PRe: triconsonantal roots

On Thu, 1 Jan 2004 08:39:43 +0200, Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@...>
wrote:
> On Thursday, January 1, 2004, at 01:46  AM, Muke Tever wrote:
>> Well, "Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic" (PAA being ancestor of
>> Proto-Semitic) lists slightly over a thousand *bi*consonantal roots
>> (using the basic five vowels, short and long; two or three tones, and
>> forty-something consonants), from which the familiar Semitic
>> triconsonantal roots were derived through various processes (most of
>> the PAA consonants could be used as derivational morphemes).
>> *Muke!
>
> TONES?!
> You're saying they reconstruct Proto-Afro-Asiatic with TONES?!
> That rocks!  (in more than the tonal-language-as-music sense) :P
> Where can i find more info about this?
The aforementioned book, _Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic
(Proto-Afrasian)_ by Christopher Ehret, says:

     << Phonemic tone is a widespread feature of Afroasiatic, appearing
        regularly in the languages of the Omotic, Chadic, and Southern
        and Eastern Cushitic divisions of the family.  Only the
        Boreafrasian subgroup (Semitic, Berber, and Egyptian [...]) has
        entirely deleted tone. >>  (p. 67)

 From the correspondences in the languages that retain tone, three tones
are reconstructed, described as either "falling, rising, and level
word-tone", or possibly "high, low, and mid" syllable-tone (depending, I
gather, on whether one considers the Cushitic or the Omotic to be more
basic).

The correspondences attested are something like, in general:

          Proto-South Cushitic    Ngizim (Chadic)   North Omotic
            falling                 high             high
            rising                  low              low
            level                   low              mid




        *Muke!
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