. As a result, he claims that the Mande migration occured before these groups entered the region.

Linguistic research make it clear that there is a close relationship between the Niger-Congo Superlanguage family and the Nilo-Saharan languages spoken in the Sudan. Heine and Nurse (Eds.), in African languages: An introduction , Cambridge University Press, 2000, discuss the Nilo-Saharan connection. They note that when Westerman (1911) described African languages he used lexical evidence to include the Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo languages into a Superfamily he called "Sudanic" (p.16). Using Morphological and lexical similarities Gregerson (1972) indicated that these languages belonged to a macrophylum he named " Kongo-Saharan" (p.16). Research by Blench (1995) reached the same conclusion, and he named this Superfamily: "Niger-Saharan".

Genetic evidence supports the upper Nile origin for the Niger-Congo speakers. Rosa et al, in Y-Chromosomal diversity in the population of Guinea-Bissau (2007), noted that while most Mande & Balanta carry the E3a-M2 gene, there are a number of Felupe-Djola, Papel, Fulbe and Mande carry the M3b*-M35 gene the same as many people in the Sudan.

In conclusion, Welmers proposed an upper Nile (Sudan-Uganda) homeland for the Niger-Congo speakers. He claims that they remained intact until 5000 years ago. This view is supported by linguistic and genetics evidence. The linguistic evidence makes it clear that the Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo languages are related. The genetic evidence indicates that Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo speakers carry the M3b*-M35 gene, an indicator for the earlier presence of speakers of this language in an original Nile Valley homeland.

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Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Clyde Winters:

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Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Dr Clyde Winters, "The Migration routes of the Proto-Mande", The Mankind Quarterly , 27(1) (1986), discussed the migration of the Mande speakers from the Nile Valley homeland of the Niger-Congo speakers using archaeological evidence.

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.
The archaeological evidence indicates that the first Mande speakers to leave the Nile Valley were speakers of the Northern Mande group. These people migrated into the Fezzan and the Maghrib around 2700 and 2500 BC. These people probably mainly spoke Malinke-Bamabara along with some Soninke speakers.

The next group to migrate out of the Nile Valley was the Soninke-Vai speakers around 2500 BC. Speakers of these languages eventually occupied Tichitt.

The Vai separated from the Soninke around 1000 BC and moved to their present location in West Africa.

Manding (Northern Mande speakers) appear to have began a migration out of the Hoggar southward into the Iforas between 200-1500 BC,with their cattle, yam and millet. Speakers of these languages remained the dominant group in the area until 500 BC, most of the speakers of these languages probably remained in the Fezzan.

Manding were the predominant group in the Tilemsi Valley up to 500 BC, when the S.E. Mande speakers began their southward migration toward the Atlantic from the Air between 500BC and AD500. The Mande speaking hunter-gatherer-fisher collectors of a Saharan material culture (McIntosh & McIntosh,1981:608) settled the Karkarichinkat site beyween 2000-130 BC.

The archaeological evidence makes it clear that Mande and Bozo speakers reached the Niger Bend by 500BC (McIntosh & McIntosh, 1983:39-42). It is interesting to note that the bowl designs of the Niger Delta dating to 250BC, are analogous to pottery styles from the southern Sahara to between 2000-500BC (McIntosh & McIntosh, 1979:246).

The speakers of the Kwa and Benue-Congo group of languages entered West Africa later. Given the presence of speakers of these languages in large numbers forced the Bantu speakers to migrate from the Congo all the way to the Cape. The strong presence of Bantoid speakers reaching from the Congo to South Africa, make it clear that when the Bantu migrated into the areas where they presently live the region was probably sparsely occupied by non-Bantoid speakers.


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Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Liberian Basenji


Egyptian Basenji

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Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
The Basenji dogs don't necessarily support mass migration. Animals could have been obtained through interaction across the Saharan belt, namely through trade. What is the Nile Valley name for this dog - and its etymology?

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Egyptian Basenji Dog Hieroglyph



.
Trade might account for the presence of Basenji dogs in both places. But, from the sense of the article, Welmers claims that speakers of other African languages surrounding the Kpelle have different dogs.


The term for Basenji may be uher. In Egyptian uher also means house, so some people claim the Egyptians placed a dog size after uher to denote the term dog.


web page

Niger-Congo hunters probably early domesticated the dog. Hunters used dogs to catch their prey .

Egyptian Hieroglyph



.


Egyptian term for dog corresponds to many African, and Dravidian terms for dog:

• Egptian uher
  
  Azer wulle
  
  Bozo kongoro
  
  Guro bere
  
  Vai wuru, ulu
  
  Bo[Bambara] -ulu
  
  Wassulunka wulu
  
  Konyanka wulu
  
  Malinke wuli, wuru, wulu
  
  Dravidian ori

.


The above data indicates that there is contrast between Paleo-Afican l =/= r. The Egyptian Ø uher # , Azer Ø wulle # and Manding Ø wuru # suggest that the r > l in Paleo-African.

There is also vowel alternation in the terms for dog o =/= u. The predominance of the vowel /u/ in the terms for dog, make it clear that o<u. This evidence suggest that there are two Paleo-African terms for dog: Paleo-African [PA] *uru and *oro.

Futhermore, this comparison of the term for dog within and among Niger-Congo languages and Egyptian supports Welmers view that the dog was domesticated in the Nile Valley before the speakers of these languages separated, and migrated to other parts of Africa.


.

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Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                         

quote:

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Originally posted by Clyde Winters:

quote:

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Originally posted by Quetzalcoatl:

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Originally posted by rasol:

A more intelligible approach to the 'null' hypothesis requires you to prove that either

a) West Africa was uninhabited prior to dynastic Nile Valley civilisation.

b) West Africa was inhabited, prior to dynastic times, but only by non Niger Congo language speakers.

c) Modern West Africans are completely unrelated in language and geneology to the pre dynastic West Africans.

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A couple of relevant quotes to the above

Roger Blench. 2006. Archaeology, Language, and the African Past New York: Altamira Press

quote:

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pp. 132-133. With some misgivings, Table 3.4 puts forward dates and possible motives for expansion for the families of Niger-Congo. The dates are arranged in order of antiquity, not in the hypothetical order suggested by the genetic tree, and, in many cases the two are strongly at variance. There is no necessary correlation between the age of a family estimated from its apparent internal diversity and the date at which it appears to split from the Niger-Congo tree.. .
. . .

MANDE 6000 BP Mande languages have spread from north to south with scattered outliers in Nigeria and Cote d’Ivoire. Mande shares the common Niger-Congo roots for cow and goat, and perhaps the Proto-Mande were an isolated livestock-keeping population at the edge of the desert, which expanded southward as habitat change created potential space for livestock keeping. Reconstructions implying cropping are not present in the protolanguage.

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Christopher Ehret. 2000 “Language and History,” in B. Heine and D. Nurse, eds. African Languages.An Introduction pp. 274-297 Canbridge: Cambridge University Press

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p. 294 A second, but still early and important stage in Niger-Congo history was the proto-Mande-Congo era. At this period, or so it appears from the evidence of word histories, the cultivation of the guinea yam and possibly other crops, such as the oil palm, began among at least the peoples of the Atlantic and Ijo-Congo branches of the family (Williamson 1993 proposes the early words for these crops; Greenberg 1964 identifies an Atlantic and Ijo-Congo verb for cultivation, •-lim-). Between possibly about 8000 and 6000 BC, these people spread across the woodland savannahs of West Africa, the natural environment of the Guinea yams. At that time, woodland savannah environments extended several hundred kilometers farther north into the Sudan belt than they do today.

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The Blench hypothesis of the Mande living in the Sahara and moving southward does not conflict with my theory of a Saharan origin for the Mande speakers.

The term lim, is not the Mande term to cultivate.


In al-Imfeld, Decolonizing: African Agricultural History (2007) , claims that in relation to African agriculture the cultivation of yam began 10,000 years ago and rice cultivation in Africa by 6000 BC.

The major cultivated crop of the Mande speakers was millet not the yam. The term for cultivation among the Mande was not lim is Proto-Paleo-Afro-Dravidian *be . Millet was probably cultivated over 5000 years ago.

The earliest sites for the cultivation of millet lie in the Sahara . Here the earliest archaeological evidence has been found for African millets.

The major grain exploited by Saharan populations was rice ,the yam and pennisetum. McIntosh and McIntosh (1988) has shown that the principal domesticate in the southern Sahara was bulrush millet (pennisetum). Millet impressions have been found on Mande ceramics from both Karkarchinkat in the Tilemsi Valley of Mali, and Dar Tichitt in Mauritania between 4000 and 3000 BP. (McIntosh & McIntosh 1983a,1988; Winters 1986b; Andah 1981)

The linguistic evidence indicates that the Mande and Dravidian speakers formerly lived in intimate contact , in the Sahara. The speakers of these languages share many terms for agriculture.

Given the archaeological evidence for millets in the Sahara, leads to the corollary theory that if the Dravidians originated in Africa, they would share analogous terms for millet with African groups that formerly lived in the Sahara.

One of the principal groups to use millet in Africa are the Northern Mande speaking people . The Mande speaking people belong to the Niger-Congo group. Most linguist agree that the Mande speakers were the first Niger-Congo group to leave the original Nile Valley and Saharan highland primary homeands of the Niger-Congo speakers.

The Northern Mande speakers are divided into the Soninke and Malinke-Bambara groups. Holl (1985,1989) believes that the founders of the Dhar Tichitt site where millet was cultivated in the 2nd millenium B.C., were northern Mande speakers. To test this theory we will compare Dravidian and Black African agricultural terms, especially Northern Mande. The linguistic evidence suggest that the Proto-Dravidians belonged to an ancient sedentary culture which existed in Saharan Africa. We will call the ancestor of this group Paleo-Dravido-Africans.

The Dravidian terms for millet are listed in the Dravidian Etymological Dictionary at 2359, 4300 and 2671. A cursory review of the linguistic examples provided below from the Dravidian (Kol, Tamil ,Kannanda, & Malayalam ) , Mande and Wolof languages show a close relationship between these language. These terms are outlined below:

code:

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Kol                sonna       ---             ---       ----
Wolof (AF.)        suna        ---            ----       ---
Mande (AF)         suna      bara, baga     de-n, doro  koro
Tamil            connal     varaga           tinai      kural
Malayalam        colam      varaku           tina        ---
Kannanda          ---     baraga, baragu     tene    korale,korle
                 *sona      *baraga          *tenä     *kora 

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Below we will compare other Dravidian and African agricultural terms. These terms come from the Mande languages (Malinke, Kpelle, Bambara, Azer, Soninke), West Atlantic (Wolof, Fulani), Afro-Asiatic (Oromo, Galla), Somali, Nubian and the ancient Egyptian.
The Paleo-Dravido-Africans came from a sedentary culture that domesticated cattle and grew numerous crops including wheat and millet. The Egyptian term for cultivation is Ø b j(w) #. Egyptian Ø b j(w) # corresponds to many African terms for cultivation:

code:

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Galla    baji  'cultivated field'
Tulu (Dravidian language)    bey, benni
Nubian    ba, bat  'hoe up ground'
Malinke    be
Somali     beer
Wolof       mbey, ambey, bey
Egyptian     b j(w)
Sumerian    buru, bur  'to root up'

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These terms for cultivate suggest that the Paleo-African term for cultivate was *be.

The Egyptian term for grain is 0 sa #. This corresponds to many African terms for seed,grain:

code:

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Galla          senyi
Malinke        se , si
Sumerian       se
Egyptian       sen 'granary'
Kannanda        cigur

Bozo           sii
Bambara        sii
Daba           sisin
Somali         sinni
Loma           sii
Susu           sansi
Oromo          sanyi
Dime           siimu
Egyptian        ssr 'corn'
   id.          ssn  'lotus plant'
   id.          sm   'herb, plant'
   id.          isw  'weeds'

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The identification of a s>Ø/#_________e pattern for 'seed,grain' in the above languages suggest that these groups were familiar with seeds at the time they separated into distinct Supersets. The fact that Sumerian Ø se # and Egyptian Ø sen #, and Malinke
Ø se # are all separated both in time and geographical area highlight the early use of seeds * se , by Paleo-Dravido-Africans.

code:

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	Rice
Soninke         dugo
Vai             ko'o
Manding         malo
Dravidian       mala-kurula
Mende            molo, konu
Kpelle           moloy
Boko             mole
Bisa             muhi
Busa             mole
Sa               mela
Bambara          kini

	Yam
Bozo              ku, kunan
Vai               jambi
Malinke            ku
Dravidian          kui, kuna, ku
Bambara            ku

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It would appear that all the Proto-Dravidians were familiar with the cultivation of rice, yams and millet. This is not surprising because Weber (1998) made it clear that millet cultivation in ancient South Asia was associated with rice cultivation.

The linguistic evidence clearly show similarities in the Afican and Dravidian terms for plant domesticates. This suggest that these groups early adopted agriculture and made animal domestication secondary to the cultivation of millet, rice and yams. The analogy for the Malinke-Bambara and Dravidians terms for rice, millet and yams suggest a very early date for the domestication of these crops.

In summary, population pressure in the Sahara during a period of increasing hyperaridity forced hunter/gather/fisher Proto-Dravidian people to first domesticate animals and then crops. The linguistic evidence discussed above indicate that the Proto-Dravidians migrated out of Africa to Harappan sites with millet, yam and rice already recognized as principal domesticated crop.

This comparison of Mande agricultural terms make it clear, that just like the Egyptian term for dog uher , the speakers of these languages share the terms for cultivate, and seed. It also shows that before the Dravidians separated from the Mande speakers these groups were cultivating also cultivating rice and the yam. [/QB]

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Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

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Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
[You're getting old and can't read. I said the Dravidians and Mande lived in the Nile Valley, I did not say that Dravidian speakers lived at Dar Tichitt.


. [/QB]

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quote:

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The linguistic evidence clearly show similarities in the Afican and Dravidian terms for plant domesticates. This suggest that these groups early adopted agriculture and made animal domestication secondary to the cultivation of millet, rice and yams. The analogy for the Malinke-Bambara and Dravidians terms for rice, millet and yams suggest a very early date for the domestication of these crops.

In summary, population pressure in the Sahara during a period of increasing hyperaridity forced hunter/gather/fisher Proto-Dravidian people to first domesticate animals and then crops. The linguistic evidence discussed above indicate that the Proto-Dravidians migrated out of Africa to Harappan sites with millet, yam and rice already recognized as principal domesticated crop.

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Posts: 833 | From: Austin, TX | Registered: Jan 2007  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

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Originally posted by Djehuti:
The usual Clyde Winters nonsense-- typological linguistic coincidences that does NOT show actual genetic relation, followed by biological genetics which he obviously knows nothing about-- K is Eurasian while R is paleolithic therefore NEITHER have nothing to do with a Saharan neolithic migration.

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posted                   

quote:

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Originally posted by Quetzalcoatl:

Since, millet was not domesticated anywhere in Africa prior to 2000 BC, this puts severe time constraints on a presumed Dravidian migration that carried it to India.

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posted                         

quote:

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Originally posted by Quetzalcoatl:
here is another Ehret paper on the location of Niger-Congo

http://www.geocities.com/juanjosecastillos/english.html

REPORT ON THE 2003 POZNAN SYMPOSIUM
by JUAN JOSÉ CASTILLO

Between the 14th and the 18th July 2003 another Poznan Symposium on the Prehistory of Northeastern Africa took place in Poland,

Ch. Ehret, "Seriating Holocene language history in Northeastern Africa" - This paper was read by S. Keita due to the absence of the original speaker. He underlined that the origin of Afroasiatic is clearly African and not Asian as earlier scholars mistakenly implied. Furthermore, he suggested that the origin of Afroasiatic could be located in the Sudan area of the Nile, the Nilo-Saharan in the sub-Saharan/Tchad area and the Niger-Congo family in West Africa. Because of the vocabulary he could date the origin of for example, the Nilo-Saharan, to about 8,500 BC, then it branched out later on.

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Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

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Originally posted by Clyde Winters:

quote:

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Originally posted by Quetzalcoatl:
here is another Ehret paper on the location of Niger-Congo

http://www.geocities.com/juanjosecastillos/english.html

REPORT ON THE 2003 POZNAN SYMPOSIUM
by JUAN JOSÉ CASTILLO

Between the 14th and the 18th July 2003 another Poznan Symposium on the Prehistory of Northeastern Africa took place in Poland,

Ch. Ehret, "Seriating Holocene language history in Northeastern Africa" - This paper was read by S. Keita due to the absence of the original speaker. He underlined that the origin of Afroasiatic is clearly African and not Asian as earlier scholars mistakenly implied. Furthermore, he suggested that the origin of Afroasiatic could be located in the Sudan area of the Nile, the Nilo-Saharan in the sub-Saharan/Tchad area and the Niger-Congo family in West Africa. Because of the vocabulary he could date the origin of for example, the Nilo-Saharan, to about 8,500 BC, then it branched out later on.

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This is his opinion. My research supports Welmers determination of the Niger-Congo home in the Nile Valley.

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Throughout the Pleistocene, West Africa had a scattered hunting-gathering population speaking languages of unknown origin and affiliation. At some point before 7000 BP, the speakers of Proto-Niger-Congo began to expand, so effectively that almost all linguistic traces of the preexisting populations disappear. A preliminary hypothesis would be to identify the expansion of Niger-Congo with the improving climate at the beginning of the Holocene, that is, about 12,000-10,000 BP onward, which would be a reasonable date in the light of the diversity of Niger-Congo.

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quote:

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MANDE 6000 BP [4.9KBC] Mande languages have spread from north to south with scattered outliers in Nigeria and Cote d’Ivoire. Mande shares the common Niger-Congo roots for cow and goat, and perhaps the Proto-Mande were an isolated livestock-keeping population at the edge of the desert, which expanded southward as habitat change created potential space for livestock keeping. Reconstructions implying cropping are not present in the protolanguage.

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Posts: 833 | From: Austin, TX | Registered: Jan 2007  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

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The Blench hypothesis of the Mande living in the Sahara and moving southward does not conflict with my theory of a Saharan origin for the Mande speakers.

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My research supports Welmers determination of the Niger-Congo home in the Nile Valley.

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Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

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This map makes it clear that Dravidians and Africans share haplotypes RxR1 and K

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Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

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There was plenty of time for the Niger-Congo languages to spread from the Nile Valley to Benin before the proto-Mande began their migration to their present location. Asumming that the proto-Niger-Congo speakers even originated in the southern Nile Valley as Welmers claims.

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Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                         

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Originally posted by rasol:

quote:

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This map makes it clear that Dravidians and Africans share haplotypes RxR1 and K

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I don't know why you bother with genetics, since you don't understand it, and are so sloppy about citing it [even confusing male e-M2 e3a; with maternal l3M2].

I think your goal is just to spread confusion amongst your "students", and so prevent genetics from easily debunking you as it always does.

R haplotype is rare in Africa.

Underived R1 is found in Central Africa where it *may* have originated 35 thousand years ago.

This haplotype is non-existent in India.

East Europeans, Indian and some East Asian....share derived R1a, which split from West European R1b in a fashion not altogether unlike the African split of E3a and E3b.

Just as Dravidian have virtually no E3a or E3b, Africans have virtually no R1a and R1b.

Likewise Dravidians do not have West African derived Benin Hbs, [as do Greeks, Arabs and other peoples with recent African ancestry] but rather their own ancient malarial resistent genes which evolved in Asia and are in turn, not found among AFricans.

Therefore all geneticists agree that Africans and Dravidians are not closely related.

And on this point, Dr. Winters, it is fair to say, that you simply don't care about the facts and are quite willingly to fib about them for ideology reasons, isn't that so?

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Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                         

quote:

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Originally posted by Quetzalcoatl:

quote:

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Originally posted by Clyde Winters:

quote:

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Originally posted by Quetzalcoatl:
here is another Ehret paper on the location of Niger-Congo

http://www.geocities.com/juanjosecastillos/english.html

REPORT ON THE 2003 POZNAN SYMPOSIUM
by JUAN JOSÉ CASTILLO

Between the 14th and the 18th July 2003 another Poznan Symposium on the Prehistory of Northeastern Africa took place in Poland,

Ch. Ehret, "Seriating Holocene language history in Northeastern Africa" - This paper was read by S. Keita due to the absence of the original speaker. He underlined that the origin of Afroasiatic is clearly African and not Asian as earlier scholars mistakenly implied. Furthermore, he suggested that the origin of Afroasiatic could be located in the Sudan area of the Nile, the Nilo-Saharan in the sub-Saharan/Tchad area and the Niger-Congo family in West Africa. Because of the vocabulary he could date the origin of for example, the Nilo-Saharan, to about 8,500 BC, then it branched out later on.

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This is his opinion. My research supports Welmers determination of the Niger-Congo home in the Nile Valley.

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i.e. you have no evidence. I keep quoting acknowledged experts in African linguistics, whose "opinion" is based on years of actual research in field not scouring of dictionaries.

Again Welmers is no good for you. You keep talking as the Mande as the progenitors of everyone (Dravidians. Olmecs, Elamites, etc.). Thus, for your argument what you need to prove is the origin of Mande (which Welmers locates in today's Benin) and not the origin of the Niger-Congo family as a whole.

C. Ehret. 2000 'Language and History" in B. Heine and D. Nurse, eds African Languages. An Introduction pp. 272-297. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

p. 193 says that proto-Niger -Congo may date back 15,000 years and that proto-Mande-Congo separated 8-10,000 years years ago. There was plenty of time for the Niger-Congo languages to spread from the Nile Valley to Benin before the proto-Mande began their migration to their present location. Asumming that the proto-Niger-Congo speakers even originated in the southern Nile Valley as Welmers claims.

More conservatively, Blench dates the expansion of Niger-Congo later,

Roger Blench 2006 Archaeology, Language and the African Past New York: Altamira

p. 126

quote:

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Throughout the Pleistocene, West Africa had a scattered hunting-gathering population speaking languages of unknown origin and affiliation. At some point before 7000 BP, the speakers of Proto-Niger-Congo began to expand, so effectively that almost all linguistic traces of the preexisting populations disappear. A preliminary hypothesis would be to identify the expansion of Niger-Congo with the improving climate at the beginning of the Holocene, that is, about 12,000-10,000 BP onward, which would be a reasonable date in the light of the diversity of Niger-Congo.

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and the expansion of the Mande p. 133

quote:

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MANDE 6000 BP [4.9KBC] Mande languages have spread from north to south with scattered outliers in Nigeria and Cote d’Ivoire. Mande shares the common Niger-Congo roots for cow and goat, and perhaps the Proto-Mande were an isolated livestock-keeping population at the edge of the desert, which expanded southward as habitat change created potential space for livestock keeping. Reconstructions implying cropping are not present in the protolanguage.

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Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

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Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
[You are wasting your time attempting to use the "method of authority" to make it appear that your 'authorities' should be more recognized than Welmers a leading authority on the Mnade langauges in his own right.

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quote:

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Moreover, these people are no more qualified then myself in African linguistics. My research in Paleo-Afro-Dravidian linguistics have been published in peer reviewed journals for years. Except for Ehret in relation to Nilo-Saharan and Chadic, most of the people you mention have never done any linguistic reconstruction work.

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quote:

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The authors you presented have speculated on the origin of the Niger-Congo speakers.None of these scholars have presented any linguistic evidence in support of their propositions; or archaeological evidence supporting a migration of people from Senegal eastward' or from Nigeria northward as suggested by the authors you cite.

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quote:

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You have yet to present any arcaheological evidence disputing the evidence of ceramics spreading from the Fezzan and Sahara; [/QUOTE ]

This is known as shifting the topic and not relevant to the topics on this thread

[QUOTE]nor have you presented any evidence disputing the relationship between the Mande and Egyptian terms
for dogs, and the presence of Basanji dogs only in Egypt and Liberia.

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quote:

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Welmers hypothesis has been confirmed. It remains the best idea on the origination of the Niger-Congo speakers supported by evidence, instead of speculation.

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quote:

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a bit of judicious speculation about Mande origins and migrations may not be out of order ... An original Niger-Congo homeland in the general vicinity of the upper Nile valley is probably as good a hypothesis as any

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quote:

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In 1951, I had the opportunity of spending a busy weekend on Mano; this proved sufficient to cover the phonology and some crucial areas of morphology. . . The opportunities that have come to me for contributing to Mande language studies have also extended beyond Liberia. As an outgrowth of a one-week mission language conference in Kankan, guinea in May, 1948, I published anarticle on the tonal system of Maninka, a northern Mande language. (Welmers 1949)

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quote:

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This is a free country. You can believe any garbage you wish. The lost in knowledge is yours and the people who follow your lead.

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Posts: 833 | From: Austin, TX | Registered: Jan 2007  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                         

quote:

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Originally posted by Quetzalcoatl:

quote:

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Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
[You are wasting your time attempting to use the "method of authority" to make it appear that your 'authorities' should be more recognized than Welmers a leading authority on the Mnade langauges in his own right.

---

There is no doubt that Welmers was an authority on African languages but the paper you cite was written in 1971, 36 years ago and there has been an enourmous amount of work done in both archaeology and linguistics since then. Moreover, you can deny, ignore and skirt it but the fact is that you have cited Welmers incorrectly. He does NOT support your claims about Mande migrations. I have posted the quotes from Welmers' article-- please post a quote from that paper where Welmers says that the MANDE migrated from the Nile Valley.

I cited my"authorities" the same way you cite Welmers, except you do not give any quotes but rather your interpretation of what Welmers supposedly said.

quote:

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Moreover, these people are no more qualified then myself in African linguistics. My research in Paleo-Afro-Dravidian linguistics have been published in peer reviewed journals for years. Except for Ehret in relation to Nilo-Saharan and Chadic, most of the people you mention have never done any linguistic reconstruction work.

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I will post Ehret's and Blench's publications below for others to judge the validity of this claim. I would invite members of ES to look at the catalogs of various universities to see how widely held journals such as the Journal of Tamil Studies are held. Linguists publish in linguistic journals.

quote:

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The authors you presented have speculated on the origin of the Niger-Congo speakers.None of these scholars have presented any linguistic evidence in support of their propositions; or archaeological evidence supporting a migration of people from Senegal eastward' or from Nigeria northward as suggested by the authors you cite.

---

Of course they have, any participant in ES can look at the titles of the publications I'll post and decide.

quote:

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You have yet to present any arcaheological evidence disputing the evidence of ceramics spreading from the Fezzan and Sahara; [/QUOTE ]

This is known as shifting the topic and not relevant to the topics on this thread

[QUOTE]nor have you presented any evidence disputing the relationship between the Mande and Egyptian terms
for dogs, and the presence of Basanji dogs only in Egypt and Liberia.

---

Don't need to since, if this were a trial it would have been dismissed for lack of evidence. You never showed any evidence that uher was an Egyptian term for dog much less for a Basenji, therefore the strained linguistic pirouettes you went through are irrelevant

quote:

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Welmers hypothesis has been confirmed. It remains the best idea on the origination of the Niger-Congo speakers supported by evidence, instead of speculation.

---

Two points. You keep distorting Welmers hypothesis-- he never said that the MANDE migrated from the southern Nile Valley, which is the point you want to make over and over.

and Welmers, himself, pointed out that his ideas were tentative. The nice thing about quotes is that you get to see what people really said-- Welmers :

quote:

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a bit of judicious speculation about Mande origins and migrations may not be out of order ... An original Niger-Congo homeland in the general vicinity of the upper Nile valley is probably as good a hypothesis as any

---

You make it sound as if Welmers presented all sorts of evidence for his hypothesis about the migrations, but in fact, the only evidence is his claim about the Basenji dog (pretty weak we now see). The article is primarily a review of the characteristics of Mande languages and of the work done on them up to 1971. Another of the distortions you make of this article.

Here is a quote from the article about his enormous expertise on Mande

quote:

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In 1951, I had the opportunity of spending a busy weekend on Mano; this proved sufficient to cover the phonology and some crucial areas of morphology. . . The opportunities that have come to me for contributing to Mande language studies have also extended beyond Liberia. As an outgrowth of a one-week mission language conference in Kankan, guinea in May, 1948, I published anarticle on the tonal system of Maninka, a northern Mande language. (Welmers 1949)

---

quote:

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This is a free country. You can believe any garbage you wish. The lost in knowledge is yours and the people who follow your lead.

---

no comment
Below are partial lists of the publications by Christopher Ehret and Roger Blench you can judge if 1) they are qualified to speak on the topic and 2) the have done any research on Niger-Congo and the Mande

First Ehret:
Selected Publications


BOOKS:

The Civilizations of Africa: A History to 1800. University Press of Virginia, 2002.

A Comparative Historical Reconstruction of Proto-Nilo-Saharan. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, 2001.

An African Classical Age: Eastern and Southern Africa in World History, 1000 B.C. to A.D. 400. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998.

(C. Ehret and M. Posnansky, eds.) The Archaeological and Linguistic Reconstruction of African History. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982.

Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic (Proto-Afrasian): Vowels, Tone, Consonants, and Vocabulary. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995.

The Historical Reconstruction of Southern Cushitic Phonology and Vocabulary. Berlin: Reimer, 1980.

Ethiopians and East Africans: The Problem of Contacts. Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1974.

Southern Nilotic History: Linguistic Approaches to the Study of the Past. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1971.


RESEARCH ARTICLES:
(asterisks identify monographic research articles)


LINGUISTIC METHOD IN HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY

“Writing African History from Linguistic Evidence.” Chapter 3 in John Edward Philips (ed.), Writing African History, pp. 86-111. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2005. (Extension and revision of entry 65 above).

“Language Family Expansions: Broadening our Understanding of Cause from an African Perspective.” Chapter 14 in P. Bellwood and C. Renfrew (ed.), Examining the Farming/Language Dispersal Hypothesis, pp. 163-176. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2003.

“The Establishment of Iron-Working in Eastern, Central, and Southern Africa: Linguistic Inferences on Technological History,” Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika 16/17 (2001): 125-175.

“Testing the Expectations of Glottochronology against the Correlations of Language and Archaeology in Africa.” Chapter 15 in C. Renfrew, A. McMahon, and L. Trask (ed.), Time Depth in Historical Linguistics, Vol. 2, pp. 373-399. Cambridge: McDon¬ald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2000.

“Language and History.” Chapter 11 in B. Heine and D. Nurse (ed.), African Languages: An Introduction, pp. 272-297. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

“Language Change and the Material Correlates of Language and Ethnic Shift,” Antiquity 62, no. 236 (1988): 564-574.

(C. Ehret and M. Kinsman) “Shona Dialect Classification and its Implications for Iron Age History in Southern Africa,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 14, 3 (1981): 401-443.

“The Demographic Implications of Linguistic Change and Language Shift.” In C. Fyfe and D. McMaster (ed.), African Historical Demography, Vol. 2, pp. 153-182. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, Centre of African Studies, 1981.

“Historical Inference from Transformations in Cultural Vocabularies,” Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika 2 (1980): 189-218.

“Linguistic Evidence and its Correlation with Archaeology,” World Archaeology 8, 1 (1976): 5-18.

“Language Evidence and Religious History.” In T. O. Ranger and I. N. Kimambo (ed.), The Historical Study of African Religion, pp. 45-49. London, Berkeley: Heinemann and University of California Press, 1972.

“Linguistics as a Tool for Historians,” Hadith 1 (1968): 119-133. Nairobi: East African Publishing House, for Historical Association of Kenya.


HISTORY, EAST AFRICA

“The Eastern Kenya Interior, 1500-1800.” In E. S. Atieno Odhiambo (ed.), African Historians and African Voices, pp. 33-46. Basel: P. Schlettwein Publishers, 2001.

“The East African Interior.” Chapter 22 in M. Elfasi and I. Hrbek (ed.), Africa from the Seventh to the Eleventh Century, pp. 616-642. (Vol. III, General History of Africa). UNESCO, University of California Press, and Heinemann, 1988.

“Between the Coast and the Great Lakes.” Chapter 19 in D. T. Niane (ed.), Africa from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Centuries, pp. 481-497. (Vol. IV, General History of Africa). UNESCO, University of California Press, and Heinemann, 1984.

(C. Ehret and D. Nurse) “The Taita Cushites,” Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika 3 (1981): 125-168.

(L. J. Wood and C. Ehret) “The Origins and Diffusions of the Market Institution in East Africa,” Journal of African Studies 5 (1978): 1-17.

“Aspects of Social and Economic Change in Western Kenya, 500-1800.” Chapter 1 in B. A. Ogot (ed.), Kenya Before 1900, pp. 1-20. Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1977.

(E. A. Alpers and C. Ehret) “Eastern Africa.” In Richard Grey (ed.), Cambridge History of Africa, Vol. 4 (1600-1790), pp. 469-536. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.

“The Nineteenth Century Roots of Economic Imperialism in Kenya,” Kenya Historical Review 2, 2 (1974): 279-283.

(C. Ehret, T. Coffman, L. Fliegelman, A. Gold, M. Hubbard, D. Johnson, and D. E. Saxon) “Some Thoughts on the Early History of the Nile-Congo Watershed,” Ufahamu 5, 2 (1974): 85-112.

“Cushites and the Highland and Plains Nilotes to 1800.” Chapter 8 in B. A. Ogot (ed.), Zamani: A Survey of East African History, new edition, pp. 150-169. London, Nairobi: Long¬mans, 1974 (this is a largely rewritten version of second item with this title)

“Cushites and the Highland and Plains Nilotes.” Chapter 8 in B.A. Ogot and J. A. Kieran (ed.), Zamani: A Survey of East African History, pp. 158-176. London, Nai¬robi: Longmans and East Afri¬can Publishing House, 1968.


HISTORY, NORTHEASTERN AFRICA

“The Eastern Horn of Africa, 1000 BC to 1400 AD: The Historical Roots.” In A. J. Ahmed (ed.), The Invention of Somalia, pp. 233-262. Lawrenceville, NJ: The Red Sea Press, 1995.

“Social Transformation in the Early History of the Horn of Africa: Linguistic Clues to Developments of the Period 500 BC to AD 500.” In Taddese Bayene (ed.), Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, Vol. 1, pp. 639-651. Addis Ababa: Institute of Ethiopian Studies, 1988.

“Cushitic Prehistory.” In M. L. Bender (ed.), The Non-Semitic Languages of Ethiopia, pp. 85-96. East Lansing: Michigan State University, 1976.


HISTORY, SAHARA AND SUDAN

C. Ehret, “Linguistic Stratigraphies and Holocene History in Northeast¬ern Africa.” In Marek Chlodnicki and Karla Kroeper (ed.), Archaeology of Early Northeastern Africa (Posnan: Posnan Archaeological Museum, Studies in African Archaeology, Vol. 9), pp. 1019-1055.

“The African Sources of Egyptian Culture and Language.” In Josep Cervelló (ed.), África Antigua. El Antiguo egipto, una civilizatión Africana, pp. 121-128. (Actas de la IXme Semana de Estudios Africanos del Centre D’estudis Africans de Barcelona.)

“Sudanic Civilization.” Chapter 7 in Michael Adas (ed.), Agricultural and Pastoral Societies in Ancient and Classical History, pp. 224-274. Philadelphia: Temple Univer¬sity Press, for the Ameri¬can Historical Association, 2001.

“Who Were the Rock Artists? Linguistic Evidence for the Holocene Popula¬tion¬s of the Sahara.” In Alfred Muzzolini and Jean-Loïc Le Quellec (ed.), Symposium 13d: Rock Art and the Sahara. In Proceedings of the International Rock Art and Cognitive Archaeology Congress News 95. Turin: Centro Studie Museo d’Arte Prehistorica, 1999. Printout text, 16 pp. [Proceedings are published as a CD ROM: files, “ehret.htm”; “ehipa1.jpg”-“ehipa9.jpg”; “ehlist1.jpg”-“ehlist2.jpg” and ehlist1p.jpg”-“ehlist2.jpg”; “ehret1.jpg”-“ehret5.jpg” and “ehret1p.jpg”-“ehret5p.jpg”)]

“Wer waren die Felsbildkünstler der Sahara?” Almogaren 30 (1999): 77-94. (Translation into German by Werner Pichler and Christiane Hintermann of preceding article.)

“Nilo-Saharans and the Saharo-Sudanese Neolithic.” Chapter 6 in T. Shaw, P. Sinclair, B. Andah, and A. Okpoko (ed.), The Archaeology of Africa: Food, Metals and Towns, pp. 104-125. London: Routledge, 1993.

“Population Movement and Culture Contact in the Southern Sudan, c. 3000 BC to AD 1000.” In J. Mack and P. Robertshaw (ed.), Culture History in the Southern Sudan, pp. 19-48. Memoire 8. Nairobi: British Institute in Eastern Africa, 1983.


HISTORY, SOUTHERN AFRICA

“Transformations in Southern African History: Proposals for a Sweeping Overview of Change and Development, 6000 BC to the present,” Ufahamu 25, 2 (1997): 54-80.

“The First Spread of Food Production to Southern Africa.” Chapter 8 in C. Ehret and M. Posnansky (ed.), The Archaeological and Linguistic Reconstruction of African History, pp. 158-181. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982.

(C. Ehret, M. Bink, T. Ginindza, E. Gottschalk, B. Hall, M. Hlatshwayo, D. Johnson, and R. L. Pouwels) “Outlining Southern African History, A Reconsideration, A.D. 100-1500,” Ufahamu 3, 2 (1972): pp. 9-27.


HISTORY, EAST, CENTRAL, AND SOUTHERN AFRICA

“Equatorial and Southern Africa, 4000 BCE-1100 CE.” In William H. McNeil, Jerry H. Bentley, David Christian, David Levison, J. R. McNeill, Heidi Roupp, and Judith P. Zinsser (eds.), Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History, Vol. 2, pp. 664-670. Great Barrington, MA: Berkshire Publishing Group, 2005.


HISTORY, AFRICAN AGRICULTURAL

“East African Words and Things: Agricultural Aspects of Economic Trans¬formation in the Nineteenth Century.” In B. A. Ogot (ed.), Kenya in the Nineteenth Century (Hadith 8), pp. 152-172. Nairobi: Historical Association of Kenya, 1985.

“Historical/Linguistic Evidence for Early African Food Production.” Chapter 3 in J. D. Clark and S. Brandt (ed.), From Hunters to Farmers, pp. 26-35. Berkeley, Los Ange¬les: Univer¬sity of California Press, 1984.

“Agricultural History in Central and Southern Africa, ca. 1000 BC to AD 500,” Transafrican Journal of History 4, 1/2 (1974): 1-25.

“Sheep and Central Sudanic Peoples in Southern Africa,” Journal of African History 9 (1968): 213-221.

“Cattle-Keeping and Milking in Eastern and Southern African History: The Linguistic Evidence,” Journal of African History 8 (1967): 1-17.


HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS, GENERAL

“Stratigraphy in African Historical Linguistics.” In Henning Andersen (ed.), Language Contacts in Prehistory: Studies in Stratigraphy, pp. 107-114. Amsterdam, Philadel¬phia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2003.

“Nostratic—or Proto-Human?” Chapter 4 in C. Renfrew and D. Nettle (ed.), Nostratic: Examining a Linguistic Macrofamily, pp. 93-112. Cambridge: The McDonald Institute for Archae¬ological Research, 1999.


AFROASIATIC HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

“The Nilo-Saharan Background of Chadic.” Chapter 4 in Paul Newman and Larry Hyman (ed.), West African Linguistics: Studies in Honor of Russell G. Schuh, pp. 56-66. Studies in African Linguistics, Suppl. 11. Columbus: Ohio State University, 2006.

“The Third Consonants in Ancient Egyptian.” In Gabor Takacz (ed.), Egyptian and Semito-Hamitic (Afro-Asiatic) Studies in Memoriam W. Vycichl, pp. 33-54. Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics, Vol. XXXIX. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2003.

“Third Consonants in Chadic Verbal Roots.” In M. Lionel Bender, Gabor Takacz, and David Appleyard (ed.), Selected Comparative-Historical Afrasian Linguistic Studies: In Memory of Igor Diakonoff, pp. 61-69. LINCOM Studies in Afro-Asiatic Linguistics 14. München, LINCOM Europa, 2003.

* “Revising the Consonant Inventory of Proto-Eastern Cushitic,” Studies in African Linguistics 22, 3 (1991): 211-275.

* “The Origins of Third Consonants in Semitic Roots: An Internal Reconstruc¬tion (Applied to Arabic),” Journal of Afroasiatic Languages 3, 2 (1989): 109-202.

C. Ehret, E. D. Elderkin, and D. Nurse, “Dahalo Lexis,” Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere 18 (1989): 5-49

* “Proto-Cushitic Reconstruction,” Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika 8 (1987): 7-180.

* (C. Ehret and M. N. Ali) “Soomaali Classification.” In T. Labahn (ed.), Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Somali Studies (Hamburg, August, 1983), Vol. 1, pp. 201-269. Ham¬burg: Buske Verlag, 1985.

“Omotic and the Subclassification of the Afroasiatic Language Family.” In R. Hess (ed.), Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Ethiopian Studies, Session B, pp. 51-62. Chicago: University of Illinois, 1980.


BANTU AND NIGER-KORDOFANIAN HSTORICAL LINGUISTICS

“Bantu Expansions: Re-envisioning a Central Problem of Early African History,” and “Christopher Ehret Responds,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 34, 1 (2001): 5-41 and 82-87. (Pp. 42-81 consist of responses to the article from 14 schol¬ars of African history, linguistics, and archaeology.)

“Is Krongo After All a Niger-Congo Language?” In R. Vossen, A. Mietzner, and A. Meissner (ed.), “Mehr als nur Worte. . .”: Afrikanistische Beiträge zum 65. Geburtstag von Franz Rottland, pp. 225-237. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, 2000.

* “Subclassifying Bantu: The Evidence of Stem Morpheme Innovation.” In L. Hyman and J.-M. Hombert (ed.), Bantu Historical Linguistics: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives. pp. 43-147. Stanford, California: Center for the Study of Language and Informa¬tion, 1999).

“Bantu Origins: Critique and Interpretation,” Transafrican Journal of History 2, 1 (1972): 1-9.


NILO-SAHARAN HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

“Language Contacts in Nilo-Saharan Prehistory.” In Henning Andersen (ed.), Language Contacts in Prehistory: Studies in Stratigraphy, pp. 135-157. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2003.

“Do Krongo and Shabo Belong in Nilo-Saharan?” In R. Nicolai and F. Rottland (ed.), Fifth Nilo-Saharan Linguistics Colloquium, Nice 24-29 Août 1992. Actes/Proceedings, pp. 169-193. Cologne: Rudiger Köppe Verlag, 1995.

“Subclassification of Nilo-Saharan: A Proposal.” In M. L. Bender (ed.), Topics in Nilo-Saharan Linguistics, pp. 35-49. Hamburg: Buske, 1989.

“Nilotic and the Limits of Eastern Sudanic: Classificatory and Historical Conclusions.” In R. Vossen and M. Bechhaus-Gerst (ed.), Nilotic Studies, Part 2, pp. 377-421. Berlin: Reimer, 1983.

“Revising Proto-Kuliak,” Afrika und Übersee 64 (1981): 81-100.

“The Classification of Kuliak.” In T. Schadeberg and M. L. Bender (ed.), Nilo-Saharan, pp. 269-289. Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 1981.

“The Nilotic Languages.” Chapter 3 in E. Polome and C. P. Hill (ed.), Language in Tanzania, pp. 68-78. London: International African Institute, 1980.


KHOESAN HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

“Toward Reconstructing Proto-South Khoisan (PSAK),” Mother Tongue 8 (2003): 65-81.

“Proposals on Khoisan Reconstruction,” Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika 7, 2 (1986): 105-130.


LINGUISTICS AND GENETICS

(Elizabeth T. Wood, Daryn A. Stover, C. Ehret, Giovanni Destro-Bisol, Gabriella Spedini, Howard McLeod, Leslie Louie, Mike Bamshad, Beverley I. Strassmann, Himla Soodyall, and Michael F. Hammer) “Contrasting Patterns of Y Chromosome and mtDNA Variation in Africa: Evidence for Sex-biased Demographic Processes.” European Journal of Human Genetics, April 2005, pp. 1-10.


SHORT RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS

“Ancient Egyptian as an African Language, Egypt as an African Culture.” In T. Celenko (ed.), Egypt in Africa, pp. 25-27. Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art and Indi¬ana University Press, 1996.

(C. Ehret, S. O. Y. Keita, and Paul Newman) “The Origins of Afroasiatic,” Science 306 (3 December 2004): 1680-1681.


ENCYCLOPEDIA EDITORSHIPS

Thomas J. Sienkiwicz (ed.). Editorial Board: Lawrence Allan Conrad, North America; Geoffrey Conrad, South America; Christopher Ehret, Africa; David A. Crain, Mesoamerica; Katherine Anne Harper, South and South¬east Asia; Robert D. Haak, Egypt, Meso¬potamia, Near East; Chenyang Li, East Asia; Thomas H. Watkins, Greece, Rome, Europe. Encyclopedia of the Ancient World, 3 vols. Pasadena: Salem Press, 2002.

Mark W. Chavalas (ed.). Consulting editors: Mark S. Aldendorfer, Carole A. Barrett, Jeffrey W. Dippmann, Christopher Ehret, Katherine Anne Harper. The Ancient World, 2 vols. (Series: Great Events from History.) Pasadena: Salem Press, 2004.
****
now Blench:
(1982) Social structure and the evolution of language boundaries in Nigeria. Cambridge Anthropology, 7,3:19-30.
(1986) The Evolution of the Nupe cultigen repertoire. Festschrift für Professor C. Hoffman. ed. F. Rottland, Helmut Buske, Hamburg
(1987b) A revision of the Index of Nigerian Languages. Nigerian Field, 52:77-84.
(1989a) Nupoid. In: The Niger-Congo Languages. J. Bendor-Samuel. ed. 305-322. Lanham: University Press of America.
1989b) New Benue-Congo: a definition and proposed internal classification. Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere 17: 115-47
(1990) [w. D. Zeitlyn] A web of words. Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika, 10/11:171-186.
1992) Recent research in the prehistory of Bantu languages. In: Datation et chronologie dans le bassin du Lac Tchad. ed. D. Barreteau. 147-160. Paris: ORSTOM.
1993a) Recent developments in African language classification and their implications for prehistory. In The Archaeology of Africa. Food, Metals and Towns eds. Shaw, T., Sinclair, P., Andah, B. and Okpoko, A. 126-138. London: Routledge.
(1993b) Ethnographic and linguistic evidence for the prehistory of African ruminant livestock, horses and ponies. In: The Archaeology of Africa. Food, Metals and Towns. eds. Shaw, T., Sinclair, P., Andah, B. and Okpoko, A. 71-103. London: Routledge.
1993c) Is Kordofanian the Omotic of Niger-Congo? Mother Tongue, 19, 33.
(1993d) An Introduction to the classification of Mambiloid languages. Journal of West African Languages, XXIII (1):105-118.
(1995a) A History of Domestic Animals in Northeastern Nigeria. Cahiers de Science Humaine, 31, 1:181-238. ORSTOM, Paris.
1995b) The Work of N.W. Thomas as Government Anthropologist in Nigeria. Nigerian Field, 60:20-28.
1995c) [with S. Longtau] Tarok Ophresiology. pp. 340-344 in Issues in African Languages and Linguistics: Essays in Honour of Kay

(1995d) Is Niger-Congo simply a branch of Nilo-Saharan? In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nilo-Saharan Linguistics Colloquium. eds. R. Nicolai and F. Rottland. 83-130. Köln: Köppe Verlag.
# (1996a) Evidence for the inception of agriculture in the Nigeria-Cameroun borderland. pp. 83-102. In The Growth of Farming communities in Africa from the Equator southwards. ed. J.E.G. Sutton. Azania special Volume XXIX-XXX. Nairobi: BIEA.
# (1996b) Report on the Tarokoid languages. Iatiku, 3:14-15.
# (1997a) [with K. Williamson & B. Connell] The Diffusion of Maize in Nigeria: a Historical and Linguistic Investigation. SUGIA, XIV:19-46. Köln.
# (1997b). Language studies in Africa. In Encyclopaedia of precolonial Africa. J.O. Vogel (ed.) 90-100. Walnut Creek/London/New Delhi: Altamira.
# (1997d) Crabs, turtles and frogs: linguistic keys to early African subsistence systems. In: Archaeology and Language, I. eds. R.M. Blench and M. Spriggs. 166-183. London: Routledge.
# (1997e) The papers of Roland Stevenson. Nilo-Saharan Newsletter. N.S. 1:3-16.
# (1998a) The diffusion of New World Cultigens in Nigeria. In: Plantes et paysages d’Afrique. 165-210. M. Chastenet. ed. Paris: Karthala.
# (1998b) The status of the languages of Central Nigeria. In: Brenzinger, M. ed. Endangered languages in Africa. 187-206. Köln: Köppe Verlag.
# (1998c) Recent fieldwork in Nigeria: Report on Horom and Tapshin. Ogmios, 9:10-11.
# (1999a) Are the African Pygmies an ethnographic fiction? In: Central African hunter-gatherers in a multi-disciplinary perspective: challenging elusiveness. K. Biesbrouck, S. Elders & G. Rossel eds. 41-60. Leiden: CNWS.
# (1999b) Hunter-gatherers, conservation and development: from prejudice to policy reform. Natural Resource Briefing Paper 43. London: Overseas Development Institute. http://www.odi.org.uk/odi/nrp/43.html.
# (1999c) The westward wanderings of Cushitic pastoralists. In: L’Homme et l’animale dans le Bassin du Lac Tchad. C. Baroin & J. Boutrais eds. 39-80. Paris: IRD.
# (1999d). General introduction. In: Archaeology and Language, IV. eds. R.M. Blench and M. Spriggs. London: Routledge.
# (1999e) The languages of Africa: macrophyla proposals and implications for archaeological interpretation. In: Archaeology and Language, IV. eds. R.M. Blench and M. Spriggs. London: Routledge.
# (1999f) Language phyla of the Indo-Pacific region: recent research and classification. Indo-Pacific Prehistory Bulletin, 18: 59-76.
# (1999g) Field trip to record the status of some little-known Nigerian languages. Ogmios, 11:11:14.
# (1999h) Recent fieldwork in Ghana: Report on Dompo and a note on Mpre. Ogmios, 11:14-15.
# (2000a) with K. Williamson. Niger-Congo. In: African languages: an introduction. B. Heine & D. Nurse eds. 11-42. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
# (2000b) Combining different sources of evidence for the history of African livestock. In: The origin and development of African livestock. R.M. Blench & K.C. MacDonald eds. 18-27. London: University College Press.
# (2000c) Revising Plateau. In: Proceedings of 2nd WOCAL, Ekkehard Wolff & O. Gensler eds. 159-174. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe.
# (2000d) Transitions in Izere nominal morphology and implications for the analysis of Plateau languages. In: A. Meißner & A. Storch (eds.) Nominal classification in African languages. Frankfurter Afrikanische Blätter, 12:7-28.
# (2001a) Types of language spread and their archaeological correlates: the example of Berber. In: Origini, XXIII: 169-190.
# (2001b) Nupe children’s songs and singing games. In: Von Ägypten zum Tschadsee: eine linguistische Reise durch Afrika. D. Ibriszimow, R. Leger & U. Seibert (eds.) 67-77. Würzburg: Ergon Verlag.
# (2002) Besprechungsartikel. The classification of Nilo-Saharan. Afrika und Übersee, 83:293-307.
# (2003a) Why reconstructing comparative Ron is so problematic. In: Topics in Chadic Linguistics. Papers from the 1st Biennial International Colloquium on the Chadic Language Family (Leipzig, July 5-8, 2001). H. Ekkehard Wolff (ed.) 21-42. Köln: Rudiger Köppe.
# (2003b) Plural verb morphology in Vagla. Cahiers Voltaïques / Gur Papers VI (2003): 17-31. Bayreuth.
# (2004a) Archaeology and Language: methods and issues. In: A Companion To Archaeology. J. Bintliff ed. 52-74. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
# (2004b) The É?Boze [Buji] language and the movement for literacy. Ogmios, #24:11-12.
# (2004c) The situation of endangered languages in the Sudan and some notes on Kufo. Ogmios, #24:10-11.
# (2004d) with J.G. Nengel. Notes on the Seni people and language with an addendum on Ziriya. Ogmios, #24:12-13.
# (2005a) From the mountains to the valleys: understanding ethnolinguistic geography in SE Asia. In: The peopling of East Asia. Sagart, L. Blench, R.M. & A. Sanchez-Mazas (eds.) 31-50. London: Routledge.
# (2005b) Fruits and arboriculture in the Indo-Pacific region. BIPPA, 24:31-50.

Books

* 1992. Crozier, D.H. and Blench, R.M. An Index of Nigerian Languages. Abuja: Language Development Centre, Ilorin: University of Ilorin, Dallas: SIL. ISBN 0-88312-611-7
* 1997. Blench, R.M. & M.Spriggs eds. Archaeology and Language I : theoretical and methodological orientations. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-11760-7
* 1998. Blench, R.M. & M.Spriggs eds. Archaeology and Language II: correlating archaeological and linguistic hypotheses. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-11761-5
* 1999a. Blench, R.M. & M.Spriggs eds. Archaeology and Language III: Artefacts, languages, and texts. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-10054-2
* 1999b. Blench, R.M. & M.Spriggs eds. Archaeology and Language, IV: language change and cultural transformation. London: Routledge. 0-415-11786-0
* 2005. L.Sagart, Blench, R.M. & A. Sanchez-Mazas eds. The peopling of East Asia. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-32242-1
* 2006 Blench R. M. Archaeology, Lnaguage, and the African Past. New York: Altamira Press

---

Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Clyde Winters:

quote:

---

Originally posted by rasol:

quote:

---

This map makes it clear that Dravidians and Africans share haplotypes RxR1 and K

---

I don't know why you bother with genetics, since you don't understand it, and are so sloppy about citing it [even confusing male e-M2 e3a; with maternal l3M2].

I think your goal is just to spread confusion amongst your "students", and so prevent genetics from easily debunking you as it always does.

R haplotype is rare in Africa.

Underived R1 is found in Central Africa where it *may* have originated 35 thousand years ago.

This haplotype is non-existent in India.

East Europeans, Indian and some East Asian....share derived R1a, which split from West European R1b in a fashion not altogether unlike the African split of E3a and E3b.

Just as Dravidian have virtually no E3a or E3b, Africans have virtually no R1a and R1b.

Likewise Dravidians do not have West African derived Benin Hbs, [as do Greeks, Arabs and other peoples with recent African ancestry] but rather their own ancient malarial resistent genes which evolved in Asia and are in turn, not found among AFricans.

Therefore all geneticists agree that Africans and Dravidians are not closely related.

And on this point, Dr. Winters, it is fair to say, that you simply don't care about the facts and are quite willingly to fib about them for ideology reasons, isn't that so?

---

.

---

quote:

---

The map speaks for itself.
It shows people carrying the same genes on two different continents. This shows a relationship.

---

Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mystery Solver:
For whatever its worth:

…Bantu languages of Central and Southern Africa arose from an ancestral language called Proto-Bantu which must have been located somewhere in today’s Cameroon and whose speakers expanded towards the equatorial forests of the Congo about 5000 years ago...the Bantu, Iyoide, Atlantic, Mande and Khordofanian linguistic families of western and central sub-Saharan Africa seem to be genetically related and an ancestral language called proto-Niger-Congo has also been postulated with an age of about 15,000 years ago. - by Felix Marti et al., Words and Worlds: World Languages Review

---

Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

I cited my"authorities" the same way you [Dr. Winters] cite Welmers, except you do not give any quotes but rather your interpretation of what Welmers supposedly said.

---

You are too kind in describing the Winters method of wild-minded distortion.

Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Eventhough you claim a lack of bias in representing the views of linguist in relation to the homeland of the Niger-Congo speakers you misrepresented the views of Blench. Blench supports Welmers view that the Niger-Congo speakers, homeland was the Sudan , not West Africa.

Roger Blench, Is Niger-Congo simply a branch of Nilo-Saharan, Nilo-Saharan,(1995) 10:83-128.

noted:

"Previous writers, noting the concentration of families in West Africa, have tended to assume a location somewhere near the headwaters of the Niger and explained Kordofanian by the migration of a single group. If the present classification is accepted, it becomes far more likely that the homeland was in in the centre of present-day
Sudan and the Kordofanian represents the Niger-Congo speakers who stayed at home (p.98)."


.

---

quote:

---

So far, it has not proved possible to reconstruct the names of any hunting implements into Niger-Saharan. However, there is the possibility that 'canoe' will reconstruct to Niger-Central Sudanic. If this is correct, then this node may be identified with the gradual improvement in the climate after 12,000 B.P. The bow and arrow, which appears in North Africa by 11,000 B.P., reconstructs convincingly back to Proto-Mande Congo and no further. Interestingly, there is no comparable reconstruction possible for the more scattered Nilo-Saharan, suggesting major dispersal took place before the technology spread south of the Sahara.

---

Posts: 833 | From: Austin, TX | Registered: Jan 2007  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Quetzalcoatl:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Eventhough you claim a lack of bias in representing the views of linguist in relation to the homeland of the Niger-Congo speakers you misrepresented the views of Blench. Blench supports Welmers view that the Niger-Congo speakers, homeland was the Sudan , not West Africa.

Roger Blench, Is Niger-Congo simply a branch of Nilo-Saharan, Nilo-Saharan,(1995) 10:83-128.

noted:

"Previous writers, noting the concentration of families in West Africa, have tended to assume a location somewhere near the headwaters of the Niger and explained Kordofanian by the migration of a single group. If the present classification is accepted, it becomes far more likely that the homeland was in in the centre of present-day
Sudan and the Kordofanian represents the Niger-Congo speakers who stayed at home (p.98)."


.

---

Thank you for providing such a complete list of your publications.
And thank you for quoting Blench and providing a citation.

I have written Blench to see if he still adheres to the views of 1995.

I hate to keep harping on this but all of the hypotheses and claims you make concern the Mande, not the Niger-Congo family. Therefore, the key point to focus on is: from where and when did the Mande expand. Again, Welmers does NOT say that the Mande expanded from the southern Sudan/Uganda area but from Benin. So Blench in 1995 agreed with Welmers about the expansion of Niger-Congo (assuming that Blench's proposal that there was a proto-Niger-Saharan family is valid). Blench does not propose such a family in his 2006 book.
Even in 1995, Blench does not support a Sudanese origin for the Mande in the paragraph, immediately before the passage you cite, he says:

quote:

---

So far, it has not proved possible to reconstruct the names of any hunting implements into Niger-Saharan. However, there is the possibility that 'canoe' will reconstruct to Niger-Central Sudanic. If this is correct, then this node may be identified with the gradual improvement in the climate after 12,000 B.P. The bow and arrow, which appears in North Africa by 11,000 B.P., reconstructs convincingly back to Proto-Mande Congo and no further. Interestingly, there is no comparable reconstruction possible for the more scattered Nilo-Saharan, suggesting major dispersal took place before the technology spread south of the Sahara.

---

That is, before Mande arose, the family had already spread out of the Sudan.

I have quoted Blench's latest book (2006) correctly above that the Mande expanded in 6000 BP. It is usually a good idea to quote a scholar's most recent views on a particular topic.

---

Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Quetzalcoatl:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Eventhough you claim a lack of bias in representing the views of linguist in relation to the homeland of the Niger-Congo speakers you misrepresented the views of Blench. Blench supports Welmers view that the Niger-Congo speakers, homeland was the Sudan , not West Africa.

Roger Blench, Is Niger-Congo simply a branch of Nilo-Saharan, Nilo-Saharan,(1995) 10:83-128.

noted:

"Previous writers, noting the concentration of families in West Africa, have tended to assume a location somewhere near the headwaters of the Niger and explained Kordofanian by the migration of a single group. If the present classification is accepted, it becomes far more likely that the homeland was in in the centre of present-day
Sudan and the Kordofanian represents the Niger-Congo speakers who stayed at home (p.98)."


.

---

Thank you for providing such a complete list of your publications.
And thank you for quoting Blench and providing a citation.

I have written Blench to see if he still adheres to the views of 1995.

I hate to keep harping on this but all of the hypotheses and claims you make concern the Mande, not the Niger-Congo family. Therefore, the key point to focus on is: from where and when did the Mande expand. Again, Welmers does NOT say that the Mande expanded from the southern Sudan/Uganda area but from Benin. So Blench in 1995 agreed with Welmers about the expansion of Niger-Congo (assuming that Blench's proposal that there was a proto-Niger-Saharan family is valid). Blench does not propose such a family in his 2006 book.
Even in 1995, Blench does not support a Sudanese origin for the Mande in the paragraph, immediately before the passage you cite, he says:

quote:

---

So far, it has not proved possible to reconstruct the names of any hunting implements into Niger-Saharan. However, there is the possibility that 'canoe' will reconstruct to Niger-Central Sudanic. If this is correct, then this node may be identified with the gradual improvement in the climate after 12,000 B.P. The bow and arrow, which appears in North Africa by 11,000 B.P., reconstructs convincingly back to Proto-Mande Congo and no further. Interestingly, there is no comparable reconstruction possible for the more scattered Nilo-Saharan, suggesting major dispersal took place before the technology spread south of the Sahara.

---

That is, before Mande arose, the family had already spread out of the Sudan.

I have quoted Blench's latest book (2006) correctly above that the Mande expanded in 6000 BP. It is usually a good idea to quote a scholar's most recent views on a particular topic.

---

Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
[]It is clear from the article that he believes the Niger-Congo speakers originated in the Sudan. It is also clear that the Mande, who spoke a Niger-Congo language, would have been in the Sudan with the other Niger-Congo speakers.


. [/QB]

---

Posts: 833 | From: Austin, TX | Registered: Jan 2007  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
[]This is not a complete list of my articles relating to linguistics, archaeology and anthropology. I just didn't feel like typing them all up.

The list also fails to note any of my education articles or presentation.

.

. [/QB]

---

Posts: 833 | From: Austin, TX | Registered: Jan 2007  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Djehuti:
Why should we provide any counter, when it is a well established fact that Bantu languages did NOT originate in Egypt!

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Posts: 1106 | From: Puerto Rico | Registered: Aug 2007  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                   

quote:

---

Originally posted by Asar Imhotep:

I just sat here and read the whole discussion and pretty much, what has been posted, has been he said she said...

However, I agree with the general argument that Niger-Congo did NOT develop from the Egyptian written language system. The so-called Egyptian WRITTEN language derived from the "other" African languages.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Asar Imhotep:

The reason why it is so hard to classify Mdw Ntr as a language system is because it is a language system of a priesthood that no modern Egyptologist belongs to.

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Posts: 1947 | Registered: Sep 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Djehuti:
^ What? So you think Egyptian originated from Bantu?? LOL Believe whatever you want.

To Asar: Again, I do not deny that all African languages share some kind of relation. This is not the issue. The issue is associating any old African language even Bantu to Egyptian just because Egyptian is the most popular ancient civilization in the world?! You understand the fallacy of that argument. Both are African languages, but Bantu is a very large and diverse language group spoken from West to Central and Southern Africa while Egyptians is one language or perhaps a very small language group spoken in northeast Africa.

---

Posts: 1106 | From: Puerto Rico | Registered: Aug 2007  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Djehuti:
^ All African languages have somekind of similarities with each other. Just how similar depends on how close the relation. Egypytian is part of the Afrasian language phylum, as such it is most similar to other Afrasian languages such as Berber, Semitic, Chadic, Omotic, and Cushitic.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by COTONOU_BY_NIGHT:
Djehuti:
According to late Beja specialist Werner Vycichl, Beja has three ways of expressing plural, reduplication (not found often), last vowel shortening & suffixation of -a. The two former, although not based on the same exact pattern of Semitic, are clearly non-concatenative, hence dissimilar to Old Egyptian suffixation.

Chapter VI, pp. 88-89

code:

---

   
Some examples of Berber "broken" plural formation:
aghiul "ass"; pl ighial
asgass "year"; pl.isgassen
ir'allen "arm"; pl. ir'allen
illi "daughter"; issi "pl."

Again Berber is totally different from Egyptian:
s3t "daughter"; pl. s3wt
ib "heart"; pl. ibw
 

---

How can one claim that Hamito-Semitic does actually exist relying on this?

The dual is frequently used in Akkadian, Ugaritic & Arabic, which may suggest that it is only secondary in other Semitic languages.

code:

---

   
Akkadian:
-aan (dative), een (genitive), iin (accusative);
Ugaritic:
-aami (nominative), eemi (genitive/accusative)
Hebraic:
-ayn
Syriac:
-En~-een (only found as a retention in two words)
Ethiopian:
-ee (only found in a few cases)
Arabic:
-aani(nominative)
-ayni (genitive/accusative)

---

While Berber doesn't make grammatical use of dual, it seems to agree with Semitic in occurrences of natural pairs (suffixes -in,-en, -an for dual are also found in Semitic) :

code:

---

  
adar "foot" pl.idaren 
tit "eye" pl. allen 
aDalis "lip" pl. dilsan (Ghadamès)
aDaluy "lip" pl. iDlay "lips" (Ahaggar)

---

Semitic languages originally marked three principal cases:

code:

---

  
-nominative (sing. -u, pl.-uu, dual -aa), 
-genitive/accusative (sing. -i(genitive), -a(accusative) pl.-i, dual -ay), 

Examples:
Classical Arabic
"king"
-Malik-u
-Malik-i
-Malik-a

Akkadian
"good"
-Taab-u
-Taab-i
-Taab-a

There is however a class of words whose both genitive and accusative are formed with the same suffix -a.

---

In Egyptian, Pharaonic and Coptic there are absolutely no traces of casual marking. Why would the most archaic synchrony of Egyptian have lost any trace of Proto-Hamito-Semitic as Akkadian (a language contemporary to Pharaonic Egyptian) did?

The truth is that Hamito-Semitic does not exist. This is a myth with no morphological basis. A myth that must be destroyed by the real science.

MTC.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by COTONOU_BY_NIGHT:
Erratum:
Of course, at the end of my last post, I meant "why would have Akkadian retained the casual marking system while Egyptian didn't at all?" & vice versa.

Chap. VII pp.92-93

http://img159.imageshack.us/img159/4610/p1010108qp0.jpg

In Semitic, the 3rd person independant personal pronouns are the following:

code:

---

 
singular masc. singular fem./ plural masc./plural fem.
Akkadian
shu/shi/shunu/shina
Ugaritic
hw/hy/hm/hm
Hebrew
huu/hii/hEm(ma)/hEn(na)
 Syriac
huu/hii/hennoon/henneen
Arabic 
huwa/hiya/hum(uu)/hunna
Ethiopian
wE'Etu/yE'Eti/'Emuuntuu/'Emaantuu

---

Hence, there are forms with:
-an initial sh: Akkadian & Southern Arabian (except Sabean)
-an initial h (for the rest, except Ethiopian)
(while Ethiopian dropped the initial h and then evolved from 'wu>wu>wE & 'iy>yi>yE and the following suffixation of the final element -tii/tuu)

The two forms are of Proto-Semitic origin, but which one is the earlier? There is no consensus on the question.

However, those forms are completely absent in Egyptian from Pharaonic to Coptic where there are no gutturals nor post-alveolar fricatives, only s (feminine sing.), f (masculine singular), and sn (plural) for the personal suffix pronoun; sw, sy, sn, st (masculine & feminine singular, masculine & feminine plural), for the deopendent personal pronouns; ntf, nts, ntsn for the independent personal pronouns.

Berber's dependent personal pronouns are the following:

code:

---

netta (masc), nettsath (fem), nittheni (masc plural), netthenti (fem. plural)

---

The Berber suffix pronouns (s (singular), sn (pl. masc), snt (pl. fem.), agree a bit with Egyptian, but this a superficial resemblance: Berber doesn't have the Egyptian f.

Wolof has the same forms for the third person , singular & plural; Obenga cites Serge Sauneron who said that the resemblance cannot be due to chance and is thus necessarily due to a common origin of the two languages.

Egyptian has no relative pronouns while Semitic & Berber have.

code:

---

Akkadian 
Singular:
shu, shi sha
shat shati
Plural:
shuut shaat
Dual:
sha

Berber: 
enni (invariant)

---

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by COTONOU_BY_NIGHT:
Chap VII pp.94-96 (final part of the chapter)
http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/1237/p1010109uq8.jpg
http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/4303/p1010110lv5.jpg
Obviously inherited lexical items clearly show the irreality of "Hamito-Semitic", since Berber, Semitic have no common lexical structure with Egyptian:

code:

---

glose	Semitic	Egyptian	Berber
sun	shmsh (common Semitic)	r’, re	tafukt
year	sn 
	(Lihyanitic)	rnpt rompE rompi	asggas
	shaanaa 	(Hebrew) 		
	sanat 	(Arabic)		
place	macom (Phoenician)
+maqam
	bw, ma	ida
night	Arabic	layl	grH, D3w	iD
	Ethiopian 	leelit		
	Hebrew	luun, liin		
	Ugaritic	lyn		
name	+sumum, samum 	rn, ran, ren, lAn, lEn	ism, isEm
take !	Sabat ! (Akkadian)	m, mi, mo	ameZ
ear	sinn 
	(Arabic)	msDr	ameZZugh
	sEn 	(Ethiopian)		
teeth	Akkadian	uzun	Tst	axs
	Assyrian	uzan		
	Hebrew	‘ozen		
	Arabic	‘uDn		
	Ethiopian	‘Ezn		
brother	Akkadian	axu	sn, son	g-ma, ait-ma (pl.)
	Ugaritic	ax		
	Hebrew	‘aaH		
	Syriac	‘aHaa		
	Arabic	‘ax		
	Epigraphic South Arabian	‘x		
	Ethiopian	‘Exw (labialized x)		
to enter	Akkadian	‘rb	‘q, 3q, ook	ekSem
	Hebrew	‘rb		
	Syriac	‘rb		
	Arabic	Grb		
	Epigraphic South Arabian	Grb		
black	‘aswad (Arabic)	km, kamE, kEmi	isgin, isggan, istif, dlu, bexxen
blood	dam (common Semitic)	snf, snfw, snof	idammen
beautiful	Hasan (Arabic)	nfr, nofre, nofri	iga shbab, iga zzin, fulki
eternity	‘almiin (Eastern Syriac)	D.t, nHH, EnEh	
god	il (Ugaritic)	nTr, nutE, nuti, noutE	rEbbi (Arabic Allah)
soul	Hebrew	nepesh	b3, bai	RroH, laRuaH (pl.) 
	Syriac	napsha		
	Arabic	nafs		
	Ethiopian	nafs		
river	naaru (Akkadian)	itrw	asif
hand	yd, yad (common Semitic)	Dr.t, ‘ (« arm »)	ufus, afus
house	bayit (Hebrew)	pr	tigemmi
head	+ra’sh 	common Semitic	tp, apE, afE	agayyu, ixf
	reeshu	Akkadian		
	roosh	Hebrew		
	ra’s	Arabic		

---

In conclusion, the results of a strict linguistic analysis are the following :

-There are no parallels between Semitic, Berber and Egyptian regarding consonantic structure, grammatical gender, formation of dual and plural, declination, casual morphologies, personal and relative pronouns.

-About verbal themes, the use of reduplication does not have the same extension in Egyptian and in Semitic.

-Also, Egyptian doesn’t have the prefixal conjugation found and the derived compound verbal themes found in Semitic.

-The verbal forms sDm.f and sDm.n.f don’t exist in Semitic.

-Egyptian prepositions and conjunctions are not found in Semitic : Egyptian m « as, like » vs Akkadian ki(ma), Ugaritic k, Hebrew kE(moo), Syriac ‘ak, Arabic kaa, Ethiopian kEmaa « as, like » ; Egyptian xr « upon, above », vs Akkadian ‘l, Ugaritic ‘l, Syriac ‘al, Hebrew ‘al, Arabic ‘ala, Ethiopian la’la « upon, above ». Berber has zud~zund « as , like », and iggi « upon »

-Inherited lexical that can hardly be borrowed from a language to another (see examples above) even in a situation of cultural linguistic dominance are different in Semitic, Egyptian and Berber. Cardinal numbers (1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 20, 100, 1000) are also much different in the three language groups.

Hence, « Hamito-Semitic » or « Afro-Asiatic »[or Afrasian] is an illusion, a myth.

---

Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Djehuti:
^ All African languages have somekind of similarities with each other. Just how similar depends on how close the relation. Egypytian is part of the Afrasian language phylum, as such it is most similar to other Afrasian languages such as Berber, Semitic, Chadic, Omotic, and Cushitic.

---

Posts: 1106 | From: Puerto Rico | Registered: Aug 2007  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Clyde Winters:

quote:

---

Originally posted by COTONOU_BY_NIGHT:
Djehuti:
According to late Beja specialist Werner Vycichl, Beja has three ways of expressing plural, reduplication (not found often), last vowel shortening & suffixation of -a. The two former, although not based on the same exact pattern of Semitic, are clearly non-concatenative, hence dissimilar to Old Egyptian suffixation.

Chapter VI, pp. 88-89

code:

---

   
Some examples of Berber "broken" plural formation:
aghiul "ass"; pl ighial
asgass "year"; pl.isgassen
ir'allen "arm"; pl. ir'allen
illi "daughter"; issi "pl."

Again Berber is totally different from Egyptian:
s3t "daughter"; pl. s3wt
ib "heart"; pl. ibw
 

---

How can one claim that Hamito-Semitic does actually exist relying on this?

The dual is frequently used in Akkadian, Ugaritic & Arabic, which may suggest that it is only secondary in other Semitic languages.

code:

---

   
Akkadian:
-aan (dative), een (genitive), iin (accusative);
Ugaritic:
-aami (nominative), eemi (genitive/accusative)
Hebraic:
-ayn
Syriac:
-En~-een (only found as a retention in two words)
Ethiopian:
-ee (only found in a few cases)
Arabic:
-aani(nominative)
-ayni (genitive/accusative)

---

While Berber doesn't make grammatical use of dual, it seems to agree with Semitic in occurrences of natural pairs (suffixes -in,-en, -an for dual are also found in Semitic) :

code:

---

  
adar "foot" pl.idaren 
tit "eye" pl. allen 
aDalis "lip" pl. dilsan (Ghadamès)
aDaluy "lip" pl. iDlay "lips" (Ahaggar)

---

Semitic languages originally marked three principal cases:

code:

---

  
-nominative (sing. -u, pl.-uu, dual -aa), 
-genitive/accusative (sing. -i(genitive), -a(accusative) pl.-i, dual -ay), 

Examples:
Classical Arabic
"king"
-Malik-u
-Malik-i
-Malik-a

Akkadian
"good"
-Taab-u
-Taab-i
-Taab-a

There is however a class of words whose both genitive and accusative are formed with the same suffix -a.

---

In Egyptian, Pharaonic and Coptic there are absolutely no traces of casual marking. Why would the most archaic synchrony of Egyptian have lost any trace of Proto-Hamito-Semitic as Akkadian (a language contemporary to Pharaonic Egyptian) did?

The truth is that Hamito-Semitic does not exist. This is a myth with no morphological basis. A myth that must be destroyed by the real science.

MTC.

---

.

quote:

---

Originally posted by COTONOU_BY_NIGHT:
Erratum:
Of course, at the end of my last post, I meant "why would have Akkadian retained the casual marking system while Egyptian didn't at all?" & vice versa.

Chap. VII pp.92-93

http://img159.imageshack.us/img159/4610/p1010108qp0.jpg

In Semitic, the 3rd person independant personal pronouns are the following:

code:

---

 
singular masc. singular fem./ plural masc./plural fem.
Akkadian
shu/shi/shunu/shina
Ugaritic
hw/hy/hm/hm
Hebrew
huu/hii/hEm(ma)/hEn(na)
 Syriac
huu/hii/hennoon/henneen
Arabic 
huwa/hiya/hum(uu)/hunna
Ethiopian
wE'Etu/yE'Eti/'Emuuntuu/'Emaantuu

---

Hence, there are forms with:
-an initial sh: Akkadian & Southern Arabian (except Sabean)
-an initial h (for the rest, except Ethiopian)
(while Ethiopian dropped the initial h and then evolved from 'wu>wu>wE & 'iy>yi>yE and the following suffixation of the final element -tii/tuu)

The two forms are of Proto-Semitic origin, but which one is the earlier? There is no consensus on the question.

However, those forms are completely absent in Egyptian from Pharaonic to Coptic where there are no gutturals nor post-alveolar fricatives, only s (feminine sing.), f (masculine singular), and sn (plural) for the personal suffix pronoun; sw, sy, sn, st (masculine & feminine singular, masculine & feminine plural), for the deopendent personal pronouns; ntf, nts, ntsn for the independent personal pronouns.

Berber's dependent personal pronouns are the following:

code:

---

netta (masc), nettsath (fem), nittheni (masc plural), netthenti (fem. plural)

---

The Berber suffix pronouns (s (singular), sn (pl. masc), snt (pl. fem.), agree a bit with Egyptian, but this a superficial resemblance: Berber doesn't have the Egyptian f.

Wolof has the same forms for the third person , singular & plural; Obenga cites Serge Sauneron who said that the resemblance cannot be due to chance and is thus necessarily due to a common origin of the two languages.

Egyptian has no relative pronouns while Semitic & Berber have.

code:

---

Akkadian 
Singular:
shu, shi sha
shat shati
Plural:
shuut shaat
Dual:
sha

Berber: 
enni (invariant)

---

---

.

.

quote:

---

Originally posted by COTONOU_BY_NIGHT:
Chap VII pp.94-96 (final part of the chapter)
http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/1237/p1010109uq8.jpg
http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/4303/p1010110lv5.jpg
Obviously inherited lexical items clearly show the irreality of "Hamito-Semitic", since Berber, Semitic have no common lexical structure with Egyptian:

code:

---

glose	Semitic	Egyptian	Berber
sun	shmsh (common Semitic)	r’, re	tafukt
year	sn 
	(Lihyanitic)	rnpt rompE rompi	asggas
	shaanaa 	(Hebrew) 		
	sanat 	(Arabic)		
place	macom (Phoenician)
+maqam
	bw, ma	ida
night	Arabic	layl	grH, D3w	iD
	Ethiopian 	leelit		
	Hebrew	luun, liin		
	Ugaritic	lyn		
name	+sumum, samum 	rn, ran, ren, lAn, lEn	ism, isEm
take !	Sabat ! (Akkadian)	m, mi, mo	ameZ
ear	sinn 
	(Arabic)	msDr	ameZZugh
	sEn 	(Ethiopian)		
teeth	Akkadian	uzun	Tst	axs
	Assyrian	uzan		
	Hebrew	‘ozen		
	Arabic	‘uDn		
	Ethiopian	‘Ezn		
brother	Akkadian	axu	sn, son	g-ma, ait-ma (pl.)
	Ugaritic	ax		
	Hebrew	‘aaH		
	Syriac	‘aHaa		
	Arabic	‘ax		
	Epigraphic South Arabian	‘x		
	Ethiopian	‘Exw (labialized x)		
to enter	Akkadian	‘rb	‘q, 3q, ook	ekSem
	Hebrew	‘rb		
	Syriac	‘rb		
	Arabic	Grb		
	Epigraphic South Arabian	Grb		
black	‘aswad (Arabic)	km, kamE, kEmi	isgin, isggan, istif, dlu, bexxen
blood	dam (common Semitic)	snf, snfw, snof	idammen
beautiful	Hasan (Arabic)	nfr, nofre, nofri	iga shbab, iga zzin, fulki
eternity	‘almiin (Eastern Syriac)	D.t, nHH, EnEh	
god	il (Ugaritic)	nTr, nutE, nuti, noutE	rEbbi (Arabic Allah)
soul	Hebrew	nepesh	b3, bai	RroH, laRuaH (pl.) 
	Syriac	napsha		
	Arabic	nafs		
	Ethiopian	nafs		
river	naaru (Akkadian)	itrw	asif
hand	yd, yad (common Semitic)	Dr.t, ‘ (« arm »)	ufus, afus
house	bayit (Hebrew)	pr	tigemmi
head	+ra’sh 	common Semitic	tp, apE, afE	agayyu, ixf
	reeshu	Akkadian		
	roosh	Hebrew		
	ra’s	Arabic		

---

In conclusion, the results of a strict linguistic analysis are the following :

-There are no parallels between Semitic, Berber and Egyptian regarding consonantic structure, grammatical gender, formation of dual and plural, declination, casual morphologies, personal and relative pronouns.

-About verbal themes, the use of reduplication does not have the same extension in Egyptian and in Semitic.

-Also, Egyptian doesn’t have the prefixal conjugation found and the derived compound verbal themes found in Semitic.

-The verbal forms sDm.f and sDm.n.f don’t exist in Semitic.

-Egyptian prepositions and conjunctions are not found in Semitic : Egyptian m « as, like » vs Akkadian ki(ma), Ugaritic k, Hebrew kE(moo), Syriac ‘ak, Arabic kaa, Ethiopian kEmaa « as, like » ; Egyptian xr « upon, above », vs Akkadian ‘l, Ugaritic ‘l, Syriac ‘al, Hebrew ‘al, Arabic ‘ala, Ethiopian la’la « upon, above ». Berber has zud~zund « as , like », and iggi « upon »

-Inherited lexical that can hardly be borrowed from a language to another (see examples above) even in a situation of cultural linguistic dominance are different in Semitic, Egyptian and Berber. Cardinal numbers (1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 20, 100, 1000) are also much different in the three language groups.

Hence, « Hamito-Semitic » or « Afro-Asiatic »[or Afrasian] is an illusion, a myth.

---

.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mystery Solver:

Cotonou's compilations of Obenga's comparative grammatic analysis was far from showing that ancient Egyptian was not related to other Afrasan languages. In fact, while he makes light of it, Obenga notes grammatic correlations between certain languages from different sub-Afrasan families. Obenga mainly hangs onto the idea that there are some grammatic differences between languages from different sub-Afrasan families, which should be obvious, because they were placed into distinct sub-families for a reason to begin with. That though, doesn't preclude the basic language affinities shared across the superfamily. I have demonstrated strong *grammatic* correlations between certain languages from distinct sub-Afrasan languages, not merely lexicons whose connections may or may not be tentative. At the end of the day, request for Obenga's *exhaustive* grammatic and lexical comparative analysis to obtain *genetic* [linguistically] justification for his typological construct of Negro-African superfamily, separate from Tamazight, Semitic, and perhaps Khoisan was never followed up with.

---

Posts: 26286 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
It is well known that the Bantu languages and Egyptian are genetically related. The dynamics of this relationship have been worked out by Th. Obenga, Alain Anselin, Oscar Pfouma and Gilbert Ngom.

The relationship between these languages is supported by grammatical and lexical similarities. For example the past and future tenses in Egyptian and Mbosi ( a Bantu language spoken in the Congo ) are the same:

• Ancient Egyptian
  
  ii ni i (I have come)
  ma n l nfrw k (I have seen your beauty)
  
  Mbosi
  
  i mi yaa (I have come)
  i mi taa ongondo a no ( I have seen your beauty)

The Mbosi 'mi' correspomds to the Egyptian 'n'.

The religious vocabulary conveys much of the unity between Bantu and Egyptian. For example, in Egyptian douat = eqauals the world of the dead; and compares favorably with Mbosi doua, which relates to the lower regions or to pass from one shore to the next.

In Egyptian we have the term 'ouaab, waab', which denotes the idea of a mysterious transformation or regeneration. This corresponds to Mbosi 'ouaa, waab' which means 'to be pure, renewed, regenerated, purified'.

In Egyptian and African languages the term *Ku, signifies death or darkness. For example:

• Egyptian Khu 'the spiritual form of the deceased person'
  
  Ewe ku 'death'
  Yoruba iku 'death, morality'
  Teke kwa 'to die'
  Mbosi leku, iku 'death'
  Fang ku 'to illuminate in the dark'

In addition to these terms there are other Egyptian and Mbosi cognates

• Egyptian ...................Mbosi
  
  b'i (palm)..................bya (palm tree), bia
  
  bw (place, region)..........(e)be (id.)
  
  bin.t (evil)................ (e) bena (flaw,defect)
  
  ba (soul,spirit)...............ba (possesing spirit)
  
  km (black)....................(i)kama (to be black)
  
  ska (to work, to cultivate)......saa, saka (id.)
  
  s (man, someone)...................si (id.)

The linguistic evidence is clear, Egyptian is genetically related to the Bantu languages

.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by KemsonReloaded:
Ancient Egyptian terms surving in Igbo

EGYPTIAN............IGBO

KAKA(God)..........Ka (greater, superior)

Khu (to kill, death).....Wu/Gbu (die/to kill)

Em (smell)..........Imi/Emi (nose, associated with smell)

Bi (to become)......Bu (to become)

un (living being)...Ndu (life)

Feh (to go away)....Feh (to fly away)

Budo (dwelling place)...Obodo/ubudo (country, dwelling place)

Dudu (black image of Osiris)....Mmadu (person)

Un (living person)....Ulo/Uno (living area, house)

Beka (pray/confess)...Biko/Beko (to plead, please)

Aru (mouth).........Oru/Onu (mouth)

Dor (settlement)....Dor-Nor (sit down, settle)

Ra -Shu (light after darkness)....La -Shu (sleep)

Aru (rise)..........Anu/Kulie (up, rise)

Wu (rise)...........KWu-ni/Kunie (rise)

In- n (negation)....nh-n (negation)

The anthropological/lingustic evidence is undeniable.

Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igbo_people

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by KemsonReloaded:
Ancient Egyptian terms surving in Yoruba

EGYPTIAN............YORUBA

Inoki...............Noki-t "fabulous beast"

A-gu-ta(n)..........Ha-khu-ptah

O-ni................Au-nu "Crocodile"

Saluga..............Salug "god of wealth"

ibatan..............Bahtan "compatriot"

amon................amon "to hide/concealed"

Wu..................Uu "swell"

Riri................Ririt "dirty (like a hippo)"

Ade.................Ade-f "crown/plumes"

Ako.................Ak "male"

Abo.................Ab "female"

Ala.................Ala "boundary - Obatala==King of Nile"

A-ke................qe-h "axe"

a-dua...............dua or tua "prayer"

a-ru-gbo............ru-ba "evening of ba i.e. later stage of life"

Sadu................Zaddu "abode of the dead"

Again, the anthropological/lingustic evidence is undeniable.

---

Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
In this thread we have explained and demonstrated the genetic relationship between Egyptian and Black African languages,

---

quote:

---

the absence of relationship between Berber and Egyptian.

---

False. In fact I asked you a month ago to explain how Berber languages, African by definition - as they are found only in Africa including Egypt, and spread from West of the Nile to the East coast - could possibly be *unrelated* to other African languages.

You never answered this, so don't pretend othwerwise.

Nor did either you are Wally actually address the topic by providing the requested chronology for the supposed specific relationship of Bantu and Mdw ntr.

The only thing you've proven is that when I am absent on this forum, your clowning runs rampent.

Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                         

quote:

---

Originally posted by Yonis2:
Clyde winters, do you consider cushitic languages to be more related to lets say kikuyu or zulu than they are to berber languages? And if so how, could you demonstrate this in a fashion that a layman could understand?

---

Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Djehuti:
^ Do you not understand that the relations stem from common origin??! Afrasian is a genetic language phylum, meaning that all langauges are related because they all share a common origin or source, that being proto-Afrasian.

---

Posts: 1106 | From: Puerto Rico | Registered: Aug 2007  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Rasol I gave the same answer that Diop gave, 1)the speakers of Berber languages come from Arabia; and 2) they have been influenced by the Germanic languages, probably as a result of the Vandal invasion.

---

Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                         

quote:

---

Originally posted by rasol:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Rasol I gave the same answer that Diop gave, 1)the speakers of Berber languages come from Arabia; and 2) they have been influenced by the Germanic languages, probably as a result of the Vandal invasion.

---

^ Yes, and genetics and linguistics have proven that this answer false, as Berber primary lineages originate in Africa, not Arabia, or Germany.

Linguistics backs this up, as their are no Berber languages in Germany or Arabia, nor is Germanic or Arabic regarded by any linguist as and ancestor of Berber.

So your pseudo-citation is outdated and your answer is wrong.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by COTONOU_BY_NIGHT:

According to late Beja specialist Werner Vycichl, Beja has three ways of expressing plural, reduplication (not found often), last vowel shortening & suffixation of -a. The two former, although not based on the same exact pattern of Semitic, are clearly non-concatenative, hence dissimilar to Old Egyptian suffixation.

Chapter VI, pp. 88-89

code:

---

   
Some examples of Berber "broken" plural formation:
aghiul "ass"; pl ighial
asgass "year"; pl.isgassen
ir'allen "arm"; pl. ir'allen
illi "daughter"; issi "pl."

Again Berber is totally different from Egyptian:
s3t "daughter"; pl. s3wt
ib "heart"; pl. ibw
 

---

How can one claim that Hamito-Semitic does actually exist relying on this?

The dual is frequently used in Akkadian, Ugaritic & Arabic, which may suggest that it is only secondary in other Semitic languages.

code:

---

   
Akkadian:
-aan (dative), een (genitive), iin (accusative);
Ugaritic:
-aami (nominative), eemi (genitive/accusative)
Hebraic:
-ayn
Syriac:
-En~-een (only found as a retention in two words)
Ethiopian:
-ee (only found in a few cases)
Arabic:
-aani(nominative)
-ayni (genitive/accusative)

---

While Berber doesn't make grammatical use of dual, it seems to agree with Semitic in occurrences of natural pairs (suffixes -in,-en, -an for dual are also found in Semitic) :

code:

---

  
adar "foot" pl.idaren 
tit "eye" pl. allen 
aDalis "lip" pl. dilsan (Ghadamès)
aDaluy "lip" pl. iDlay "lips" (Ahaggar)

---

Semitic languages originally marked three principal cases:

code:

---

  
-nominative (sing. -u, pl.-uu, dual -aa), 
-genitive/accusative (sing. -i(genitive), -a(accusative) pl.-i, dual -ay), 

Examples:
Classical Arabic
"king"
-Malik-u
-Malik-i
-Malik-a

Akkadian
"good"
-Taab-u
-Taab-i
-Taab-a

There is however a class of words whose both genitive and accusative are formed with the same suffix -a.

---

In Egyptian, Pharaonic and Coptic there are absolutely no traces of casual marking. Why would the most archaic synchrony of Egyptian have lost any trace of Proto-Hamito-Semitic as Akkadian (a language contemporary to Pharaonic Egyptian) did?

The truth is that Hamito-Semitic does not exist. This is a myth with no morphological basis. A myth that must be destroyed by the real science.

MTC.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by COTONOU_BY_NIGHT:
Erratum:
Of course, at the end of my last post, I meant "why would have Akkadian retained the casual marking system while Egyptian didn't at all?" & vice versa.

Chap. VII pp.92-93

http://img159.imageshack.us/img159/4610/p1010108qp0.jpg

In Semitic, the 3rd person independant personal pronouns are the following:

code:

---

 
singular masc. singular fem./ plural masc./plural fem.
Akkadian
shu/shi/shunu/shina
Ugaritic
hw/hy/hm/hm
Hebrew
huu/hii/hEm(ma)/hEn(na)
 Syriac
huu/hii/hennoon/henneen
Arabic 
huwa/hiya/hum(uu)/hunna
Ethiopian
wE'Etu/yE'Eti/'Emuuntuu/'Emaantuu

---

Hence, there are forms with:
-an initial sh: Akkadian & Southern Arabian (except Sabean)
-an initial h (for the rest, except Ethiopian)
(while Ethiopian dropped the initial h and then evolved from 'wu>wu>wE & 'iy>yi>yE and the following suffixation of the final element -tii/tuu)

The two forms are of Proto-Semitic origin, but which one is the earlier? There is no consensus on the question.

However, those forms are completely absent in Egyptian from Pharaonic to Coptic where there are no gutturals nor post-alveolar fricatives, only s (feminine sing.), f (masculine singular), and sn (plural) for the personal suffix pronoun; sw, sy, sn, st (masculine & feminine singular, masculine & feminine plural), for the deopendent personal pronouns; ntf, nts, ntsn for the independent personal pronouns.

Berber's dependent personal pronouns are the following:

code:

---

netta (masc), nettsath (fem), nittheni (masc plural), netthenti (fem. plural)

---

The Berber suffix pronouns (s (singular), sn (pl. masc), snt (pl. fem.), agree a bit with Egyptian, but this a superficial resemblance: Berber doesn't have the Egyptian f.

Wolof has the same forms for the third person , singular & plural; Obenga cites Serge Sauneron who said that the resemblance cannot be due to chance and is thus necessarily due to a common origin of the two languages.

Egyptian has no relative pronouns while Semitic & Berber have.

code:

---

Akkadian 
Singular:
shu, shi sha
shat shati
Plural:
shuut shaat
Dual:
sha

Berber: 
enni (invariant)

---

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by COTONOU_BY_NIGHT:
Chap VII pp.94-96 (final part of the chapter)
http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/1237/p1010109uq8.jpg
http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/4303/p1010110lv5.jpg
Obviously inherited lexical items clearly show the irreality of "Hamito-Semitic", since Berber, Semitic have no common lexical structure with Egyptian:

code:

---

glose	Semitic	Egyptian	Berber
sun	shmsh (common Semitic)	r’, re	tafukt
year	sn 
	(Lihyanitic)	rnpt rompE rompi	asggas
	shaanaa 	(Hebrew) 		
	sanat 	(Arabic)		
place	macom (Phoenician)
+maqam
	bw, ma	ida
night	Arabic	layl	grH, D3w	iD
	Ethiopian 	leelit		
	Hebrew	luun, liin		
	Ugaritic	lyn		
name	+sumum, samum 	rn, ran, ren, lAn, lEn	ism, isEm
take !	Sabat ! (Akkadian)	m, mi, mo	ameZ
ear	sinn 
	(Arabic)	msDr	ameZZugh
	sEn 	(Ethiopian)		
teeth	Akkadian	uzun	Tst	axs
	Assyrian	uzan		
	Hebrew	‘ozen		
	Arabic	‘uDn		
	Ethiopian	‘Ezn		
brother	Akkadian	axu	sn, son	g-ma, ait-ma (pl.)
	Ugaritic	ax		
	Hebrew	‘aaH		
	Syriac	‘aHaa		
	Arabic	‘ax		
	Epigraphic South Arabian	‘x		
	Ethiopian	‘Exw (labialized x)		
to enter	Akkadian	‘rb	‘q, 3q, ook	ekSem
	Hebrew	‘rb		
	Syriac	‘rb		
	Arabic	Grb		
	Epigraphic South Arabian	Grb		
black	‘aswad (Arabic)	km, kamE, kEmi	isgin, isggan, istif, dlu, bexxen
blood	dam (common Semitic)	snf, snfw, snof	idammen
beautiful	Hasan (Arabic)	nfr, nofre, nofri	iga shbab, iga zzin, fulki
eternity	‘almiin (Eastern Syriac)	D.t, nHH, EnEh	
god	il (Ugaritic)	nTr, nutE, nuti, noutE	rEbbi (Arabic Allah)
soul	Hebrew	nepesh	b3, bai	RroH, laRuaH (pl.) 
	Syriac	napsha		
	Arabic	nafs		
	Ethiopian	nafs		
river	naaru (Akkadian)	itrw	asif
hand	yd, yad (common Semitic)	Dr.t, ‘ (« arm »)	ufus, afus
house	bayit (Hebrew)	pr	tigemmi
head	+ra’sh 	common Semitic	tp, apE, afE	agayyu, ixf
	reeshu	Akkadian		
	roosh	Hebrew		
	ra’s	Arabic		

---

In conclusion, the results of a strict linguistic analysis are the following :

-There are no parallels between Semitic, Berber and Egyptian regarding consonantic structure, grammatical gender, formation of dual and plural, declination, casual morphologies, personal and relative pronouns.

-About verbal themes, the use of reduplication does not have the same extension in Egyptian and in Semitic.

-Also, Egyptian doesn’t have the prefixal conjugation found and the derived compound verbal themes found in Semitic.

-The verbal forms sDm.f and sDm.n.f don’t exist in Semitic.

-Egyptian prepositions and conjunctions are not found in Semitic : Egyptian m « as, like » vs Akkadian ki(ma), Ugaritic k, Hebrew kE(moo), Syriac ‘ak, Arabic kaa, Ethiopian kEmaa « as, like » ; Egyptian xr « upon, above », vs Akkadian ‘l, Ugaritic ‘l, Syriac ‘al, Hebrew ‘al, Arabic ‘ala, Ethiopian la’la « upon, above ». Berber has zud~zund « as , like », and iggi « upon »

-Inherited lexical that can hardly be borrowed from a language to another (see examples above) even in a situation of cultural linguistic dominance are different in Semitic, Egyptian and Berber. Cardinal numbers (1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 20, 100, 1000) are also much different in the three language groups.

Hence, « Hamito-Semitic » or « Afro-Asiatic »[or Afrasian] is an illusion, a myth.

---

Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged |