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Morphological comparisons between ancient Egyptian and Dagara
By Théophile Obenga
Abstract: This comparative research between Pharaonic Egyptian and Dagara language is crucial for its exemplary dealing with methodological issues in the field of historical linguistics. Indeed, new African generations must have appropriate framework in order to undertake their studies with rigor and soundness.
I) Introduction
The purpose of this work is to emphasize some pertinent morphological similarities between ancient egyptian and dagara in the context of the recommendations of the international Cairo colloquium organized by the UNESCO in 1974 and whose proceedings have been published in the main working languages of the United Nations.
The ancient egyptian language,formerly Pharaonic Egypt's official language for more than thirty centuries, is quite well known in its main characteristics, since the decipherment of the Egyptian writing system by Champollion.
Dagara is a modern african language today spoken in southwest Burkina Faso by the Dagari people, who live in the same region as the Lobi, the Djan and the Birifor. Among the Dagari, one distinguishes two main dialects: dagara and wile. Actually, the dialectal differences are very few.
According to the oral tradition, the Mossi/More people around Ouagadougou and the Dagari of the region of Diebougou are stemming from a XIIth century migration from the kingdom of Gabanga (modern northwest Ghana). There is still today some Dagari people in northwest modern Ghana.
The method used here is the one, in comparative linguistics, that established Indo-European, Semitic and the other world families of languages. The details of this method of comparison applying to Egyptian and modern african languages have been debated and passed in the international Cairo colloquium. We chose to emphasize here similitudes that can hardly be explained by chance. II) Personal pronouns In dagara, the first singular personal pronoun is n, "I". In egyptian, n is the first plural personal suffix pronoun (feminine and masculine). Let's suppose a reversed alternation happened between the two situations.
But in the grammatical category studied here, a single case of inversion could not give rise to a plausible or even likely explanation. We need other facts, in the same grammatical category, to give the rise to a more or less convincing argumentation.
Precisely, in dagara, the second singular personal pronoun is fu, "you". In egyptian, f is the third singular personal suffix pronoun (masculine),"he". It would have been another inversion between dagara and egyptian.
This fact dismiss the possibility of an isolated inversion. The interesting thing is that there is no more mystery in the dagara forms, because egyptian can explain it and vice-versa. This is the work of researchers to resolve mysteries in a plausible and logical way.
From a phonetic standpoint, the similitude of the pharaonic "n" and the dagara "n" is not uninteresting to notice: the notions, although reversed are still said in the same way III) Organization of the verbal system "to be" There are some strict rules in the field of general and comparative linguistics. For example, even if true, an observation without explanation is not significant. So we must explain and explain until there are no more ways to explain.
In the most archaic ancient Egyptian (earlier than 2000 BC), the verb "to be" is always i. In dagara, we have exactly the same attestation: i, "to be". If you conclude that egyptian and dagara are related just looking at this facts, then you totally misunderstood comparative linguistics. What is important here is to know if the dagara i and pharaonic egyptian i do work in the same way from a grammatical standpoint. In egyptian, some words are formed from this primitive i, all having an affirmative content of "to be". We have: i: "to be" i+w: iw: "is", "are" i+pw, ipw: "it is" i+nw, inw: "it is"
In dagara there is an identical system, also derived from the primitive i: i: "to be" i+na: ina: "to be, to exist"(egyptian: iwn, wn, wnn) i+nu, inu: "it is"(egyptian: inw, nw, nu)
If there is an apparent identical derivative system between the two languages, is it identical from a grammatical standpoint as well? If yes, it would eliminate the chance as an explanation of the similarities of the derivation the two languages. It is exactly the same thing from semantical and grammatical standpoints: Egyptian: Râ pw, "Râ: it is" i.e. It is Râ, he is Râ Dagara: nâ nu, "boss: it is" i.e. It is the boss, he is the boss
These are three no contradictory facts: an identical primitive state of "to be", identical grammatical derivation from the same primitive state "to be" and an also identical semantical arrangement with the same semantic meaning. This similitarities, now explained, are plausibles and the possibility of chance as an explanation for this is eliminated: we can consider it as the result of an historical relationship. So which conclusion should we draw from this facts?
Most ancient egyptian grammars erroneously call the egyptian elements pw, nw, nw, etc. "demonstrative pronouns" or "articles". It would actually be more correct to call it "the verb to be and its grammatical derivatives". Actually, most black african languages, from the antiquity to today don't have any articles! That is how a modern black african language can help to understand the nature and functioning of some "very particular" points of egyptian grammar. IV) Grammatical expression of the plural About the grammatical expression of the plural, there is also a common morphology between egyptian and dagara.
Ancient Egyptians used the suffix -w and -wt for masculine and feminine, respectively: pr, "house"; prw "houses" dpt, "ship"; dpwt "ships"
In Dagara, we have: nir, "man"; nibè, "men" po, "woman"; pobè, "women"
The element -bè is indeed the element used by Dagari people to express the plural of substantives.
Laymen with no knowledge in linguistics will probably say that although the system is the same, the elements are different as -w,-wt is very different from -bè. That is why one should never draw a conclusion looking at the appearances. Phonetically m/b can evolve into w. Dagara may well have known the forms *niwè and *powè, that would have given the rise to the attested forms nibè and pobè. Actually the pharaonic suffix -w would correspond to the dagara -bè in the same grammatical functions. It is very plausible all the more so since the morphologies are identical. V) Grammatical expression of equivalence The Ancient Egyptians didn't say "Nefer is a scribe", but "Nefer is as a scribe", i.e. he is equivalent as a scribe. To express this relation of equivalence, the Ancient Egyptians used the element m (sign representing an owl): "Nefer is as a scribe", i.e. Nefer is scribe (iw Nfr m ssh).
This quite particular syntax is found intact in Dagara: u ina mè, "she is as" (her mother); fu ina mè iba, "you are as a caïman"(in the water),i.e. "you are equivalent to a cayman in the water". The Ancient Egyptians used m, the Dagari people mè, to express grammatically the equivalence. That is to say the pharaonic m and the dagara mè play the same role of equivalence grammatically.
Mbochi, a bantu language spoken in the North of the Republic of Congo, confirms with mbi, a reinforced form of the pharaonic m: "as". Here is an example:
à di mbi taa, "He is like (his) father", "He is equivalent to his father".
Between the egyptian, dagara and mbochi forms, there is clearly a family resemblance. These are linguistic fossils which let glimpse a common origin. VI) Grammatical formation of the abstract substantives
The substantive originally bw meant: "place", but could also be used as a prefix having a very specific grammatical function. Indeed, in order to get an abstract substantive from an adjective, a qualificative, the Ancient Egyptian were prefixing bw- to the adjective. Here are a few examples:
In dagara, we grammatically get an abstract substantive by prefixing the substantive bun, "thing" to an adjective. Here are some examples:
-sèbla: "black", bun sèbla: "blackness" -vièl: "beautiful", bun vièl: "beautifulness"(bunvla) -pla: "white", bunla: "whiteness"
Kikongo, a bantu language spoken in Northwest Angola, in the South of both Congo Republics and wolof, spoken in modern Senegambia do behave the same way about this specific point:
Eveywhere, in pharaonic egyptian, in dagara ,in kikongo and in wolof, the prefix used to get an abstract substantive is exactly the same. Can Semitic languages share an origin with egyptian, dagara, kikongo and wolof which use the prefix bu to create an abstract substantive from an adjective? The answer is negative.
But let's be complete. In egyptian we also have this fact: nfr,"beautiful" and nfrw, "beautifulness". Usually, egyptologists describe this nfrw as an "apparent plural".Were the Ancient Egyptians considering this as an "apparent plural"? Technically, describing it as an "apparent plural" does not really this grammatical process. In my opinion, this is another way to get an abstract substantive from an adjective:
a) nfr: "beautiful" bw+nfr bunefer: "beautifulness"
b) nfr: "beautiful" nfr+w nfrw: "beautifulness"
Dagari people also use this two exact ways to get an abstract substantive from an adjective:
a) sèbla:"black" bun+sèbla bunsèbla: "blackness"
b)sèbla: "black" sèbla+u sèblu: "blackness"
This very particular points can only be explained by a common origin of the two languages. VII) Grammatical expression of the past tense
To express the past tense, Ancient Egyptians used the particle n between the verb and the subject. Example:
iri.n.i: "I did"(iri: "to do"; i: "I")
The Dagari use the particle na to express the same situation. Example: n i na: "I did"(n: "I"; i: "to do")
As you can see,the pharaonic particle follows the verb (iri):so this element is never before the verbo-nominal. In dagara, the particle na also follows the verb(i).So syntaxically, the pharaonic n and the dagara na occupy the same position after the verb, to express the past. Maybe even the Ancient Egyptians were pronouncing this n "na" like the Dagari and Djerma people do today in the same situation. VIII) Grammatical particles
The grammatical particles, prepositions, conjunctions, etc., which are often very short words are indispensable in all human languages. If two languages do share the same particles with the same morphologies and the same values, there is a very good chance that thes languages are related. In the contrary case, the probabilities of a relationship between the two languages are very low, even nil.
For exemple, in assyrian, an old semitic language spoken in the Ancient Assyrian empire, there is no one particle that shares a common morphology with pharaonic egyptian, which is also an ancient language, egyptian and assyrian being contemporary languages during Antiquity. Supposing that both languages derive from a common ancestor, the "Afro-Asiatic",or "Hamito-Semitic", it is clear that around 5000 BC, the "african" idiom(egyptian) and the "asiatic" one (assyrian) already have nothing more in common linguistically as show the particles:
1)"Together with" Egyptian(Africa): henâ Assyrian(Asia): adi
2)"unto, against" Egyptian(Africa): em Assyrian(Asia): ana
3)"after, behind" Egyptian(Africa): ha Assyrian(Asia): arki
4)"over, above, upon" Egyptian(Africa): her Assyrian(Asia): ili
5)"before, in front of" Egyptian(Africa): khenty Assyrian(Asia): illamu
6)"in, with, by, at the time of" Egyptian(Africa): m Assyrian(Asia): ina
These few assyrian particles are attested, for example in the cuneiform text that relates the first egyptian campaign of king Assurbanipal (668-626 BC):
"Ina Makhri girri-ya ana Makan u Milukhkha lû allik."
Translation: At the time of my first expedition (litterally: "in the first expedition mine"), I went to Makan and to Millukhkha.
So what is the behaviour of this ancient Mesopotamian language? The particles are: ina "in", my first expedition; ana, "to", I went to Makan and Millukhkha; u, "and" Makan and Millukhkha. In Assyrian, the place of the ordinal number is before its name: makhrî girri-ya, "first of expedition mine"; the -i at the end of girri is the ending of genitive, nominative girru, accusative girra, "way", "road", "expedition", deriving from the verb garâru, "to leave, to run"; in the syntax structure girri-ya, -ya is the first person singular nominal suffix: girri-ya, "my expedition", "expedition mine"(genitive).The particle lû, luu, prefixed to the verb is of asservative form. The second imperfect allik, "I left" is the tense used to express the narration especially to express that an action took place at a specific moment. The infinitive of this verb is alaku "to leave", and the substantive milliku means: "distance".
It is clear that all this assyrian grammatical facts are, without an exception, lacking from egyptian grammar. The pseudo relationship between semitic and egyptian, in the name of "Afro-Asiatic" or "Hamito-Semitic", is the most terrible scientific lie of our time in the field of historical, social and human sciences, especially comparative linguistics. The hamito-semitic africanist ideology is actually a scientific hoax.
The assyrian particles:ina, ana, u, lû/luu, adi, arki, ili, illamu, etc., don't match with pharaonic egyptian's. On the other hand, dagara and egyptian share the most common particles:
1)"in,into" Egyptian: m(m pr: "in the house") Dagara: mi(zu mi: "in the head")
2)"as" Egyptian: m(m ssh: "as a scribe") Dagara: me(me iba: "as a cayman")
3)"and" Egyptian: n Dagara: ni (fu ni u: "you and him")
4)"upon, on" Egyptian: her Dagara: zu (r/z)(yir zu: "on the house")
The sound correspondances are regular and do match:
m/m m/m n/n h-r/z-(r/z)
The particles are identical about its morphological structure, its semantic value, its grammatical functions. Chance cannot explain similarities observed not on isolated cases but on series. Egyptian is closer to Dagara, a modern black african language than assyrian, although contemporary. Whether or not we have reconstructed earlier states of dagara, the genetic relationship between dagara and egyptian is still there, demonstrable and their common ancestor can be reconstructed. This is reconstruction that proves a relationship, not all this fictional earliers states, like "proto-bantu". Here are the two reasons why:
-there is no hierarchy in the comparison and in the classification: the sanskrit, even though very useful is not superior to greek in the indo-european field; -the germanic branch is not "closer" to indo-european than slavic or iranian branches.
The "proto-bantu" is just a convincing hypothesis, but is still only a reconstruction. To use this reconstruction to reconstruct the common ancestor of egyptian and bantu is "to play" with two reconstructions. To do well, one must also reconstruct proto egyptian, to compare it with proto-bantu. To result in what? And how to deal with african languages that are not bantu languages in this bantu/egyptian comparison? Proto-germanic (so does proto-bantu) never proved alone indo-european (in the same way, proto-bantu cannot prove alone the genetic relationship between egyptian, coptic and other modern black african languages).One has to be very blind to get into this mess that will never manage to reconstruct the common ancestor of egyptian and all the other black african languages.
The goal is the reconstruction of the common ancestor, as it has been done for indo-european, semitic, etc. Africanists, who are often poor comparatists, misguide african researchers who are methodologically weak, to erroneous methods that are presented as logical inventions, whereas their premises are completely false.
I have debated with the fiercest supporters of Afroasiatic and Hamito-Semitic during colloquiums, symposiums, international scientific meetings. I have answered some of their works in writing. The african side always comes out victorious in this encounters between specialists. IX) A few lexical correspondences
Here are a few dagara/egyptian lexical correspondences that hardly can be explained by chance:
I am waiting on the detractors to say I haven't shown affinities with Bantu and Ancient Mdw Ntr> Keep in mind this article is broken down into:
II) Personal pronouns III) Organization of the verbal system "to be" IV) Grammatical expression of the plural V) Grammatical expression of equivalence VI) Grammatical formation of the abstract substantives VII) Grammatical expression of the past tense VIII) Grammatical particles IX) A few lexical correspondences
Below says it all and I've witnessed it and end the end the recommendations of the 1974 UNESCO Symposium still hold true:
quote: I have debated with the fiercest supporters of Afroasiatic and Hamito-Semitic during colloquiums, symposiums, international scientific meetings. I have answered some of their works in writing. The african side always comes out victorious in this encounters between specialists.
What is presented here is clear evidence that Niger-Congo (which Bantu falls under) and Egyptian share a common ancestor based on morphology, grammar, vocabulary, and phonetics.
Also he clearly demonstrates why Egyptian is not a part of this myth called Afro-Asiatic. Nothing matches from so-called "semetic" and ancient Egyptian. Yet, the lexical and grammatical correspondences exist in the Niger-Congo languages.
It makes sense and gives supporting evidence to all of the oral histories from people in Ghana, Nigeria and the Congo who say they migrated from the Nile Valley and the Sahara to populate the areas they currently reside.
The so-called linguistic data is not consistent with the available "linguistic" data above as well as the oral histories of the people.
quote: “Bantu Migration and Settlement,” in Laman’s Kongo Cultural Collection, (20,000 pp. microfilm, Lidingo, Sweden, 1914. Film No. 1, Cahier XVIII/13), he goes on to state:
“A long time ago in antiquity, people did not exist in this Lower-Congo; they come from the north of the country. There also, in the north, people came from far off north, the very north of Kayinga. Kayinga is the name of the country [region] where lived our ancestors in antiquity…There they already knew how to weave the cloths they wore, forge hoes and knives that they used. The main reason for their coming in this country [area] was the famine that hit Kayinga. For many years the drought reigned; crops and fruit trees they planted dried up. They suffered a lot for this. Unable to support the suffering they said to each other: “Let’s go to Banda-Mputu [Let’s pass through the dense forest, the unbreakable wall] and organize chieftaincies, because we have a lot of hunger up here.” So they agreed: “Let’s go.”
In the past, two chieftaincies ruled this part of the world [region]. When people escaped from the north of Kayinga, they separated on their way; some crossed the Nzadi [Congo river], these are people who live in the Nsundi area [the left shore of Nzadi] and others are those who live on the Simu-Kongo [the right shore of the Nzadi].”
Also, here is an excerpt from the Ghanian writer and scholar Ayi Kwei Armah speaking about his research in the oral traditions of the people of Ghana (where the Dagara come from cited in this article):
quote: Now I had grown to adulthood. Inside our larger history I was undertaking life journeys of my own, and though I had imagined other paths, I was moving into the future as a writer. The more I learned about our history, the clearer it seemed to me that if I wanted to write, I would have to study it more seriously, since all available evidence indicated that the narrative of our social history was at the centre of the art of our poets, storytellers and spokespersons. I followed the trail of evidence backward in time. It led me to the oral traditions. The oral traditions took me back to traditions of migration. Those traditions, beginning with acknowledgments of places reached by groups travelling under pressures too extreme to adapt to, referred to an earlier place of departure. Sometimes the reference was simply to the Great River or the Great Water. More frequently, the traditions of migration mentioned Misri, Msiri, or Luti. Those are just other names for the area now known as Egypt, though in ancient times it went by other, indigenous names: Ta Meri, Beloved Land, Tawi, Two Lands, and, more often, Kemet, the Black Nation.
Dr. Gabriel Oyibo talks about the oral histories of the migrations from Km.t because the invading Arabs:
Royalty and its attributes as the uraeus contained respectively on the royal headdresses Pharaoh and the Oni of Ife.
Emblems totemiques in Nigeria
B.3. Religion reflecting, for example, a replica of the pantheon égypto-nubien in Benin, Togo and Nigeria among the peoples Fon, Ewe and Yoruba.
B.5. Ethnonymy, meaning the study of names of groups in Africa that still present many names attested in Ancient Egypt: Atoum, Antef, Sek, Meri, Kara, Bara, Bari, Raka, Sen. Sar, Kaba, Keti, Amunet, Kamara, Konare, Sankale, Sangare, Sankare, etc..
In 1984, UNESCO publishes under the drafting of the General History of Africa involved in the collection, Studies and Documentation (No. 6, 1984) a book devoted to this question: Ethnonymes and African names. the study also noted "Some remarks on personal names in the Pharaonic Egypt" (in the Annals of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, No. 13, University of Dakar, 1983, pp. 141-153) of A. M. Mr. L AM and the doctoral thesis of State by the same author: The origin of Fulbe and Haal-pulaar-en - Approach Egyptological (Cheikh Anta DIOP Dakar, 1989, 2 volumes) published in co Presence African / Khepera, under the title: "From the Egyptian origin of the Fulani (1993). A.M. LAM deepens the study of the relationship between ancient Egypt and the rest of Africa in his book Les Chemins Nile, published in 1997 (co Présence Africaine / Khepera). See also articles receuil: The Sahara and the Nile Valley?
Posts: 853 | From: Houston | Registered: Nov 2007
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Asar, what is your problem with the Afro-Asiatic language group? And even though you're not saying Ancient Egyptian is Niger-Congo...what problems do you have with it being part of the Afro-Asiatic group?
Posts: 1219 | From: North Carolina, USA | Registered: Jul 2004
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Don't you know? There's a war between the sons of Hham and the sons of Shem when it comes to things African. Look especially to Mauritania and Sudan in particular.
quote:Originally posted by King_Scorpion: Asar, what is your problem with the Afro-Asiatic language group? And even though you're not saying Ancient Egyptian is Niger-Congo...what problems do you have with it being part of the Afro-Asiatic group?
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote:Originally posted by King_Scorpion: Asar, what is your problem with the Afro-Asiatic language group? And even though you're not saying Ancient Egyptian is Niger-Congo...what problems do you have with it being part of the Afro-Asiatic group?
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:
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.
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:
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.
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.
. [/QB][/QUOTE]
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In egyptian, some words are formed from this primitive i, all having an affirmative content of "to be". We have: i: "to be" i+w: iw: "is", "are" i+pw, ipw: "it is" i+nw, inw: "it is"
In dagara there is an identical system, also derived from the primitive i: i: "to be" i+na: ina: "to be, to exist"(egyptian: iwn, wn, wnn) i+nu, inu: "it is"(egyptian: inw, nw, nu)
Elsewhere, it is maintained:
‘i‘- suffix ~ I, me, my
And yes, iw ~ is
“pw” (masculine pl.) ~ these, this
“nw” ~ these, this and we also have “nw” ~ time, also “nw” (pl.) ~ belong to
Yes, “wn” and “wnn” ~ to be, to exist.
“sw”, “sy”, and “st” are all alternatives to “it”.
Again, it is a complex matter in Egyptic, and roots of words need to be sought out. Besides, based on this, there is obviously some mismatches between Obenga’s translations and the above.
Ancient Egyptians used the suffix -w and -wt for masculine and feminine, respectively: pr, "house"; prw "houses" dpt, "ship"; dpwt "ships"
In Dagara, we have: nir, "man"; nibè, "men" po, "woman"; pobè, "women"
The element -bè is indeed the element used by Dagari people to express the plural of substantives.
Laymen with no knowledge in linguistics will probably say that although the system is the same, the elements are different as -w,-wt is very different from -bè. That is why one should never draw a conclusion looking at the appearances. Phonetically m/b can evolve into w. Dagara may well have known the forms *niwè and *powè, that would have given the rise to the attested forms nibè and pobè. Actually the pharaonic suffix -w would correspond to the dagara -bè in the same grammatical functions. It is very plausible all the more so since the morphologies are identical.
Highly speculative! Just about any language has a means to communicate plurality in one form or another.
Yes, appearances apparently matter, even to Obenga, as he dedicates portions of his lexical comparisons to similarities in lexical appearance, although he tries to argue for genetic basis for such relationship. If Egyptic and these languages come from common branch, one would expect to see not only grammatical cognates shared between the sub-languages of that common branch and Egyptic in attaining plurality, but also lexical appearance of those cognates, which I shall demonstrate in due time, as is exemplified in the case of the functions of “n” and “w” in Egyptic on one hand, and the function of “n” in attaining plurality across the Afrasan super phylum on the other hand. Also, not mentioned here, as it pertains to Dagara, is the grammatic structure of de-neutering terms, so as to attain “masculine” and “feminine” counterparts of a single term. In the Afrasan super family, there is consistency in this structure, along with consistency in lexical appearance in attaining this structure.
Yes, “nfr” ~ good, but can also imply “goodness” [Jim Loy, 1998], beautiful or beauty without modification to the term.
“nfrw” ~ goodness [e.g. mnw pw n zj nfrw.f ~ The monument of a man in his goodness - courtesy James P. Allen, 2000] , beauty . This term is apparently the alternative to ‘nfr’ and ‘bw-nfr’, yet doesn’t follow the pattern in question.
Whereas “bw-nfr” ~ good (as noun), as is “bw-bin” ~ bad (noun)
“wr” ~ greatness, yet does not abide by the pattern so-described.
‘bnr’ ~ sweetness, pleasant, “bw-ikr” ~ excellence, which is not much different from plainly”ikr” ~ excellent, excellence, trustworthy
“bw” also means “place”.
Hence, taking up a few words here and there, without a broader look at the possible alternative uses of single terms, can lead to simplistic conclusions. Obenga himself unintentionally and partly directs us to the complexity of situation in Egyptic, in the following, by acknowledging “nfrw” as an alternative to “bw-nfr” to beautifulness…
a) nfr: "beautiful" bw+nfr bunefer: "beautifulness"
b) nfr: "beautiful" nfr+w nfrw: "beautifulness"
^…although, he makes it appear as though it is necessary to have co-occurrence of singular terms to relay the meanings so described; there is no evidence however, that single appearance of the terms in question relay anything different from their supposed co-occurrence. In fact, I’ve just provided an example which suggests otherwise [see above].
1)"in,into" Egyptian: m(m pr: "in the house") Dagara: mi(zu mi: "in the head")
2)"as" Egyptian: m(m ssh: "as a scribe") Dagara: me(me iba: "as a cayman")
3)"and" Egyptian: n Dagara: ni (fu ni u: "you and him")
4)"upon, on" Egyptian: her Dagara: zu (r/z)(yir zu: "on the house")
The sound correspondances are regular and do match:
m/m m/m n/n h-r/z-(r/z)
Yes ‘m’ ~ in; but not quite so simple as that; there is alternative term for it: ‘hr’ ~ in. In fact, Obenga’s repetition of this letter again for a totally different meaning, as the equivalent of “as”, is enough evidence of its use in totally different contexts.
The Egyptic terms for ’and’ from other sources, is “hr” or “hn“ [n with an accent of some sort] ~ and. Haven’t come across any source suggesting “n” ~ and.
^Speaking of “hr”, it reappears in Mdu Ntr as the equivalent of “on”, “upon“, “at“, “through“, (conj.) “because“, “and” (with suffix pron.) or “face", which again attests to the problems with cherry picking one context of a single term that could possibly turn out to have one, two or three more other meanings. Again, the root of these terms may well shed light on their origins, and hence, account for parallel designations for the various contexts. Why? Because it is necessary to understand the context of the original term that begat other contexts, and to examine if a well defined figurative undertone accounts for this. With multiple contexts of a single term, one can't simply use it in one convenient context as though it were the root term, without first examining what was just said.
In egyptian, n is the first plural personal suffix pronoun (feminine and masculine). Let's suppose a reversed alternation happened between the two situations.
Consistency across Afrasan languages is observed, no “reversed alternation“ to speak of.
I------------->-i<------>-tu<------>-o you (m.)------>-tia<---->-ta<------>-to you (f.)------>-tii<---->-ti<------>-to he------------>-i<------>-a<------->-:i she----------->-ti<----->-at<------>-to we------------>-ni<----->-na:<----->-no you (pl.)----->-tina<--->-tum<----->-ten they---------->-ina<---->-u:<------>-en, -ammi
Observe the plural suffix pronouns above, where ‘n’ consistently appears in the languages in question.
Precisely, in dagara, the second singular personal pronoun is fu, "you". In egyptian, f is the third singular personal suffix pronoun (masculine),"he". It would have been another inversion between dagara and egyptian.
Whereas in Afrasan we see clear consistency:
Word that ends in:
i = "I, me, my" - per.i = "my house" k = "you, your" - per.k = "your house" t = "you, your" - per.t = "your house" f = "he, him, his" - per.f = "his house" s = "she, her - per.s = "her house" n = "we, us, our" - per.n = "our" tn = "you, your" - per.tn = "y'alls house" best way to show its usage. sn = "they, them" - per.sn = "their house" ny(ni) = "our, we two" - per.ny = "We two's house" tny = "you two" - per.tny = "You two's house" sny = "those two" - per.sny = "Those two's house" - posted by Wally
Taking that [Kemetic suffixes] and then comparing it with the above suffixes [from Beja, Arabic, Kabyle and Dahalo], we have:
And the pronominal object suffixes add credence:
-------------Beja---Arabic-----Kabyle me----------->-i,<--->-o -ni:<-->-iyi you---------->-ok<--->-ka<------>-ik us----------->-on<--->-na:<----->-aγ you (pl.)---->-okn<-->-kum <---->-kən
I------------->-i<------>-tu<------>-o you (m.)------>-tia<---->-ta<------>-to you (f.)------>-tii<---->-ti<------>-to he------------>-i<------>-a<------->-:i she----------->-ti<----->-at<------>-to we------------>-ni<----->-na:<----->-no you (pl.)----->-tina<--->-tum<----->-ten they---------->-ina<---->-u:<------>-en, -ammi ^The main observation above, is the usual pattern for “t”, in the feminine terms, and reappearances of “n” in the plural terms.
According to Ali Alalou of Columbia University, we have the following "direct object pronoun" examples in "Berber language system" [using Tamazight dialect of the Central Atlas region, namely Imdghas and Dades Valley]:
'him' = 't'
'her' = 'ts'
'them' = 'tn'[Musculine plural]
'them' = 'ttn.t [Feminine plural]
'you' = 'tkwn' [Musculine plural]
Feminine pronoun - appearance of ‘s’
Plural pronouns - addition of ‘n’
Feminine pronouns - characterization by addition of ‘t’.
More object pronoun suffixes in Egypt, alternative to the previous citations:
‘sw’ ~ he, him, it
‘sy’ ~ she, her, it
‘st’ ~ she, her, it
‘n’ ~ we, us ‘tn’ ~ you (pl.) ‘sn’ ~ they, them
Feminine pronoun suffix - again addition of ‘t’
Plural pronoun suffix [both masculine and feminine] - addition of ‘n’
^What pattern is observed herein? Yes, the re-appearance of "t" in conversion of a term into its feminine form.
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3) Pharaonic egyptian: Dagara: nw: "to see, to watch" nyè:"to see" nwa: "id." wolof: "nau"
“nw” in Etyptic ~ of, belonging to [plural]; time; this, these
I can also understand how the glyphs for water can be read as “nw”, designating the plurality of the undulating symbols, nonetheless several sources read this as:
As noted above, alternative term for Egyptic ‘water’ is read as ‘mw’, while ‘nwy’ also has an alternative meaning of ‘return’ [e.g. Russell G. Schuh The Use And Misuse Of Language In The Study Of African History (an interesting read btw for students of African Studies); Jim Loy 1998]
Enough demonstrations of the multiplicity of contexts that single Egyptic terms can have.
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Leo Depuydt (Brown University):
1997
The Origin and Development of the Ancient Egyptian Suffix Conjugation
Having been written as well as spoken for more than 4000 years, from about 3000-2500 B.C.E. to about 1000-1500 C.E., Egyptian is the world's longest attested language. A topic that deserves treatment in a comprehensive history of the language is the origin and the development of the suffix conjugation. When it first emerged in writing in the early third millennium B.C.E., Egyptian had two distinct ways of conjugating a verb according to person, gender, and number, or just person and number. The first is the suffix conjugation, in which suffix pronouns effect conjugation.
Suffix pronouns are attached to prepositions and nouns in both Egyptian and Semitic; to verbs only in Egyptian. In the suffix conjugation, suffix pronouns originally mostly follow the verbal stem, like .f "he" in Middle Egyptian stp.f "may he choose." But increasingly, they join a "conjugation base" preceding the stem, like .f in Late Egyptian bwpw.f stp "he has not chosen."
The only other conjugation in earliest written Egyptian was the stative conjugation, generally thought to be related to the West-Semitic Perfect and the Akkadian permansive. The stative conjugation is in a sense also a suffix conjugation. Its conjugation endings are attached to the verbal stem. In the second millennium B.C.E., the stative conjugation gradually lost its conjugation and became a stative form. Conjugation of the stative was henceforth effected either by the suffix conjugation attached to a preceding conjugation base, like .f in jw.f stp "he being chosen," or by a newly evolved proclitic conjugation, the third of a total of three conjugations found throughout Egyptian history, as in twj stp "I am chosen." The stative conjugation is known to Egyptologists also as the Old Perfective or Pseudo-participle; the stative form to Copticists also as the Qualitative.
In Afroasiatic terms, the Egyptian suffix conjugation appears to be an innovation. It is widely thought to have evolved from passive participles. But other theories have been proposed. Since the suffix conjugation appears fully developed in earliest written Egyptian, its origin and evolution belong to prehistory. Postulating patterns of evolution in languages is hazardous enough for the historical period. The present investigation makes statements about the suffix conjugation only in as far as they can be derived from facts from the historical period pertaining to this conjugation. I believe that the available facts have not yet been fully exploited to obtain a satisfactory theory of how the suffix conjugation came into being and evolved.
The passive participle theory remains the most plausible, especially if one considers that analogy must have played a crucial role, as it does in every linguistic evolution. Analogical formations are in a sense mistakes. Languages evolves in large part by error, as it were. But what is owed to analogy has been in danger of discrediting the passive participle theory because it is not logical in a certain sense. It will be crucial to identify that part of the suffix conjugation that derives directly from passive participles and that part that came about subsequently by analogy.
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Any family resemblance with Egyptic?…
In his effort to demonstrate the "pragmatics of two Berber morphemes n (the space containing the addressee) and d (the space containing the speaker) and their grammaticalization", Ali Alalou says:
"[wt is a verb which means either 'to hit' or 'to throw something at someone'.]
(1) Y -wt n wrba aryaz Y -ssigh *i [threw something at -3p.Ms.Sg][towards the addressee][boy-Sub-Cons.][Man-DO-NotCons.][Hit -3p.Ms.Sg][me]
"The boy threw something at (towards the addressee) the man and hit me"
(2) Y -wt n wrba aryaz Y -ssigh *agh [threw something at -3p.Ms.Sg][towards the addressee][boy-Sub-Cons.][Man-DO-NotCons.][Hit -3p.Ms.Sg][us]
"The boy threw something at (towards the addressee) the man and hit us"
(3) Y -wt d wrba aryaz Y -ssigh i [threw something at -3p.Ms.Sg][towards the speaker][boy-Sub-Cons.][Man-DO-NotCons.][Hit -3p.Ms.Sg][me]
"The boy threw something at (towards the speaker) the man and hit me"
References:
Ali Alalou (Columbia University) - Two Berber Deictics n & d: From Pragmatics to Syntax
posted
Consonant Compatibility Restrictions in Egyptic and the Afrasan super phylum - another Pan-Afrasan grammatical trait, and other grammatical affinities:
From Kirsty Rowan, we have:
The first seminal study into consonant compatibility restrictions (or dissimilation) is Greenberg’s 1950b paper. 17 In this study, Greenberg analysed and discussed the evident restrictions between certain consonantal segments in the verbal roots, but not on derived forms, of Semitic languages. His investigation, which included the Semitic languages Syriac, Hebrew, Ugaritic, South Arabian, Ethiopic and Assyrian, was also extended to Egyptian, an autonomous branch of Afroasiatic. This led him to make the important assertion that ‘The general subject of the patterning of consonantal phonemes within the morphemes of Hamito-Semitic [Afroasiatic] languages would seem to be a promising subject of investigation and one whose results must be kept in mind for their bearing on the historical analysis of this family of languages’ (1950b:181). Bender (1978) extended Greenberg’s study to other branches of the Afroasiatic phylum and from the positive results obtained led him to conclusively state that ‘…the co-occurrence restrictions are a good Afroasiatic isomorph…’ (1978: 9
The following sections overview the restrictions that take place in a selection of languages from the Afroasiatic phylum.
3.1 Semitic Languages 18 3.1.1 Arabic Of all the Afroasiatic languages, Arabic has one of the most well documented phonological dissimilatory processes in terms of its root consonantal system and this has led to many phonological discussions and analyses into these consonantal compatibility restrictions. The fundamental characteristic of Semitic morphology is the consonantal root template, where vowels are inserted between the consonants to make forms according to a CV template (McCarthy 1979). Subsequently, Semitic languages are classed as having a non-concatenative morphological system. The most common root type throughout the Semitic languages is the triliteral root form whereby a root is made up of three consonants, although, Semitic roots can also be biliteral and quadriliteral. Greenberg’s (1950) study specifically dealt with the combinations of consonants that could occur in the triliteral root forms.
A Semitic triliteral root can take the form such as /drs/ made up of three consonants or ‘radicals’. These fixed ordered consonants have a range of templates where vowels are interspersed, depending on the grammatical form, which can also take inflectional affixes, shown in the following example:
(1) a. daras-a ~ ‘he studied’ b. dars-un ~ ‘a lesson’ c. diraas-ah ~ ‘studies’ d. daaris ~‘studying’
Greenberg’s (1950) study showed was that the combination of consonants that can make up a root in Arabic is restricted. There is not a free co-occurrence of consonants. These restrictions depend upon the placement of consonants within a root. Therefore, a triliteral root has consonants in the placement of C 1 C 2 or C 3 positions:
(2)
code:
C1 C2 C3 | | | d r s
The adjacency of the positions C1 C2 , and C2 C3 was found to have the strongest restrictions in which consonants could occur, with the non-adjacent C1 and C3 positions still having an avoidance constraint, although a weaker one. Greenberg (1950:162) concluded that not only are identical adjacent consonants prohibited in a root but also that consonantal homorganicity (non-identical consonants sharing the same place of articulation) were strongly disprefered. McCarthy (1979; 1988; 1994) developed Greenberg’s observation, specifically with regards to Arabic, and demonstrated further that the consonant compatibility restrictions were fundamentally determined by the place of articulation and furthermore by the major manner feature of [sonorant] for the coronal place articulator.
(3) a. labials [f, b, m] b. coronal sonorants [l, r, n] c. coronal stops [t, d, −t , −d] d. coronal fricatives [ð, θ, s, z, −s, −z, ] e. dorsals [g, k, q] f. gutturals [ , h, , ħ, , χ ]
Fig. 4 shows Kenstowicz’s (1994:163) results table of the distribution of a sample of triliteral roots with adjacent consonants; C1 C2, and C2 C3: 20
The table shows the vertical column represents the first adjacent consonant with the horizontal column representing the second adjacent consonant. The series’ are given of the consonants depending upon their place of articulation. What can be seen from the table is that there is an overwhelming dispreference for two adjacent consonants of a triliteral root sharing the same place specification (diagonal axis highlighted in bold). 21
Furthermore, analyses of the first and third consonants in a triliteral root also show a dispreference for the consonants sharing the same articulator, as shown in the following table, again taken from Kenstowicz (1994:164):
It is evident that there are a high proportion of occurrences of the coronal sonorant consonants [n, l, r] that can occur in the nonadjacent first and third positions of a triliteral root, subsequently the coronal sonorant set is separated to distinguish between [+nasal].
Conclusively, this data shows that there are consonantal compatibility restrictions in Arabic verbal roots, whereby the occurrence or non-occurrence of consonants is determined by their articulatory place specification.
3.1.2 Tigrinya Tigrinya is an Ethio-Semitic (South Semitic) language that also shows the same restrictions as Arabic on the occurrences of consonants within a root (Buckley 1997). Even though Tigrinya does not share the exact phonemic inventory as Arabic, it is still seen that the co-occurrence of these consonants rests upon which articulatory sets they are divided into, and again the class of coronals is further subdivided. The Tigrinya inventory has the following classification: (6) 23
a. labials [f, p, b, −−p, m]
b. coronal sonorants [r, n, l]
c. coronal stops [t, d, −t]
d. coronal fricatives [s, z, −s, ]
e. velars [k, g, −k, k , g , −k ]
f. post-velars [h, , , ħ]
Buckley (1997) draws upon a corpus of Tigrinya verb roots and finds that there are no roots containing adjacent identical consonants. However, there are some roots found with nonadjacent identical consonants (1997:12):
(7) sls ‘plow a field for a third time’ l l ‘raise, lift off the ground’ trt ‘tell stories, old traditions’
Although, Buckley points out that some of these roots have known historical origins in roots without identical consonants, such as / sls / is the root for ‘three’ where in Ge’ez it is / ls /. Further, Buckley states that only 12 such roots exist in his corpus of 2744 roots. But what is salient about this data is that the roots with nonadjacent identical consonants nearly always involve the coronal articulator class. Within the coronal sonorant class, Tigrinya makes a further distinction between the feature [+nasal]. As Greenberg (1950:172) noted, the coronal sonorant /n/ can occur freely (whether adjacent or nonadjacent) with /l/ and /r/, but there is a strong prohibition on the liquids /l/ and /r/ occurring together. As Buckley (1997:14) states ‘…the most salient feature among the sonorants is [+nasal], splitting the members into two classes /n/ and /l, r/. Within either class the co-occurrence restriction is absolute in effect, but across the classes the effect is weaker.’ As with the Arabic co- occurrence restrictions, the feature [+continuant] is needed to define two further subsets of the coronal class in that the coronal fricatives ([+continuant] /s, z, −s/) can occur with the coronal stops ([-continuant] /t, d, −t/) but the co-occurrence of these consonants from the same subset is disprefered. 24
In light of the occurrences of adjacent and nonadjacent coronal consonants, this major articulatory class has to have further subdivisions.
Moving on to the velar class of consonants, Tigrinya exhibits an interesting contrast between plain velars and labialised velars. Whereby the co-occurrence of plain velars is strongly prohibited, whether adjacent or nonadjacent, the co-occurrence of labialised velars is more particular. Although in adjacent position labialised velars are prohibited, they can co-occur in non-adjacent position. Buckley’s (1997:15) study does not take into account six suspicious cases of co-occurring labialised velars in quadriliteral roots. He omits these from his analysis because he believes these are cases of historical reduplication of biliteral roots or from a triliteral with infixation (where the same process is attested in Arabic). Furthermore, he proposes that these suspicious cases, and the asymmetry between the plain velars and labialised velars is due to the labialised velars not being inherited from Proto-Semitic, but attributable from borrowed forms from the Cushitic substrate in Ethiopia.
3.1.3 Akkadian Akkadian is classified as being an East Semitic language of the Afroasiatic phylum. The language, although now deceased, was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia and is known through written records – 2400BC to 100AD. The following classification gives the inventory of the literary dialect of Akkadian (Reiner 1966):
(8)25 a. labials [p, m, b]
b. coronal sonorants [n, r, l]
c. coronal stops [t, d, −t]
d. coronal fricatives [s, , z, −s]
e. dorsals [k, g, x, q]
Identical adjacent consonants are prohibited in Akkadian verb roots. Again, the root is almost canonically made up of three consonants, although some quadriliteral roots are attested. Reiner (1966:51) states that two adjacent homorganic consonants are also prohibited and puts this non-co-occurrence down to phonotactics as ‘both the first and second, and the second and third consonants of a root come into contact position in some inflectional forms.’ The co-occurrence of consonants that are drawn from the same articulatory set is prohibited in Akkadian. However, the set of coronal sonorants needs further explanation.
Akkadian makes the same distinction within the coronal sonorants of the feature [+nasal] as does Tigrinya. Therefore, the coronal sonorants /r/ and /l/ are prohibited to co-occur in the same root, although the coronal sonorant [+nasal] /n/ is allowed to co- occur with the [-nasal] coronal sonorants /r/ and /l/ but only when it is following - / ln/ or / rn / but never */ nl / or */ nr /. 26
Reiner (1966:50) labels these restrictions as ‘non-reversible’ and gives further instances of non-reversible clusters where these are all instances of consonants from the coronal articulatory set. 27
Further, she states that ‘…this list goes beyond occurrences limited to “root-incompatibility”.’ It is seen in (9) that when there are co-occurrences of coronals consonants, the primary coronal is drawn from the coronal fricative set and the secondary coronal from the coronal stop set and importantly these sequences are prohibited from co-occurring in reverse order (Reiner 1966:41):
A further restriction is that two emphatic coronals cannot co-occur:
(10) */−s−t/
Moreover, this restriction on emphatic consonants co-occurring is evidenced when the consonants are drawn from across the articulatory sets. This is known as an instantiation of Geers Law (1945):
(11) */−tq/, */q−t/, */q−s/, */qq/
Reiner (1966:50) points out that it is difficult to discern in instances when these consonantal compatibility restrictions are not respected whether these violations are due to the ‘approximation of foreign words in the vocabulary’ or to ‘actual phonetic realisations.’ Furthermore, she addresses the issue that certain combinations such as /mb/ occur morpho-phonologically as a dissimilation of /b:/ in that /m/ and /b/ are not successive consonants in a root. However, as with other analyses of restrictions in Semitic languages of consonantal compatibility (Greenberg 1950), there are instances of geminated consonants in only second and third positions of triliteral roots but never in first and second position. Generally, this has been attributed to a diachronic process of alteration to the template pattern of biliteral roots transformed into triliteral ones.28
The instances of consonant compatibility restrictions in Akkadian are not restricted to root forms but can also straddle a morpheme boundary when the affix is Derivational. Reiner (1966:51) shows this with the example of the derivational morpheme prefix /ma/ /me/ which is dissimilated to /na/ /ne/ when the root contains a labial consonant. This same process is also evidenced in the Afroasiatic language Tashlhiyt Berber where there is a co-occurrence restriction on derived stems which can only contain one labial consonant, i.e. /b, f, m/. A derivational prefix containing /m/, such as the reflexive or agentive morpheme, will dissimilate from /m/ to /n/ when prefixed to a root that contains a labial consonant in any position (Boukous 1987; El Medlaoui 1995): 29
code:
(12a) Reflexive prefix: m n (12b) Agentive prefix: am an m-xazar ‘scowl’ am-las ‘shear’ m-saggal ‘look for’ am-zug ‘abscond’ n-fara ‘disentangle’ an-bur ‘stay celibate’ n-kaddab ‘consider a liar’ an-azum ‘fast’
The dissimilative process that can apply across morphemes, however, is not seen in other Afroasiatic languages such as Arabic as Greenberg (1950:179) noted. A root such as ftH ‘to open’ can have the nominal instrument prefix m- attached with no change on the labial quality of the consonants, therefore resulting in the form mifta:H ‘key’. Subsequently, two labial consonants can be adjacent when they belong to separate morphemes.
Akkadian and Berber are languages that apply the consonantal incompatibility rule to a higher order constituent, namely the word, rather than languages such as Arabic where it is restricted to the root.30Posts: 1947 | Registered: Sep 2005
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3.2 Ancient Egyptian Ancient Egyptian is classified as being an autonomous member of the Afroasiatic Phylum and as such is positioned on its own sub-branch of Northern Afroasiatic. It is the longest continually attested language in the world and is fundamentally known through its writing system which appeared shortly before 3000 BCE and survived, in various stages, until the fifth century CE, although the spoken language was actively used for a further six centuries before being superseded by the Arabic language (Allen 2000).
Ancient Egyptian is a dead language, however, Coptic which is its last spoken phase is still used as the liturgical language of the Christian Coptic church in Egypt. Greenberg(1950b:179) addressed the issue of whether the incompatibility of consonants could be attributed to the Proto-Semitic period through a preliminary examination of Egyptian verbal roots (as Egyptian has such a long documented history), which are also formed by two or three consonants. Greenberg rested his investigation into this on certain series’ of consonants as the patterning of others was too obscure in Egyptian ‘because of the coalescence within Egyptian of consonants originally belonging to different and compatible series and sections’ (1950b:179).
Overall, Greenberg was able to specifically outline the most fundamental restrictions. Further studies on consonantal compatibility restrictions in Egyptian (Peust 1999b; Takács 1996; Watson 1979; Roquet 1973; Rössler 1971; Petráček 1969) have contributed to Greenberg’s (1950b) Egyptian consonantal incompatibility claims. 31
The main findings from these researchers are presented here, with an incompatibility chart taken from Peust (1999b:196). Although, Peust does not discuss the general principles that are behind these restrictions i.e. the restriction into root occurrence whereby there is a fundamental dispreference for identical first and second positional consonants etc. However, Peust’s (1999b) examination does detail how the data is counted.32
He goes on to state that ‘It is therefore to be assumed that the chart actually represents the consonantal incompatibilities as they were valid around the time of the late Old Kingdom. In the early Old Kingdom, not all of these incompatibility rules were already valid. From the Middle Kingdom on, Egyptian integrated a considerable number of loan words which did not conform with these rules, and consequently the system of compatibility restrictions was obscured.’ (1999:195). 33
Furthermore, the restrictions that Peust posits surely include the incompatibility of nominal forms as well as verbal (this is not explicitly stated but can be seen through his small use of data), whereas Greenberg and Watson kept to the analysis of only verbal forms. Consequently, I believe this can, at times, contradict the claims of incompatibility made by these scholars, as Greenberg outlined when looking at the incompatibility of Semitic roots ‘It is therefore striking that so many Semitic substantival roots have identical first and third consonants.’(1950b:168).
Peust’s chart overviews the strong compatibility restrictions of pairs of consonants with an asterisk (*) and absolutely no occurrences with (x). His strong restriction means that these pairs of consonants are clearly disfavoured, although they may appear occasionally. I take the occasional appearance of these consonants to mean that they are nonadjacent, again, however, Peust does not indicate any positional variations on consonantal incompatibility. Further, Peust omits the three consonants transcribed as <A>, <j> and <n> as he found they were not subject to strong restrictions (1999b:196).
Peust (1999b) does not discuss the general restrictions of these consonants such as articulatory sets or their positioning within a root therefore they will be discussed here supported by Greenberg’s (1950b) and Watson’s (1979) studies into verbal root consonantal compatibility restrictions.
As there are consonants that have been through internal developments, the articulatory divisions are discussed in-depth. I use the standard transcription (put in pointed brackets <>) along with their posited phonemic representation as put forward in Loprieno (1995:32), which is given for the Old Kingdom period (3000-2000 BCE) and Peust (1999b) for the Late Kingdom period (1300-700 BCE):
3.2.1 Labials
The labial series of consonants in Egyptian are:
<b> /b/, <f> /f/, <m> /m/, <p> /p/, (<w> /w/)
The co-occurrence restriction of consonants from the labial group in Egyptian is the most clear and rigorous of all the articulatory series. Although it is seen that the labials can combine freely with the labial glide /w/, Greenberg omitted the labial glide from his discussion because ‘w and y do not consistently pattern with any group of Consonants. It has long been realized that the so-called weak verbs of Semitic, containing w and y in various positions, are ‘rationalizations’ by which older forms containing root u and i were incorporated into the dominant triconsonantal schema’.(1950b:163). Specifically applied to Egyptian this is an instantiation of the “law of Belova” (Takács 1996:355). The initial <w-> or <j-> when found in an Egyptian triliteral root are, in many cases, part of the original root of Proto-Afroasiatic with the internal root vocalism *-u- or *-i-, therefore, PAA *C1uC2 > Eg. wC1C2.
These initial glides have previously nearly always been treated as prefixes, and as Watson (1979:100) points out ‘affixal elements do not obey patterning’ (in this root-level co- occurrence restriction, Egyptian is similar to Arabic). Instances can subsequently be seen of the labial glide <w> /w/ patterning with other consonants from the labial series.
What is interesting from Peust’s chart (fig. 13) is that it shows that the labial glide <w> /w/ does have strong restrictions against it co-occurring with the velar stop <k>/k/ and the uvular (?) stop q /q/.35
However, Watson (1979:105) states that <w> /w/ does not show any significant patterning in verbal roots and so dismisses any discussion of its co-occurrence restrictions from his paper. Although, when looking at Watson’s root distribution table (1979:101) for first and second root position, in can be seen that the labial glide <w> /w/ does not pattern with the velar <k> /k/ or the uvular (?) <q> /q/ either.36
Furthermore, from Watson’s chart <w> /w/ is not seen to co-occur with <p> /p/ and <f> /f/, although this restriction is not evident from Peust’s chart (perhaps this is due to Peust analysing the nominal and verbal roots, so it can be assumed that /w/ patterns with /p/ and /f/ in nominal forms).
3.2.2 Coronal sonorants
The coronal sonorant series in Egyptian contains the consonants:
<r> /r/, <n> /n/ 37
Contrary to Peust’s (1999b) findings, that <n> /n/ is not subject to strong restrictions, is the claim made by Greenberg (1950b:180) that ‘In Egyptian, verb roots with r and n in adjacent positions are rare.’ These two studies elicit differing results, again due to the grammatical nature of the data they analyse. Greenberg (1950b) specifically deals with verbal roots and not nominal, whereas Peust (1999b) analyses both. Watson (1979:104), who following Greenberg, only analyses the verbal roots gives a contradictory analysis to Greenberg’s claim of this articulatory series and states that ‘[r and n]…are not as exclusive in regard to combining with each other.’ Watson goes on to summarise this articulator series as ‘n and r seemingly ignore patterning altogether.’ (1979:105). Due to the contradiction between Greenberg and Watson’s claims on the coronal sonorants series, this would require a firmer investigation. Although on the surface, as with other Afroasiatic languages, it could be stated here that there is a gradient co-occurrence restriction involving the feature [+nasal] within the coronal sonorants that needs to be taken into consideration.
The articulatory set of coronals is further sub-divided in Egyptian as it is seen there are no co-occurrence restrictions of the stops patterning with the fricatives, although within these sets there are restrictions. This position is reflected in Semitic languages where the same co-occurrence is evident. Importantly there is a ‘rule of transposition’ that is exhibited in Semitic languages whereby the ordering of the consonants coronal stop + coronal fricative > coronal fricative + coronal stop.38
However, Watson (1979 104) states this ‘may have been observed in Egyptian but was not certainly so.’
3.2.4 Coronal fricatives
The class of coronal fricatives is:
<s> /s/, <z> /z/
The co-occurrence of these consonants is strongly disfavoured in Egyptian. Watson (1979:104) lists only two roots containing a co-occurrence of these consonants, but through such a low co-occurrence ‘one may tentatively admit exclusive patterning to have been at work’ (1979:104). Greenberg (1950b:180) also concludes that the co- occurrence of these consonants is ‘very rare’ and only cites one example known to him where they do co-occur. It is noted that in the Middle Egyptian stage of the language these two phonemes merged resulting in only /s/ (Allen 2000:16). It is seen that two distinct graphemes were still used that came to represent the one phoneme /s/ by the Middle and Late Egyptian stages.
3.2.5 Dorsals 39
The dorsal series of consonants are:
<g> /g/, <k> /k/, <q> /q/, <x> /x/ /χ/
In Watson’s study (1979:103), there are absolutely no occurrences of this series of consonants co-occurring together in the same verbal root, and Greenberg notes ‘I Could discover no instances of Egyptian roots containing two different velars.’(1950b:179). Confusingly though, these two studies label these consonants as velar and post-velar. For Greenberg, the sign he transcribes as <x> is commonly transcribed as <x> and he terms this as a ‘post-velar’. Watson gives the Egyptological transcription as <x>, although he follows Greenberg in also terming this sound a post-velar. Loprieno(1995:33) gives the representation of <x> as a uvular fricative /χ/.
Although Egyptologists are undecided as to whether this sound is thought to represent a velar or uvular fricative, it can be positioned into the dorsal set due to its incompatibility with the other segments in this series. 40
The sign, transcribed as <q>, is thought to be representative of either a uvular stop/velar ejective/labio-velar. Loprieno transcribes <q> as a uvular stop /q/ (1995:33), whereas Greenberg (1950b) does not define the phonemic transcription of this sign and only posits the Egyptological transcription <q> (although Greenberg (1950b:180) terms this sound as a velar). Peust (1999b:110) gives the phonemic representation of this sign as a labio-velar /k /. Watson (1979) also only gives a transcription of this sign but for him it is represented as <q>. 41
Allen (2000:16) states that Egyptian <q> is ‘A kind of k, probably like Arabic and Hebrew q … or with some kind of “emphasis,” like q in some Ethiopic languages …’ Moreover, Greenberg (1950b:180) states that ‘the Semitic rules concerning the non-occurrence of velars and post-velars finds its correspondence in Egyptian.’ For clarity, therefore, it is proposed here that the Egyptian velars and ‘post-velars’ should be termed ‘dorsal’. As the term, ‘post-velar’ implies the inclusion into this set of any other sound that is articulated further back than the velar place of articulation (such as the gutturals). This is in line with the Arabic categorisation.
In Egyptian verbal roots, the co-occurrence restriction of the uvular stop/velar ejective/labio-velar <q> /q/ /k’/ /k /, the velar stops <g> /g/ and <k> /k/ or the velar/uvular fricative <x> /x/ /χ/ with each other is upheld.
3.2.6 Gutturals The gutteral series of consonants are:
<h> /h/, <H> /ħ/, <a> / /, <A> / / / /
Watson (1979:102) describes these consonants as being laryngeals (<A>, <h>) and pharyngeals (<H>, <a>), which ‘display a complex series of interreactions and are party to phonological rules, for the most part unformulated and little understood.’ Watson finds that these consonants ‘exhibit no degree of patterning whatsoever.’(1979:102). Although Greenberg claims that the combination <Hh> is not found but <AH>, <Ah> and <HA> do occur (1950b:180). 43
He outlines that the combinations of <A> with the other gutturals can be ‘understood as the development of r and l’ (1950b:180). It is evidenced that this phoneme, transcribed as <A>, frequently corresponds to Proto-Semitic *r and *l, hence the dual representation given in fig.14f. 44
Watson states that ‘Egyptian A often represents etymological r and l as well as A’ (1979:102). Furthermore he discusses the developments of the other sounds ‘a, likewise, commonly derives from r and less frequently from l besides a itself; and finally H may under certain conditions reflect an original x.’
Conclusively, Watson states that ‘For the time being therefore it must be confessed that no rules of patterning among laryngeals and pharyngeals in Egyptian are immediately apparent and that, in our present state of knowledge no definite conclusions can be drawn.’ (1979:102-103). However, Petráček (1969) finds that <h> shows incompatibility with <H> and <a>. This is also seen from Peust’s chart in fig.13. Interestingly, Rössler (1971) finds that <a> shows restrictions with the coronal series <d>, <t> and <z> (also seen in Peust’s chart). 45 As Watson pointed out, this series of Egyptian consonants demand further investigation.46
3.2.7 Ancient Egyptian internal phonemic developments It is evidenced that the series of consonants in fig. 14 have gone through internal developments; this is clearly seen with the analysis of their co-occurrence restrictions with certain articulatory sets. 47
(14) <S>, <T>, <D>, <X>
The Egyptian sign transcribed as <S> is proposed by Loprieno (1995:33) to have the phonemic value / /. He states (1995:34) that this phoneme, when palatalised, corresponds etymologically to Afroasiatic *x. 48
This was Greenberg’s theory (1950b:181) although he was unable to support this with any etymologies. Watson (1979:103) shows that <S> ‘does not seem to pattern as though it were a sibilant, and it must be suggested that S behaves as though it were a (prepalatalised) post-velar.’
Although Watson does not discuss its exact phonological nature, he notes that in Old Kingdom writings there is ‘confusion between x and S’ (1979:106). The dorsal nature of this sign is evidenced in Watson’s chart that shows this through the incompatibility of <S> with velars where their co-occurrence is ‘rare.’ From
Watson’s analysis (1979:101), this co-occurrence restriction is validated and further <S> patterns frequently with other sibilants, where it has already been discussed that the sibilant series do not pattern with each other. Peust’s chart (fig.13) omits this sign from the compatibility analysis.
The two signs transcribed as <T> and <D>, are given by Loprieno (1995:33) with the phonemic representation of the palatals /t / and /d / respectively (1995:33). 49 However, Greenberg (1950b:180) discusses the fronting of an original <k> /k/ resulting in <T>, and <D> from a fronted <g> /g/. Watson terms these sounds as being ‘prepalatalised’ <T> from <k> and <D> from <g> (1979:103). Evidence for their prepalatalisation comes from their incompatibility with the consonants from the dorsal series. Watson’s chart shows that there are no co-occurrences of these two sounds with any consonants from the dorsal series. Greenberg (1950b:180) also sees the incompatibility of these sounds with the dorsal series, ‘It is striking therefore, that there are no verb roots in Egyptian containing both T and a member of the velar stops…it also appears that D does not occur in roots along with a velar stop.’50
A further sign - <X> is known to be subject to internal developments. Loprieno (1995:33) gives the phonemic transcription of this sign as / / - a palatal fricative. Further, he states that this sound was also, along with <S>, the heir of Afroasiatic *x (Afroas. *xanam > Eg. Xnmw “[the ram-god] Khnum” (1995:35)). Watson (1979:103) states that this sound was ‘prepalatalised’. In Watson’s analysis, he finds no instances of roots containing both <X> and <x> (velar/uvular fricative). This co-occurrence restriction evidences the prepalatalised nature of this sound. Peust’s chart (fig. 13) also shows that this sound has strong restrictions against its occurrence with the dorsal series of consonants (<x>, <k>, although <q> and <g> are questioned marked) and interestingly with the three other signs that are subject to internal ‘prepalatalised’ developments (<T>, <D> and <S>).
Greenberg’s (1950b:181) study concludes, ‘The general subject of the patterning of consonantal phonemes within the morphemes in Hamito-Semitic languages would seem to be a promising subject of investigation and one whose results must be kept in mind for their bearing on the historical analysis of this family of languages.’ Watson, in supporting the conclusions made in Greenberg’s ‘preliminary attempt’ is unequivocal in his conclusion: ‘… more important however is that the presence of this patterning in Egyptian helps locate Egyptian’s historical position within Hamito-Semitic [Afroasiatic] with slightly more precision that hitherto.’ (1979:105).
.3 Non-Semitic Afroasiatic languages Bender (1978) extended the consonantal compatibility restriction analysis to all the branches of Afroasiatic. Bender found ‘strongly positive results’ for Tamazigt (Berber), an autonomous member of the Northern branch, and the Cushitic languages Beja and Oromo. 51
Further he found ‘More equivocal positive results are obtained for Hausa, Mubi, and Logone (Chadic), Awngi and Sidamo (Cushitic), Welamo (Omotic), Koma (Nilo-Saharan), 52 and Proto-Indoeuropean (all verb roots). Negative results, equivocal or clearcut are obtained for Margi (Chadic), Kefa and Ari (Omotic), Kanuri and Masai (Nilo-Saharan), Proto-Bantu and Moro (Niger-Kordofanian).’ (1978:9). 53
Bender breaks down the consonantal restrictions into their articulatory classes such as labials, dentals (coronals) etc. and gives an overview of their positional incompatibility. Bender concludes that these results obtained show that ‘the co-occurrence restrictions are a good Afroasiatic isomorph, though it is see that Omotic is the weak link, and Chadic is also on the weak side.’ (1978:9-10). 54
The outline given of the consonantal compatibility restrictions evident in these languages primarily shows that these restrictions are not just characteristic of the Semitic language family, but of further language families in the Afroasiatic phylum as a whole. Secondly, that the restrictions are gradient in being (i) positional (adjacency of positions I-II stronger than positions I-III etc), and importantly, (ii) articulatory, as the gradient restrictions always involve the coronal consonantal series.
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You make a lot of interesting points Mystery Solver, and I would definitely appreciate you to discuss these matters in its original place of discussion and translation, ( the starter of this thread obviously forgot to mention where he took it from) since the below forum seems to be on again.
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The mere argument that because an African term has more than one meaning does not give grounds for dismissal of the obvious connections of Egyptian and the Niger-Congo languages.
quote: The Egyptic terms for ’and’ from other sources, is “hr” or “hn“ [n with an accent of some sort] ~ and. Haven’t come across any source suggesting “n” ~ and.
Although not explicitly said, “n” in Budges Dictionary on pg. 339b has it labeled “a particle” as in a sentence (not a particle as opposed to a wave in quantum mechanics). A grammatical particle is a catch-all term and there are many types. The particle “n” for “and” would fall under this and is a conjunction particle with other words such as: or, nor, but, while, although, for, because, unless and since.
quote: Speaking of “hr”, it reappears in Mdu Ntr as the equivalent of “on”, “upon“, “at“, “through“, (conj.) “because“, “and” (with suffix pron.) or “face", which again attests to the problems with cherry picking one context of a single term that could possibly turn out to have one, two or three more other meanings.
This just goes to prove that linguists has the Egyptian language categorized all wrong in the first place. The reason you have so many definitions for the same word is more than likely it is a tonal language, or, as I have argued, it is an agglutinative language that “hides” various verbs and nouns (just like in the names for the land of Ta-Meri –- Kaa in Km.t and in BaKaa - both meaning Egypt). Ra Un Nefer expressed this point on pg 27 of Metu Neter when he brought out the fact there is no way for to ascertain the meaning of a word in Egyptian verbally unless it was a tonal language. For example the Egyptian word “a-au-au” has the following meanings:
/a-au-au/ grave, tomb, to come, sleep, slumber, to punish, to do harm, to bespatter, to make a charge against, foreign interpreter
In ever case the words are written with the same exact letters. He also gives an example from the Twi (Akan) and Chinese languages respectively of this principle.
/me-ba/ - Twi my son = when the “ba” is accented I (am) going = when the “me” is accented
/shi/ - Chinese damp = when pronounced in an even pitch stone = when pronounced in a rising pitch to cause = when pronounced in a dropping then rising pitch to be = when pronounced in a dropping pitch
The only way the people of Ta-Meri could make such a distinction of the word “a-au-au” when spoken would be in the intonation differences. Or, as has been argued, they fully understood what words were “hidden” to us like most Niger-Congo languages (Odudua which hides the word “Olodu” which the “Ol” is a contraction of the word “Oluwa.” for example).
This is a fact Egyptologists try to avoid and why it is very difficult to create dictionaries of African languages. This is why you can’t rely on “root” words to determine the definition of the Egyptian “consonantal” values. If you want to know the definition of a word, based on its symbols, the Egyptian language itself employs a method of defining words as a way of explicitly describing the glyphs. The criteria for identifying an Egyptian defining word would be
quote: the common usage meaning of the word should express the ideographic concept depicted by the glyph, and the written form of the word should display the defined glyph, and the written form of the word should display the defined glyph as the final glyph of the word.
For example, how do we know the word /nu/ means “to tie, to bind together?” The written word itself possesses a glyph that gives a hint to its meaning: the adze glyph – wood carving tool used to shape wood.
/nu/ to tie or bind
The word /nu/ hides another word /an-t/ which means to shape and uses the "adze" glyph just as well.
/an-t/ adze - a wood working tool used to shape
The word /an-t/ is an "Egyptian Defining Word" because it defines the determinative used to convey the meaning. So from this we know any word with the "adze" symbol as to do with the shaping of something.
The "adze" glyph is used in the word /nu/ above to hint the "shaping" of the determinatives (coiled and tied strings - string theory) of a scientific concept of the shaping of waves (the water symbol) into matter (the clay pot). Now, (and this is why you talk to priests on the continent) the proper way to read the glyps for /nu/ in the above example is:
quote: /nu/ to tie or bind
waves (water) form and/or shape (adze) particles/matter (clay pot) from coiled threads (coiled rope) followed by the tied rope determinative
The word /nu/ also means "adze" the wood carving tool
/nu/ = adze (wood carving tool used to shape wood)
Well there is another meaning for /nu/ and it has nothing to do with tying. It is a demonstrative particle and means “this or these.” By what criteria when hearing the words without the glyphs would you know which is being used (outside of context)?
/nu/ = this, these
Looking for the "root" of the words will NOT give you ANY indication of the many uses of the word and is why your assumption would not stand up to scrutiny in comparing Egyptian to any other language by the criteria you suggest.
And this is more than likely one of the reasons the Egyptians never abandoned the writing system of ideographic glyphs. And this further gives credence to why Mdw Ntr glyphic writing was used, as has been argued before based on testimony from various African priests, to write down the various words of different African priesthoods and nations. It would be very difficult for Egyptian priests to learn all of these tonal fluctuations in all of these various languages, but the remedy is determinates which distinguishes the various sounds when spoken.
The Egyptian language hides conventions for the interpretation of its glyphs and it can ONLY be understood in relation to the cosmological concepts and ideas in the languages of what is called the "Niger-Congo" languages.
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The mere argument that because an African term has more than one meaning does not give grounds for dismissal of the obvious connections of Egyptian and the Niger-Congo languages.
Not to anyone who doesn't understand what one reads, but for those us who do, it does put to question the supposed connections.
You simply cannot cherry pick one particular meaning of a word with multiple distinct meanings, out of convenience of the occasion at hand and pass it off as the root context, without understanding the underlying figurative nuance. Specific words are not created out of happenstance, whereby in a single language a specific word is invented many times over and where the meanings attached to each is entirely unconnected to the other.
quote:Originally posted by Asar Imhotep:
quote: The Egyptic terms for ’and’ from other sources, is “hr” or “hn“ [n with an accent of some sort] ~ and. Haven’t come across any source suggesting “n” ~ and.
Although not explicitly said
Hence, my comment. Case closed.
quote:Originally posted by Asar Imhotep:
quote: Speaking of “hr”, it reappears in Mdu Ntr as the equivalent of “on”, “upon“, “at“, “through“, (conj.) “because“, “and” (with suffix pron.) or “face", which again attests to the problems with cherry picking one context of a single term that could possibly turn out to have one, two or three more other meanings.
This just goes to prove that linguists has the Egyptian language categorized all wrong in the first place. The reason you have so many definitions for the same word is more than likely it is a tonal language, or, as I have argued, it is an agglutinative language that “hides” various verbs and nouns (just like in the names for the land of Ta-Meri –- Kaa in Km.t and in BaKaa - both meaning Egypt). Ra Un Nefer expressed this point on pg 27 of Metu Neter when he brought out the fact there is no way for to ascertain the meaning of a word in Egyptian verbally unless it was a tonal language. For example the Egyptian word “a-au-au” has the following meanings....
Having many contexts for a single term doesn't prove that a language is tonal. For instance, though not perhaps the best examples, in English, black could have many distinct meanings like:
'It was a black day'
'He/she has a black heart'.
'It is a black car'
'He sold the gun at the blackmarket'.
'The blacksheep of the family'
"The room went black"
Cloud:
"Don't let this cloud your judgement."
"He has a black cloud hanging over his head"
"The sky is clear off clouds at the moment"
The word here doesn't need any variation in pitch to be understood within the context it's placed, but more so, by its cotext. It is obvious that these terms have some consistent fugartive undertone, nowithstanding the different contexts.
quote:Originally posted by Asar Imhotep:
This is a fact Egyptologists try to avoid and why it is very difficult to create dictionaries of African languages.
Are you suggesting that you can see that Ancient Egyptian is "tonal" language, while most linguistic experts have failed to see this, by which I must take it, that you're under the impression that they've missed the fact that single words can come in multiple distinct meanings and applications? Sounds like it.
quote:Originally posted by Asar Imhotep:
This is why you can’t rely on “root” words to determine the definition of the Egyptian “consonantal” values.
You've got it twisted. You'd have already known the meaning, and hence, definition of the term, as the context is already given. What I'm talking about, is picking one meaning or application out of several distinct ones, and proclaiming that to be to the root word, while ignoring the fugarative underpinning that ultimately allowed the word to take up seemingly disparate meanings and applications.
quote:Originally posted by Asar Imhotep:
Looking for the "root" of the words will NOT give you ANY indication of the many uses of the word and is why your assumption would not stand up to scrutiny in comparing Egyptian to any other language by the criteria you suggest.
If you don't know the root of the word, then how can you just stubbornly go ahead and pick one out of its many distinct applications, and then use that as an argument to suggest that this word derived from so and so language, or that this is the shared common root or genetic link between the words from the host language and a foreign language, while ignoring the other different applications that don't seem to support that position? So of course, you have to have an idea of what the possible root of the word is, before you use it comparative analysis and ultimately, if necessary, reconstruct a proto-term for the proto-language.
quote:Originally posted Asar Imhotep:
And this is more than likely one of the reasons the Egyptians never abandoned the writing system of ideographic glyphs. And this further gives credence to why Mdw Ntr glyphic writing was used, as has been argued before based on testimony from various African priests, to write down the various words of different African priesthoods and nations.
Love talking about this supposed "Pan-African" priest usuage of Mdu Ntr, without concrete evidence of it having ever been found in anywhere else but the lower Nile Valley [Egypt-Sudan], don't you?
quote:Originally posted by Asar Imhotep:
The Egyptian language hides conventions for the interpretation of its glyphs and it can ONLY be understood in relation to the cosmological concepts and ideas in the languages of what is called the "Niger-Congo" languages.
...because the "familial" grammatic structures just described are too much to bear, right? I mean, I don't see any of the experts who place Egyptic a subphylum of Afrasan complain that they don't know how to interpret the glyphs or know about the morphological nature of language. So, when you say this:
"it can ONLY be understood in relation to the cosmological concepts and ideas in the languages of what is called the "Niger-Congo" languages"
...you must not be speaking for these folks, and hence, must be speaking for your own inability to understand what these experts understand - no? On the other hand, these experts have compared Egyptic with languages from other superphylums, and *understood* that it fits in more with the Afrasan superphylum.
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quote:Originally posted by King_Scorpion: Asar, what is your problem with the Afro-Asiatic language group? And even though you're not saying Ancient Egyptian is Niger-Congo...what problems do you have with it being part of the Afro-Asiatic group?
Don't you know? There's a war between the sons of Hham and the sons of Shem when it comes to things African. Look especially to Mauritania and Sudan in particular.
Biblical myths withstanding, this still does not rid the simple fact that the Afrasian group still exists and originated in Africa, with Semitic being a branch that made its way out of Africa (likely along with lineages like E3b).
Besides, I thought the early Hebrew scholars described the early Semites as blacks also.
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quote: Love talking about this supposed "Pan-African" priest usuage of Mdu Ntr, without concrete evidence of it having ever been found in anywhere else but the lower Nile Valley [Egypt-Sudan], don't you?
Let's deal with one thing at a time, and the above first and foremost. The priesthoods themselves are attested to even by the early Greek writers. But first lets deal with another name for the "secret" Egyptian language. As Dr. George GM James points out in stolen legacy pg. 133
quote: (ii) We are also informed that the mystery system of Egypt employed modes of spoken language which could be understood, only by the initiated. These consisted not only of myths and parables; but also of a secret language called SeNzar. (Ancient Mysteries: C.H. Vail, pg.23)
Now lets take to the Bantu people and see if this is characteristic of African priestly systems. Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop in Civilization or Barbarism pg 320 states:
quote: The Woyo have a hieroglhic writing system the study of which has been recently undertaken by a Belgian ethnologist, according to Nguvulu Lubundi. In Zambia, an Austrian researcher, Dr Gerhard Kubik of the Vienna University's Institute of Ethnology, has recently discovered ideograms called Tu-SoNa, of a philosophic meaning that are known only by the old men who speak the Luchazi language in the Kabompo district; he is in the process of studying them. Therefore it is not by chance that a statuette of Osiris was found in situ in an archaeological layer in Shaba, a province in Zaire
R. Grauwet: "Une statuette egyptienne au Katanga," in Revue Coloniale Belge, no. 214, 1954, p.622
So I ask again, how did this secret language make it into a Bantu speaking people south of the Sahara? Also, how did a statuette of Osiris get "found" in the heart of Zaire (another Bantu speaking country)?
Let's take it a step further, how is it that the Lemba tribe have the "priestly" Cohen gene of the so-called Jews, at a rate that is higher than Jews, if these Bantu speaking people were not in the area of Egypt and the Levant?
quote: Kevin Davies. Cracking the Genome: Inside the Race to Unlock Human DNA. New York: The Free Press, 2001. Excerpts from Davies' book:
"But the most remarkable application of Y-chromosome markers is to Jewish populations in the Middle East and beyond... Aaron thus became the first Jewish priest, or cohen, a tradition that has since been handed down from father to son. [Michael] Hammer, Karl Skorecki, David Goldstein, and colleagues studied Y markers from three hundred Jews, including more than one hundred cohanim, and found that half of the Jewish priests shared the same genetic signature, compared to less than 5 percent in the lay Jewish population.... The results of the DNA studies [of the Lemba people of South Africa] were stunning: a significant portion of the Lemba Y chromosomes exhibit the characteristic genetic signature found in the cohanim, including more than 50 percent of the Buba, one of the 12 Lemba clans. These markers have also turned up in the Bene Israel, the oldest Jewish community in India..." (excerpts from pages 182-183)
So much for not being in the vicinity. Before we move on to the other comments, which is based on your assumption of no Bantu contact with ancient Egyptians (although the very name NTU is attested to in the Egyptian language), you need to accurate address these things and not skate around the issues.
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^You might want to first worry about the elaborate language issues you've skated around before you concern yourself with such self-imagined fowl play on my end.
And while you're at it, feel at liberty to produce photographic material, along with elaborate scientific examination and datings of the so-called Bantu "Osiris" figures going back to antiquity. Should be easy, since Bantu-affiliated pottery and metallic materials [e.g. iron items] had been uncovered along Bantu migratory paths.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: Don't you know? There's a war between the sons of Hham and the sons of Shem when it comes to things African. Look especially to Mauritania and Sudan in particular.
quote:Originally posted by King_Scorpion: Asar, what is your problem with the Afro-Asiatic language group? And even though you're not saying Ancient Egyptian is Niger-Congo...what problems do you have with it being part of the Afro-Asiatic group?
Sons of Kem already know what they must do to put certain characters in place. Sons of Sham are full of lies and deceit. Get it? Sham?.
Posts: 213 | From: New York City, USA | Registered: Sep 2007
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quote:Originally posted by King_Scorpion: Asar, what is your problem with the Afro-Asiatic language group? And even though you're not saying Ancient Egyptian is Niger-Congo...what problems do you have with it being part of the Afro-Asiatic group?
Don't you know? There's a war between the sons of Hham and the sons of Shem when it comes to things African. Look especially to Mauritania and Sudan in particular.
Biblical myths withstanding, this still does not rid the simple fact that the Afrasian group still exists and originated in Africa, with Semitic being a branch that made its way out of Africa (likely along with lineages like E3b).
Besides, I thought the early Hebrew scholars described the early Semites as blacks also.
really? early semites as black?
Posts: 447 | From: Somewhere son... | Registered: Sep 2006
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^ The first semites were just a few Africans, waundering into the Levantine to find [non semitic] peoples already there. - Christopher Ehret.
Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004
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-------------------- Across the sea of time, there can only be one of you. Make you the best one you can be. Posts: 4028 | From: NW USA | Registered: May 2005
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WHC: You seem to be suggesting that the Semitic monotheism Jewish, Christian and Islamic monotheism descends from African models. Is that fair?
Ehret: Yeah, actually it is. Look at the first commandment: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." It's not like the Muslim creed, which is "There is no God but God." It's doesn't say "there is no god but Yahweh, and Moses is his prophet." It is an admittance that there are other gods. It is an example of henotheism. And the Hebrew tribes are like the Omati clan groups. The tribes are clans writ larger. Like the Omati clans, they track their ancestry back ten or fifteen generations to a common ancestor. And these common ancestors were twelve brothers. (Actually, there are thirteen. They have to turn two of them, Ephraim and Manasseh, into half tribes, because thirteen wasn't a good number. I always loved that. There are really thirteen tribes, but you have to combine two of them).
The Canaanite cities have an alternative Semitic structure: polytheism. There's Astarte and Baal and the various gods that you'll find in South Arabia. So it looks like in the early Semitic world, you have two coexisting religions. You have polytheism among the ones who are really more urbanized. Then you have henotheistic groups.
What I see here is that earlier Middle Eastern polytheism is influencing Semitic religion. After all, the early Semites were just a few Africans arriving to find a lot of other people already in the area. So they're going to have to accommodate. Some groups, maybe ones who live in peripheries, in areas with lower population densities, may be able to impose the henotheistic religion they arrived with.
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WHC: How does a small group of Semites coming in from Africa transform the language of a region in which they are a minority?
Ehret: One of the archaeological possibilities is a group called the Mushabaeans. This group moves in on another group that's Middle Eastern. Out of this, you get the Natufian people. Now, we can see in the archaeology that people were using wild grains the Middle East very early, back into the late glacial age, about 18,000 years ago. But they were just using these seeds as they were. At the same time, in this northeastern corner of Africa, another people the Mushabaeans? are using grindstones along the Nile, grinding the tubers of sedges. Somewhere along the way, they began to grind grain as well. Now, it's in the Mushabian period that grindstones come into the Middle East.
Conceivably, with a fuller utilization of grains, they're making bread. We can reconstruct a word for "flatbread," like Ethiopian injira. This is before proto-Semitic divided into Ethiopian and ancient Egyptian languages. So, maybe, the grindstone increases how fully you use the land. This is the kind of thing we need to see more evidence for. We need to get people arguing about this.
And by the way: we can reconstruct the word for "grindstone" back to the earliest stage of Afrasan. Even the Omati have it. And there are a lot of common words for using grasses and seeds.
Posts: 6572 | From: N.Y.C....Capital of the World | Registered: Jun 2008
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Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
^ A critique not driven by emotion but solely based on the linguistics. Take it from the top.
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