PERSPECTIVES ON AFROASIATIC LINGUISTICS

• Authors: Zaborski Andrzej
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Cushitic 'Afar and Saho 'temporal' and aspectual endings -e, -a and -u have cognates in archaic East Chadic. Moreover Cushitic ending -a has a cognate in Semitic Subjunctive -a while Cushitic -u has a cognate in Semitic Imperfect -u which has been shifted to subordinate clauses in Akkadian. Proto-Semitic Preterite zero ending may be going back to at least Proto-Semito-Cushito-Berber *-i which resulted in zero in Semitic due to the 'emphatic' stress when Preterite was used also as Jussive while in Cushitic it survived mainly as -e. Another rival hypothesis: Cushitic Preterite/Perfect -e of the old prefix conjugation is due to analogy with the new suffix conjugation. Semitic Energetic with -an preserved in Modern Semitic of Southern Arabia (the author thinks that this name is better than 'Modern South Arabian' in spite of its length) mainly as Conditional could be reconstructed as original Preterite and perhaps original -an > -en could result in Cushitic -e. Egyptian independent pronouns of the second and third persons are innovations (apart from older forms which left traces in Old Egyptian) and therefore it is quite probable that in Egyptian, a relatively innovating language, prefix conjugation has been lost like in Middle Cushitic and the new suffix conjugation corresponding to nominalizations with suffixed possessive pronouns in Semitic has expanded.

Keywords

EN

-A; -U ENDINGS; CUSHITIC -E

Discipline

• PHILOLOGY_&_LINGUISTICS: PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Nauk
• Journal: Rocznik Orientalistyczny
• Year: 2009
• Volume: 62
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 250-255
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Zaborski Andrzej

• Andrzej Zaborski, Uniwersytet Jagiellonski, Wydzial Filologiczny, Instytut Filologii Orientalnej, al. Mickiewicza 9/11, 31-120 Kraków, Poland

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

10PLAAAA077923