posted
These questions are geared towards Asar Imhotep's Cyena-ntu phyla and related linguistic findings. There are a few baselines that needs to be established and on record. Anyone who can answer these questions can chime in, as Asar himself doesn't need to cover these if it's already been relayed by him or his work. These questions aren't too deep but I think the answers are very important to hard sell his findings. with that being said if there are any publications which lay out the answers to these questions without any obscurities feel free to shout them out.
-Was anyone successful in creating a phylo-tree with African languages and Sumerian, relating to their purported relationship using the comparative method (done many times by Asar)?
-which contemporary bantu language is closest to ciKam?
-in relation to the question above, how does that affect the reconstruction of protobantu? If there are any outstanding similarities with a derived language and AEgyptian we'd need an explanation to explain it's exclusion in protobantu, which leads to the following question.
-Is anyone working on a revised protobantu reconstruction to better adjust to its relationship with other protolanguages? has it been done already?
-what are the most important shared innovations between various so called Niger Congo languages and Aegyptian.
-Do various NC languages and Aegyptian coalesce before or after neolithics in Africa. Also does the words that can be compared between African languages reflect the subsistence strategies practiced when these languages were one(or at least more closely related)??
Posts: 1781 | From: New York | Registered: Jul 2016
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quote:Originally posted by Elmaestro: These questions are geared towards Asar Imhotep's Cyena-ntu phyla and related linguistic findings. There are a few baselines that needs to be established and on record. Anyone who can answer these questions can chime in, as Asar himself doesn't need to cover these if it's already been relayed by him or his work. These questions aren't too deep but I think the answers are very important to hard sell his findings. with that being said if there are any publications which lay out the answers to these questions without any obscurities feel free to shout them out.
-Was anyone successful in creating a phylo-tree with African languages and Sumerian, relating to their purported relationship using the comparative method (done many times by Asar)?
Yes. I was successful in creating a phylo-tree with African languages and Sumerian. I call this language family Bafsudralam Super Language family.
A comparison of Egyptian, Niger-Kordofanian-Mande, Elamite,Dravidian and Sumerian indicated that they diverged from a common ancestor. The Dravidian examples discussed below are taken from Tamil. All of these languages share pronouns and demonstrative bases. (Winters 1989a) This is proven by a comparison of cognate culture terms. .
. The above examples from languages spoken by blacks validates Diop's theory that there were cognate black civilizations in Africa and Asia, before the expansion of the Indo-European speaking peoples after 1500 BC. This linguistic data which is outlined in further detail elsewhere (Winters 1985b,1989a) illustrates that a common cultural macrostructure is shared by these speakers, which subsequently evolved along separate lines.
Given the genetic unity of these languages I named this group B(lack) Af(rican), Su(merian), Draa(vidian), (E)lam or Bafsudraalam Superset of languages. This supports Diop's use of the comparative method to illuminate the African past.
References:
Clyde Winters, Egyptian Language:The Mountains of the Moon Niger-Congo Speakers and the Origin of Egypt. 2013.
Clyde Winters, Before Egypt: The Maa Confederation, Africa?s First Civilization. 2013.
Winters, Clyde Ahmad, "The Proto-Culture of the Dravidians ,Manding and Sumerians", Tamil Civilization 3, no1 (March 1985a) ,pages 1-9. Winters, Clyde Ahmad, "The Indus Valley Writing and related Scripts of the 3rd Millennium BC", India Past and Present 2, no1 ( 1985b), pages 13-19.
Winters,Clyde Ahmad, "The genetic Unity between the Dravidian ,Elamite, Manding and Sumerian Languages", P Sixth ISAS ,1984, (Hong Kong:Asian Research Service,1985d) pages 1413-1425.
Winters,Clyde Ahmad Winters ,"The Dravidian Origin of the Mountain and Water Toponyms in central Asia", Journal of Central Asia 9, no2 (1986d), pages 144-148.
Winters,Clyde Ahmad,"Tamil,Sumerian and Manding and the Genetic Model",International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics,18,(1989) nol.
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posted
The Linguistic Methods of Chiekh Anta Diop By Clyde Winters
Chiekh Anta Diop has contributed much to the Afrocentric social sciences. Here we discuss many of Diop's views on using the linguistic sciences to rediscover the ancient history of Blacks.
Chiekh Anta Diop has made important contributions to linguistic theory in relation to African historiography. Diop's work illustrates that it is important for scholars to maintain a focus on the historical and linguistic factors which define the "personnalitè culturelle africaine" (Diop 1991, 227).
Language is the sanctum sanctorum of Diop's Afrocentric historical method. The Diopian view of historiography combines the research of linguistics, history and psychology to interpret the cultural unity of African people.
C. Anta Diop is the founder of modern Afrocentricism . Diop (1974,1991) laid the foundations for the Afrocentric idea in education. He laid these foundations using both the historical and anthropological/linguistic methods of research to explain the role of the Blacks in World History.
There are three components in the genetic model: 1) common Physical type, 2) common cultural patterns and 3) genetically related languages. (Winters 1989a) Diop over the years has brought to bear all three of these components in his illumination of Kemetic civilization. (Diop 1974,1977,1978,1991)
The opposition of many Eurocentric scholars to Afrocentric -ism results from white hostility to Diop's idea of a Black Egypt, and the view that Egyptians spoke an African ,rather than Afro-Asiatic language.
Recently, Eurocentric American scholars have alleged to write reviews of Diop's recent book (Diop 1991). Although these reviewers mention the work of Diop in their articles, they never review his work properly, because they lack the ability to understand the many disciplines that Diop has mastered.(Lefkowitz 1992; Baines 1991)
For example Lefkowitz (1992) in The New Republic, summarizes
Diop (1974) but never presents any evidence to dispute the findings of Diop. The most popular "review" of Diop (1991) was done by Baines (1991) review in the New York Times Book Review. In this "review" Baines (1991) claims that "...the evidence and reasoning used to support the arguments are often unsound".
Instead of addressing the evidence Diop (1991) presents of the African role in the rise of civilization that he alleges is "unsound", he is asking the reader to reject Diop's thesis without refutation of specific evidence presented by Diop of the
African contributions to Science and Philosophy. Baines (l991)
claims that Diop's Civilization or Barbarism, is not a work of originality, he fails to dispute any factual evidence presented by Diop.
Baines (1991) wants the public to accept his general negative comments about Civilization or Barbarism ,based on the fact that he is an Egyptologist. This is not enough, in academia
to refute a thesis one must present counter evidence that proves the falseness of a thesis not unsubstantiated rhetoric. We can not accept the negative views of Baines on faith alone.
In the recovery of information concerning the African past, Diop promotes semantic anthropology, comparative linguistics and the study of Onomastics. The main thesis of Diop is that typonymy and ethnonymy of Africa point to a common cradle for Paleo-Africans in the Nile Valley (Diop 1978, 67).
Onomastics is the science of names. Diop has studied legends, placenames and religious cult terms to discover the unity of African civilization. Diop (1981, 86) observed that:
"An undisputed linguistic relationship between two geographically remote groups of languages can be relevant for the study of migrations. A grammatical (or genetic) relationship if clear enough is never an accident".
As a result, Diop has used toponyms (place-names), anthroponyms (personal names) and ehthnonyms (names of ethnic groups/tribes) to explain the evidence of analogous ethnic (clan) names in West Africa and the Upper Nile (Diop 1991).
In Precolonial Black Africa, Diop used ethnonyms to chart the migrations of African people in West Africa. And in The African Origin of Civilization, Diop used analyses acculturaliste or typological analysis to study the origin and spread of African cultural features from the Nile Valley to West Africa through his examination of toponyms (Diop 1974, 182-183). In the Cultural Unity of Black Africa, Diop discussed the common totems and religious terms many African ethnic groups share (Diop 1978, 124).
LINGUISTIC TAXONOMY
This linguistic research has been based on linguistic classification or taxonomy. Linguistic taxonomy is the foundation upon which comparative and historical linguistic methods are based (Ruhlen 1994). Linguistic taxonomy is necessary for the identification of language families. The determination of language families give us the material to reconstruct the proto-language of a people and discover regular sound correspondences.
There are three major kinds of language classifications: genealogical, typological, and areal. A genealogical classifica-tion groups languages together into language families based on the shared features retained by languages since divergence from the common ancestor or proto-language. An areal classification groups languages into linguistic areas based on shared features acquired by a process of convergence arising from spatial proximity. A typological classification groups languages together into language types by the similarity in the appearance of the structure of languages without consideration of their historical origin and present, or past geographical distribution.
COMPARATIVE METHOD
Diop has used comparative and historical linguistics to illuminate the Unity of African civilization. Diop (1977, xxv) has noted that
"The process for the evolution of African languages is clearly apparent; from a far we (have) the idea that Wolof is descendant by direct filiation to ancient Egyptian, but the Wolof, Egyptian and other African languages (are) derived from a common mother language that one can call Paleo-African, the common mother language that one can call Paleo-African, the common African or the Negro- African of L. Homburger or of Th. Obenga."
The comparative method is used by linguists to determine the relatedness of languages, and to reconstruct earlier language states. The comparative linguist has two major goals (1) trace the history of language families and reconstruct the mother language of each family, and (2) determine the forces which affect language. In general, comparative linguists are interested in determining phonetic laws, analogy/ correspondence and loan words.
Diop is a strong supporter of the comparative method in the rediscovery of Paleo-African. The reconstruction of Paleo-African involves both reconstruction and recognition of regular sound correspondence. The goal of reconstruction is the discovery of the proto-language of African people is the recovery of Paleo-African:
(1) vowels and consonants
(2) specific Paleo-African words
(3) common grammatical elements; and
(4) common syntactic elements.
The comparative method is useful in the reconstruction of Proto-languages or Diop's Paleo-African. To reconstruct a proto-language the linguist must look for patterns of correspondences. Patterns of correspondence is the examination of terms which show uniformity. This uniformity leads to the inference that languages are related since uniformity of terms leads to the inference that languages are related since conformity of terms in two or more languages indicate they came from a common ancestor.
HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS
A person's language provides us with evidence of the elements of a group's culture. Diop has noted that reconstruction of Paleo-African terms can help us make inferences about a group's culture going backwards in time to an impenetrable past undocumented by written records. This is semantic anthropology, a linguistic approach which seeks to discover aspects of man's culture from his language. Thusly, linguistic resemblances can help the anthropologist make precise inferences about a groups culture elements.
Linguistic resemblances denote a historical relationship. This suggest that resemblances in fundamental vocabulary and culture terms can help one reconstruct the culture of the speakers of genetically related languages.
LINGUISTIC CONSTANCY
The rate at which languages change is variable. It appears that linguistic change is culture specific. Consequently, the social organization and political culture of a particular speech community can influence the speed at which languages change.
Based on the history of language change in Europe most linguists believe that the rate of change for all languages is both rapid and constant.(Diagne, 1981,p.238) The idea that all languages change rapidly is not valid for all the World's languages.
African languages change much slower than European languages. (Armstrong, 1962) For example, African vocabulary items collected by Arab explorers over a thousand years ago are analogous to contemporary lexical items.(Diagne,1981, p.239) In addition there are striking resemblances between the ancient Egyptian language and Coptic, and Pharonic Egyptian and African languages.(Diagne, 1981; Diop, 1977; Obenga, 1993)
The political stability of African political institutions has caused languages to change very slowly in Africa. Pawley and Ross (1993) argue that a sedentary life style may account for the conservative nature of a language.
African oral traditions and the eye witness accounts of travelers to Africa, make it clear that African empires although made up of diverse nationalities illustrated continuity. To accomodate the plural nature of African empires Africans developed a Federal system of government. (Niane , 1984) In fact we can not really describe ancient African state systems as empires, since this implies absolute rule or authority in a single individual. This political state of affairs rarely existed in ancient Africa, because in each African speech community local leadership was elected by the people within the community. (Diop, 1987) For example the Egyptians often appointed administrators over the conquered territories from among the conquered people. (Diop ,1991)
The continuity of many African languages may result from the steady state nature of African political systems, and long standing cultural stability since neolithic times. (Diop, 1991 ; Winters 1985) This cultural stability has affected the speed at which African languages change.
In Africa due to the relative stability of socio-political structures and settled life, there has not been enough pressure exerted on African societies as a whole and African speech communities in particular, to cause radical internal linguistic changes within most African languages. Permanent settlements led to a clearly defined system of inheritance and royal succession. These traits led to stability on both the social and political levels.
This leads to the hypothesis that linguistic continuity exist in Africa due to the stability of African socio-political structures and cultural systems. This relative cultural stability has led African languages to change more slowly then European and
Asian languages. Diop (1974) observed that:
First the evolution of languages, instead of moving everywhere at the same rate of speed seems linked to other factors; such as , the stability of social organizations or the opposite, social upheavals. Understandably in relatively stable societies man's language has changed less with the passage of time.(pp.153-154)
There is considerable evidence which supports the African continuity concept. Dr. Armstrong (1962) noted the linguistic continuity of African languages when he used glottochronology to test the rate of change in Yoruba. Comparing modern Yoruba words with a list of identical terms collected 130 years ago by Koelle , Dr. Armstrong found little if any internal or external changes in the terms. He concluded that:
I would have said that on this evidence African languages are changing with glacial slowness, but it seems to me that in a century a glacier would have changed a lot more than that. Perhaps it would be more in order to say that these languages are changing with geological slowness. (Armstrong, 1962, p.285).
Diop's theory of linguistic constancy recognizes the social role language plays in African language change. Language being a variable phenomena has as much to do with a speaker's society as with the language itself. Thus social organization can influence the rate of change within languages. Meillet (1926, 17) wrote that:
Since language is a social institution it follows that linguistics is a social science, and the only variable element to which one may appeal in order to account for a linguistic change is social change, of which language variations are but the consequences.
THE BLACK AFRICAN ORIGIN OF EGYPT
Diop has contributed much to African linguistics. He was a major proponent of the Dravidian-African relationship (Diop 1974, 116), and the African substratum in Indo-European languages in relationship to cacuminal sounds and terms for social organiza-tion and culture (1974, 115). Diop (1978, 113) also recognized that in relation to Arabic words, after the suppression of the first consonant, there is often an African root.
Diop's major linguistic effort has been the classification of Black African and Egyptian languages . Up until 1977 Diop'smajor area of interest were morphological and phonological similarities between Egyptian and Black African languages. Diop (1977, 77-84) explains many of his sound laws for the Egyptian-Black African connection.
In Parènte Génétique de l'Egyptien pharraonique et des Langues Négro Africaines (PGEPLNA), Diop explains in some detail
his linguistic views in the introduction of this book. In PGEPLNA , Diop demonstrates the genetic relationship between ancient Egyptian and the languages of Black Africa. Diop provides thousands of cognate Wolof and Egyptian terms in support of his Black African-Egyptian linguistic relationship.
PALEO-AFRICAN
African languages are divided into Supersets (i.e., a family of genetically related languages, e.g., Niger-Congo) sets, and subsets. In the sets of African languages there are many parallels between phonological terms, eventhough there may be an arbitrary use of consonants which may have a similar sound. The reason for these changes is that when the speakers of Paleo-African languages separated, the various sets of languages underwent separate developments. As a result a /b/ sound in one language may be /p/ or /f/ in a sister language. For example, in African languages the word for father may be baba , pa or fa, while in the Dravidian languages we have appan to denote father.
Diop has noted that reconstruction of Paleo-African terms can help us make inferences about an ethnic group's culture going backwards in time to an impenetrable past undocumented by written records. This is semantic anthropology, a linguistic approach which seeks to discover aspects of man's culture from his language. Thusly, linguistic resemblances can help the anthropologists make precise inferences about a linguistic group's cultural elements.
BLACKS IN WEST ASIA
In PGEPLNA Diop makes clear his views on the role of African languages in the rise of other languages. Using archaeological evidence Diop makes it clear that the original West Asians: Elamites and Sumerians were of Black origin (1974, 1977, xxix-xxxvii).
Diop (1974, 1991) advocates the unity of Black Africans
and Blacks in West Asia. Winters (1985,1989,1994) has elaborated on the linguistic affinity of African and West Asian languages.
This view is supported by linguistic evidence. For example these languages share demonstrative bases:
Proximate Distant Finite
Dravidian i a u
Manding i a u
Sumerian bi a
Wolof i a u
The speakers of West Asian and Black African languages also share basic culture items:
Chief city,village black,burnt
Dravidian cira, ca uru kam
Elamite Salu
Sumerian Sar ur
Manding Sa furu kami,"charcoal'
Nubia sirgi mar
Egyptian Sr mer kemit
Paleo-African *sar *uru *kam
OBENGA
Obenga (1978) gives a phonetic analysis of Black African and Egyptian. He illustrates the genetic affinity of consonants within the Black African (BA) and Egyptian languages especially the occlusive bilateral sonorous, the occlusive nasal apico-dental /n/ and /m/ , the apico-alveolar /r/ and the radical
proto-form sa: 'man, female, posterity' in Black Africa.
Language
Agaw asau, aso 'masculine
Sidama asu 'man'
Oromo asa id.
Caffino aso id.
Yoruba so 'produce'
Meroitic s' man
Fonge sunu id.
Bini eso 'someone'
Kikongo sa,se,si 'father'
Swahili (m)zee 'old person'
Egyptian sa 'man'
Manding si,se 'descendant,posterity,family'
Azer se 'individual, person'
Obenga (1978) also illustrated the unity between the verbs 'to come, to be, to arrive':
Language
Egyptian ii, ey Samo, Loma dye
Mbosi yaa Bisa gye
Sidama/Omo wa Wolof nyeu
Caffino wa Peul yah, yade
Yoruba wa Fonge wa
Bini ya Mpongwe bya
Manding ya,dya Swahili (Ku)ya
between t =/= d, highlight the alternation patterns of many Paleo-African consonants including b =/= p, l =/= r ,and
g =/= k.
The Egyptian term for grain is 0 sa #. This corresponds to many African terms for seed,grain:
Galla senyi
Malinke se , si
Sumerian se
Egyptian sen 'granary'
Kannanda cigur
Bozo sii
Bambara sii
Daba sisin
Somali sinni
Loma sii
Susu sansi
Oromo sanyi
Dime siimu
Egyptian ssr 'corn'
id. ssn 'lotus plant'
id. sm 'herb, plant'
id. isw 'weeds'
In conclusion, Diop has done much to encourage the African recovery of their history. His theories on linguistics has inspired many African scholars to explain and elaborate the African role in the history of Africa and the world. This has made his work important to our understanding of the role of Black people in History.
REFERENCES
Armstrong,R.G. (1962). Glottochronology and African linguistics. Journal of African History,3(2), 283-290.
Baines, J. (1991, August 11). Was civilization made in Africa? The New York Times Review of Books, 12-13.
Bynon,T. (1978). Historical linguistics. London: Cambridge University Press.
Crawley,T. 1992. An Introduction to Historical Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Delafosse,M. (1901). La Langue Mandigue. Paris.
Diagne,P. (1981). In J. Ki-Zerbo (Ed.), General history of Africa I: Methodology and African prehistory (233-260). London: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd.
Diop, C.A. (1974). The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality. Westport, Conn.:Lawrence Hill and Company.
Diop,C.A. (1977). Parentè gènètique de l'Egyptien Pharaonique et des languues Negro-Africaines. Dakar: Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire.
Diop, C.A. (1978). Precolonial Black Africa. Wesport, Conn. :Lawrence Hill and Company.
Diop, C.A. 1981. A methodology for the study of migrations. In African Ethnonyms and Toponyms, by UNESCO. (Unesco: Paris) 86--110.
Diop, C.A. (1991). Civilization or Barbarism. Brooklyn,N.Y.:
Lawrence Hill Books.
Dweyer, D.J. (1989). 2. Mande. In John Bendor-Samuel (Ed.), The Niger-Congo Languages (47-65). New York: University Press of America.
Ehret,C. (1988). Language change and the material correlates of language and ethnic shift. Antiquity, 62, 564-574.
Ehret,C. & Posnansky (Eds.). (1982). The Archaeological and linguistic reconstruction of African history. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hock,H.H. (1988). Principles of historical linguistics. Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter.
Labov,W.(1965). The social motivation of a sound change. Word, 19, 273-309.
Labov.,W. (1972). The internal evolution of linguistic rules. In Stokwell,R.P. and Macaulay, R.K.S. (eds.) Linguistic change and generative theory (101-171). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Lefkowitz, M. (1992, February 10). Not out of Africa. The New Republic, 29-36.
Mbiti, J. S. 1970. African religions and Philosophy. Garden City: Anchor Press.
Meillet, A. 1926. Introduction à l'etude comparatif des languages Indo-Europeennes. Paris.
Moitt,B. (1989) Chiekh Anta Diop and the African diaspora: Historical continuity and socio-cultural symbolism. Presence Africaine, 149/150, 347-360.
Pawley,A. & Ross,M. (1993). Austronesian historical linguistics and culture history. Annual Review of Anthropology, 22, 425-459.
McIntosh, S. K. & McIntosh, R. (1983). Forgotten Tells of Mali. Expedition, 35-47.
Niane,D.T.(Ed.). (1984). Introduction. General History of Africa IV (1-14). London: Heinemann Educational Books.
Obenga,T. (1978). The genetic relationship between Egyptian (ancient Egyptian and Coptic) and modern African languages. In
UNESCO (Ed.), The peopling of ancient Egypt and the deciphering of the Meroitic script (65-72). Paris: UNESCO.
Obenga, T. (1993). Origine commune de l'Egyptien Ancien du Copte et des langues Negro-Africaines Modernes. Paris: Editions L'Harmattan.
Lord,R. (1966). Comparative Linguistics. London: St. Paul's House.
Olderogge, L. (1981). Migrations and ethnic and linguistic differentiations. In J. Ki-Zerbo (Ed.),General History of Africa I: Methodology and African History (271-278). Paris: UNESCO.
Robins, R.H. (1974). General Linguistics. Bloomington: Indiana State University Press.
Ruhlen, M. 1994. The origin of language. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Welmers, W. (1968). Niger Congo-Mande. In T.A. Sebeok (Ed.), Current Trends in Linguistics, 7,113-140.
Williams, B. (1987). The A-Group Royal Cemetery at Qustul:Cemetery L. Chicago: Oriental Institute, University of Chicago Press.
Winters,C.A. (1985). The Proto-Culture of the Dravidians, Manding and Sumerians.Tamil Civilization,3(1), 1-9.
Winters,C.A. (1986). The Migration routes of the Proto-Mande. The Mankind Quarterly,27(1), 77-96.
Winters, C.A. 1989. Tamil, Sumerian, Manding and the genetic model. International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics, 18 (1), 98-127.
Winters, C.A. (1994). Afrocentrism:A valid frame of reference. Journal of Black Studies, 25 (2), 170-190.
Winters,C.1998. Afrocentric historical and linguistic methods, The Western journal of Afro-American Studies 22(2): 73-83.
Yurco,F. 1989. Were the ancient Egyptians Black? Biblical Archaeology.
-------------------- C. A. Winters Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Elmaestro: These questions are geared towards Asar Imhotep's Cyena-ntu phyla and related linguistic findings. There are a few baselines that needs to be established and on record. Anyone who can answer these questions can chime in, as Asar himself doesn't need to cover these if it's already been relayed by him or his work. These questions aren't too deep but I think the answers are very important to hard sell his findings. with that being said if there are any publications which lay out the answers to these questions without any obscurities feel free to shout them out.
-Do various NC languages and Aegyptian coalesce before or after neolithics in Africa. Also does the words that can be compared between African languages reflect the subsistence strategies practiced when these languages were one(or at least more closely related)??
, Egyptian and African languages are genetically related. Because of the linguistic genetic relation between NC and Egyptian we can reconstruct Paleo-Egyptian- African subsistence strategies . This indicates that the Egyptians and African originated from the same culture.
.
References:
Winters,C.(1998). Afrocentric historical and linguistic methods, The Western journal of Afro-American Studies 22(2): 73-83.
_______________.(1999a). ProtoDravidian terms for cattle. International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics, 28, 91-98.
_______________.(1999b). Proto-Dravidian terms for sheep and goats.PILC Journal of Dravidian Studies, 9 (2), 183-87.
_______________.(2000). Proto-Dravidian agricultural terms. International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics, 30 (1), 23-28.
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quote:Originally posted by Elmaestro: Good job on the self promotional post Winters! ...but this has little to do with Asars work. The OP was directed at his research.
Would you mind contributing to the forum title Thanks!
This is not self promotion.I don't know of any research by Asar in these areas, so I can't comment on his work.
I thought you wanted answers to the questions you asked; so I mentioned my work in these areas.
As an anthropologists and linguist, these themes are not new to me. I have been conducting African and Black comparative and historical linguistics research for over 3o years and I taught linguistics at University.As a result, of my expertise in these areas I was just trying to help students interested in these areas finding resources in these areas in English. Most research in Egyptian-Negro/Black African languages is in French.
If Asar has researched these areas he can post his work. I am not here to debate anyone on comparative and historical linguistic methods. .
-------------------- C. A. Winters Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006
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posted
Greetings Elmaestro. Sorry for the delayed response. I don’t frequent this board much anymore due to a lack of proper moderation (as the continued spamming of Mr. Winters is an example) and just being busy with other projects. Someone had to reach out to me on another website to inform of this post. So, I do apologize. I will answer as best as possible your inquiries.
quote:-Was anyone successful in creating a phylo-tree with African languages and Sumerian, relating to their purported relationship using the comparative method (done many times by Asar)?
Short answer, no. This is currently being worked on as we speak. Enough evidence is available to show that it is in fact a Cyena-Ntu (Negro-Egyptian) language using the Obenga (1993)/Mboli (2010) model. Mboli (2010) did a brief examination of a few vocabulary words and concluded that Sumerian was highly influenced by N-E, but that more work needed to be done. As a result of my initial comparisons, he is convinced now that it is N-E. My preliminary examinations are in Aaluja Vol. II: Cyena-Ntu Religion and Philosophy (2020). But a more formal lexical and morphemic examination is in the works for a review in a linguistic journal. So, 2021 we should see how it is accepted in academia.
quote:-which contemporary bantu language is closest to ciKam?
I can’t say which is ‘closer’, provided that the model we use has Bantu and Middle-Egyptian deriving from the [it]bere[/it] dialect of Post-Classic Cyena-Ntu, but belonging to two different branches of that branch. So, it is like asking, what North Germanic language is closet to Yiddish (see map below)?
It is clear from the evidence that Middle-Egyptian is a ‘type’ of ‘bantu’ language. However, due to its continued interactions with other languages in the area, much of its grammar and phonology has been reduced or altered. The same happened with Sumerian. So, I have found deep meaningful correspondences, on the ancient level, with Kikongo and Ciluba. IsiZulu is another contender. However, like Egyptian, it has gone through a number of changes from Proto-Bantu.
quote:-in relation to the question above, how does that affect the reconstruction of protobantu? If there are any outstanding similarities with a derived language and AEgyptian we'd need an explanation to explain it's exclusion in protobantu, which leads to the following question.
Well, you have to keep in mind that in historical comparative linguistics, whose major concern is the demonstration of family relationships and the reconstruction of the parent ancestor of language families, that reconstruction is an ongoing process. There is no ‘final’ reconstruction as these reconstructions are logical deductions of the examination of extant languages. The more languages you include, the more refined your reconstructions. To test your reconstructions, to see if they match up to languages not included in your reconstructions, you then compare your reconstructions to other extant languages believed to belong to another family or branch of the parent family if it is believed that the reconstructed family is a sub-branch of the larger family.
If the above comparisons is any indicator, doing analyses like this force us to reconsider our previous models and force us to do more detailed studies. We haven’t gotten to the stage of sub-branching yet in Cyena-Ntu. But this is an ongoing development.
quote:-Is anyone working on a revised protobantu reconstruction to better adjust to its relationship with other protolanguages? has it been done already?
I don’t know of anyone working on such connections of Proto-Bantu to other Proto-Reconstructions. Typically, you don’t do that because it violates certain scientific principles; especially one in which you experiment only with actually attested (real) things. A reconstruction is not a reality. It is the logical deduction of a set of premises and experiments (obviously if we had record of the parent language we would not need to do any reconstructions).
So, my method is to have a solid reconstruction based off the comparative method. Then compare it to other extant languages. If we can demonstrate a reoccurring pattern of sound-meaning correspondences between, for example, Proto-Language A, Regular-Language B, and Regular-Language C, then we go back and pick a few actual languages from Proto-Language A and compares those with Regular-Languages B and C, respectively.
quote:-what are the most important shared innovations between various so-called Niger Congo languages and Aegyptian.
Note that the concept of “innovations” is only used, and is valuable, when you are talking about “sub-branching” in a language family. So you would first have to argue that Egyptian is a ‘Niger-Congo’ language. Then you would see if there is evidence for branching and sub-branching. Then you can talk about “shared innovations.” Because it is the shared innovations that would determine what branch or sub-branch Egyptian belongs in the Niger-Congo family. But since Niger-Congo is not a valid construct, and has not been formed based on results from the comparative method, then there is no point of talking about “shared innovations” between Egyptian and so-called ‘Niger-Congo’ languages.
Again, I don’t go by the Greenberg models, the reasons fully explained in my Aaluja Vol. II (2020). For Mboli and I, Egyptian belongs to a family called Cyena-Ntu (Negro-Egyptian) and that family has two main branches as of right now labeled beer and bere, respectively. Middle-Egyptian belongs to the bere branch, and Coptic belongs to the beer branch. The great details are in Mboli (2010), but it is also explained, somewhat in my text (in English) Towards a Comparative Dictionary of ciKam and Modern African Languages (2020). More work has to be done, and is being done, to further sub-branch the language family.
quote:-Do various NC languages and Aegyptian coalesce before or after neolithics in Africa. Also does the words that can be compared between African languages reflect the subsistence strategies practiced when these languages were one(or at least more closely related)??
Again, Niger-Congo is not a genetic reality. As I noted in Imhotep (2020):
quote: Gerrit Dimmendaal’s full citation, in his article "Areal Diffusion versus Genetic Inheritance: An African Perspective," regarding Niger-Congo, from the same text, reads:
Apart from Greenberg's (1963) list, an extensive list of likely lexical cognates with a widespread distribution across Niger-Congo has been presented by Mukarovsky (1976-7), who also makes some preliminary attempts at reconstruction of proto-forms. By the criteria of regular sound correspondences among these languages and of the reconstruction of proto-forms, Niger-Congo is not a proven genetic unit. Nevertheless, considerable historical-comparative work, using classical Neogrammarian methods of regular sound correspondences as well as grammatical comparison, has been carried out over the past decades, most prominently in the scholarly work of John Stewart (e.g. 1970, 1971, 1976, 1983, 1994). In his historical-comparative work Stewart has concentrated on Volta-Congo. (Aikhenvald & Dixon, 2001: 368) (bolded emphasis mine)
The criteria for the existence of a language family is the establishment of the regular, non-accidental sound-meaning correspondences of basic vocabulary, morphology, and phonology, alongside the reconstruction of proto-forms. As noted by Dimmendaal (who still believes in NC, however), NC is not a proven genetic unit because they have yet to apply the comparative method in comparing the languages. Thus, there is no NC and we can’t make inferences between a language and a language phylum that hasn’t even proven to exist. Since there is no NC, I can’t identify any “N-C languages.” And since there are no NC languages, I can’t tell you what languages ‘coalesced’ with Egyptian or not in Neolithic times.
To your second question, based on the reconstruction done in Mboli (2010), it is clear from the reconstructed vocabulary that the Post-Classic Cyena-Ntu speakers were hunter gatherers and lived in a tropical environment.
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