The Semitic Thread

[Vijay]

A bunch of people on this forum seem to be interested in Semitic languages, but I couldn't find a thread dedicated to Semitic languages, so I figured I might as well just start one myself. I've been mainly studying Arabic (MSA and Damascene) and Amharic but listen to Hebrew on YouTube fairly often (and am interested in everything).

I've been wondering for a while whether the Amharic word አሳላፊ asalafi 'waiter' is etymologically related to the Arabic root س ل ف, which has to do with taking, giving, or passing things but also is the ancestor of the word سلفي Salafi ('to pass' > 'to be past' > 'ancestors' > 'early Muslims')!

EDIT: I've decided to make this a thread for Amazigh (Berber), Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, and Omotic languages as well. (If this was unclear, I don't believe in Afroasiatic).

[bradrn]

Request: could we perhaps rename this ‘The Afroasiatic Thread’? The rest of the family is pretty interesting as well. (And besides, we’ve already discussed Semitic plenty before.)

[Kuchigakatai]

I noticed yesterday something funny about the "shibboleth" story: it involves a word with the phoneme /ʃ/!

Apparently from a root with Proto-Semitic *š too, with an Arabic cognate root that has /s/. Which I find odd because this would mean the Ephraimites didn't have /ʃ/ in their inventory, even though both Phoenician and Aramaic perfectly have /ʃ/. The story implies a Semitic language with a merger rather like that of Ge'ez, with Proto-Semitic *s and *š (or "s1 and s3" if you prefer) merged into /s/, without turning *ṯ [θ] or *ś (=s2) [ɬ] into [ʃ] (as Phoenician/Hebrew/Aramaic and Arabic did).

Request: could we perhaps rename this ‘The Afroasiatic Thread’? The rest of the family is pretty interesting as well. (And besides, we’ve already discussed Semitic plenty before.)

That could be its own separate thread.

[bradrn]

Request: could we perhaps rename this ‘The Afroasiatic Thread’? The rest of the family is pretty interesting as well. (And besides, we’ve already discussed Semitic plenty before.)

That could be its own separate thread.

Oh, I don’t have anything in particular to say about non-Semitic languages yet; it was just an idea.

[Vijay]

I don't really believe in Afroasiatic tbh, but I'm willing to settle by making separate threads for Tamazight/Berber languages, Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, and/or Omotic if you like! I can even find something to post about one language from each family.

Ge'ez, with Proto-Semitic *s and *š (or "s1 and s3" if you prefer) merged into /s/, without turning *ṯ [θ] or *ś (=s2) [ɬ] into [ʃ] (as Phoenician/Hebrew/Aramaic and Arabic did).

Did *ṯ and/or *ś later merge into [s] in Tigre and Dahallik?

[Linguoboy]

I don't really believe in Afroasiatic tbh, but I'm willing to settle by making separate threads for Tamazight/Berber languages, Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, and/or Omotic if you like! I can even find something to post about one language from each family.

I'm going to request that thread-creation in this area be a little more demand-driven and a little less build-it-and-they-will-come, if that's alright.

[Vijay]

Maybe I could also just expand the scope of this thread without even changing the title. Compare the Sinitic thread, which was meant to be derailed from the beginning.

[Vijay]

Yeah, I think I'll go ahead and do that after all.

Apparently, this inscription is in Blemmye, which is the ancestor of Beja:

What script is it in? Greek?

Also, I don't quite understand why there was a disagreement about whether Beja is Cushitic or not. How is Beja different from other Cushitic languages?

[bradrn]

The source listed for that image is J.E. Quibell, Excavations at Saqqara (1907–1908). What appears to be a transcription of the relevant ostracon is given on p109:

blemmye-ostracon.png (1.71 KiB) Viewed 4888 times

Thus, the script seems to be Coptic.

[Vijay]

Oh, wow, thanks!

To answer my other question myself, Vanhove says in his "Beja Grammatical Sketch": "The morphological structure of the lexicon is partially organised in consonantal roots to which various patterns apply, as in Arabic, the contact language. Beja is the Cushitic language where it is most developed. It concerns both the verb and the noun morphology (inflection, verb derivation, verb-noun derivation, derived nouns, adjectives, plurals...). Beja is also the sole Cushitic language to use qualitative vocalic alternation in the verbal stem as a derivational device for semantic and voice derivation. [...] Together with four other Cushitic languages, Afar, Saho, Somali and South-Agaw, Beja has two morphological verb classes. Verb class 1 (V1), historically the oldest one, is conjugated with prefixes (and also infixes for disyllabic verbs in the singular). The root of the verbs of this class is consonantal (one, two or three consonants), and the vowels of the verb stem vary with TAM. Beja is the Cushitic language where this verb type is the most frequent. It contains the majority of the verbs (56%, cf. Cohen 1984). [...] Beja is the sole Cushitic language that uses qualitative ablaut in the stem as a derivational device for various semantic and voice derivations. [...] Beja is the sole Cushitic language to differentiate between Active (base form) and Reflexive voice by means of vocalic alternation. [...] Unlike a number of other Cushitic and Omotic languages, there are no specific Negative paradigms in Beja, but negation is expressed with different constructions according to TAM."

Now I wonder whether Bench is unusual for an Omotic language. It's kind of funny to me how it's supposed to be remarkable for having six phonemic tones since Chatino can have more than twice that many...