quote:A systematic, computer-automated tool for narrowing down the homelands of linguistic families is presented and applied to 82 of the world’s larger families. The approach is inspired by the well-known idea that the geographical area of maximal diversity within a language family corresponds to the original homeland. This is implemented in an algorithm which takes a lexicostatistically derived distance measure and a geographical distance measure and computes a lexical diversity measure for each language in the family relative to all the other related languages. The location of the language with the highest diversity measure is heuristically identified with the homeland.
Where did this algorithm locate the origin point of Afroasiatic and other African language phyla?
quote:The most controversial homeland in the African map (Figure 3) is probably the one for Afro-Asiatic (which, interestingly, is almost identical to the one for Niger-Congo).
This reminds me of all those efforts to relate ancient Egyptian to West African and Bantu languages, starting with Diop's claims about Wolof. Maybe they were onto something after all? Could Afroasiatic and Niger-Congo be sister phyla after all?
Posts: 7069 | From: Fallbrook, CA | Registered: Mar 2004
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Obenga don't believe in the hamito-semitic (afro-asiatic) myth. A lot of falsely perceived similarities are due to proven contacts and borrowing between languages. In any manner, it doesn't change much things as the homeland of this Afro-asiatic family would be Africa, Eastern Africa, where most of the languages (Cushitic and Chadic branches) are spoken.
Ehret as well as most linguists I think place the homeland of all modern African language families in Eastern Africa.
Reconstructing Ancient Kinship in Africa by Christopher Ehret (From Early Human Kinship, Chap 12)
Obenga, following the footsteps of Homburger and Diop, went a step further and demonstrated the existence of a paleo-African language which later diversified (in Eastern Africa) into most of the modern language phyla mentioned above by Ehret. Obenga places the origin of this paleo-african language in Eastern Africa too. At a time period before approx 10 000BC(iirc). I would say genetic studies seems to point in the same direction too. This paleo-african language is the mother language of almost all the modern languages phyla spoken in Africa nowadays.
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My linguistic studies informs me that if Afro-Asiatic exist, it exist as a branch of Kongo-Saharan. I say this because many of the Kongo-Saharan grammatical features are fossilized in Afro-Asiatic. For example, the Semitic tri-consonantal roots are a result of fossilization of Kongo-Saharan bi-consonantal roots with an affix. Because the affixes were no longer operable, they went to the method of utilizing the vowels for grammatical and sense change.
GJK Campbell-Dunn, in his Sumerian Grammar (2009a: 5-6) suggests as well that Afro-Asiatic derives from offshoot of Niger-Congo-Nilo-Saharan; however, he doesn't go into detail.
Posts: 853 | From: Houston | Registered: Nov 2007
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quote:Originally posted by Asar Imhotep: My linguistic studies informs me that if Afro-Asiatic exist, it exist as a branch of Kongo-Saharan.
You say Kongo-Saharan but if you combine Kongo-Saharan languages with the Cushitic and Chadic language phyla, or any other language phyla, it seems to be logical that the new combined language phyla would be called by another name. I wouldn't be called Kongo-Saharan anymore to take into account the new language phyla included in the family.
I don't know how to choose which language family to call an offshoot of one another when they share a common proto-language. If they do share a common proto-language the new language phylum would be called by another name. Kongo-Saharan, Cushitic and Chadic language phyla would be the name given to the offshoots of this new language phylum. Obenga call it Negro-Egyptians but admit the lack of finding a better term. It is some kind of 'paleo-African' language phyla or even a 'pan-African' language phyla (since almost all modern African language families spoken in Africa derive from it).
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A new language family, and/or phylum is determined by shared innovations. The paleo-African language would be so far remote in time. Negro-Egyptian is not the paleo-African phylum. Negro-Egyptian is the Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan and Afro-Asiatic languages combined. Khoisan and Berber exist outside of Negro-Egyptian, but are still considered African languages per Obenga. A true paleo-African language phylum would also include Berber and Khoisan. This is his whole Negro-Africaines; not to be confused with Negro-Egyptian.
Again, just because a language family or phylum may share a parent, this doesn't eliminate its distinctiveness. I said earlier, language families are determined by a number of shared features and shared innovations that do not exist in the parent language or phylum, but exists in its children.
With that said, if Afro-Asiatic exists, my argument is that it came out of Kongo-Saharan in agreement with Campbell-Dunn (2009a).
Posts: 853 | From: Houston | Registered: Nov 2007
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quote:Originally posted by Asar Imhotep: [QB] A new language family, and/or phylum is determined by shared innovations. The paleo-African language would be so far remote in time. Negro-Egyptian is not the paleo-African phylum. Negro-Egyptian is the Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan and Afro-Asiatic languages combined. Khoisan and Berber exist outside of Negro-Egyptian, but are still considered African languages per Obenga. A true paleo-African language phylum would also include Berber and Khoisan. This is his whole Negro-Africaines; not to be confused with Negro-Egyptian.
I don't know how to call this paleo-African language beside Negro-Egyptian. 'Pan' for me is like 'wide' not 'all'. 'Paleo' to me means upper paleolithic (LSA). Those are only descriptions anyway not names.
quote: Again, just because a language family or phylum may share a parent, this doesn't eliminate its distinctiveness.
My reply to you doesn't have anything to do with losing language distinctiveness. For example, if you believe in the afro-asiatic phyla, you could call this new language family the 'Kongo-Saharan-Afro-Asiatic' language phyla. Where the 2 distinct Kongo-Saharan and Afro-Asiatic phyla would be offshoots of. Of course the name is too long for a language phyla but you get the idea. So it doesn't have anything to do with their distinctiveness as they would maintain it no matter what name we give to their common parent language phyla.
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None of the alledged language families is adjacent to the Horn of Africa. Note legend on map, you will notice that AA which does not exist is also situated in Wsst Africa.
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