PRe: triconsonantal roots
| From: | Muke Tever <hotblack@...> |
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| Date: | Friday, January 2, 2004, 19:08 |
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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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