Chadic

In comparative studies, within Hamito-Semitic and between the latter and Indo-European, many scholars have tried to compare numerals as such. In this paper, it is suggested to compare other features in the domain of numerals, such as the order of tens and units in composed numerals, the formation of tens and the number of counted object.

Barayin is an East Chadic language spoken by around 5000 people in the Guera region of the Republic of Chad. This dissertation examines a particular type of syntactic construction in the language, serial verb constructions, from the perspectives of typological (or comparative) syntax, descriptive grammar, and the formal syntactic theory of Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG). Typologically, serial verb constructions are problematic because they represent a heterogeneous set of multiverb constructions that have features that do not fit into traditional syntactic categories like subordination, conjunction and adjunction. Part A of this dissertation describes these problematic features in detail, providing a succinct overview of the literature which can serve as a resource for field linguists describing similar constructions. Part B of the dissertation gives a detailed description of the morphology, syntax and semantics of serial verb constructions in Barayin. These chapters contribute to our knowledge of the world’s languages by documenting a complex syntactic phenomenon in an area of the world where most of the languages are significantly understudied. The most common type of SVC in Barayin involves a deictic motion verb. The motion is normally (but not always) understood to take place prior to the activity or state predicated by the main verb. The formal analysis of Barayin SVCs in Lexical-Functional Grammar in Part C uses recent developments in the theory to show how argument sharing in SVCs can be represented in a connected s-structure that conforms to the standard mechanisms of LFG. The approach is compared to two previous analyses of complex motion predicates in other languages which appeal to a non-standard formal mechanism to model complex predicates.

The dialect spoken and written by the Jews of Babylonia from the third century CE onwards is known as “Jewish Babylonian Aramaic”. This is the first comprehensive description of this dialect since Levias’ “Grammar of Babylonian Aramaic” of 1930. The current book offers a thorough reexamination of the grammar on the basis of a large corpus in its manuscript witnesses. It not only synthesizes the results of recent scholarship but introduces original insights on many important questions. The book is designed to appeal to readers of all backgrounds, including those with no prior background in Babylonian Aramaic or the Babylonian Talmud. The discussion frequently makes reference to parallels in other Semitic languages and in other Aramaic dialects, as well as to a variety of topics in linguistics . The book is structured as a textbook: it introduces topics in an order determined by pedagogical considerations, and offers vocabulary notes and translation exercises at the end. At the same time, the book can be used as a reference grammar.

This paper is a comparative wordlist and historical reconstruction of the West Chadic (A3) languages, formerly called the Angas-Sura group. It includes around 23 languages, although some of these, such as the Pan (Kofyar) cluster are so close to one another, as to not be distinct languages. None of the A3 languages are very remote from one another, only Ywom has a significant proportion of idiosyncratic vocabulary, presumably due to its rather particular history. A tree-like classification is made difficult by a significant level of internal borrowing; smaller languages tend to borrow from dominant ones such as Ngas, Mwaghavul and Goemai. Published data on many of these languages is extremely scanty; indeed some of the languages documented here are being described for the first time.

An essay on the origins of the negative forms of verb in Berber (both in the perfective and in the imperfective stems). Since they usually display shortening of the first syllables and lengthening and/or fronting of the last vowel of the stem, the origin might be linked to the presence of postponed particles (not always attested today), possibly containing a front vowel (Vycichl already suggested a case of Umlaut). A parallel evolution can be found in some Egyptian Arabic dialects.

Two dictionaries of Semito-Hamitic, one by Orel & Stolbova, and another one by Christopher Ehret, were published at the same time, thus allowing the public, for the first time, to assess their reliability.
The authors disregard the possibility of accidental matches. A simulation of their respective methods measures the amount of possible false positives.

This thesis is the first linguistic analysis of Baraïn [bva], an East Chadic (Afroasiatic) language spoken by about 6,000 people in the Republic of Chad. The study focuses on the fundamental phonological, morphological, and syntactic structures of the language. Baraïn has sixteen consonants (no implosives) and five vowels. It uses contrastive length and three levels of contrastive tone. No syllables are super-heavy. Morphophonological processes include asymmetrical patterns of voice spreading in consonant clusters and vowel backness harmony. Major class lexical items are minimally bimorphemic. Nouns are unbound roots with covert grammatical gender. However, gender is only distinguished in singular forms. Verbs are bound roots with an underlying tone melody. A small class of verb roots consist of a single consonant (and tone). Two classes of verbs have distinctive argument structures: labiles and causatives. Objects, indirect objects, and some oblique arguments can be indexed by verbal agreement, but not subjects. Six distinct tense, aspect, and mood categories are marked by suffixes and one auxiliary. There are ten categories in the pronominal and agreement systems, but the first person plural inclusive markers are all bimorphemic. The language is head-initial and the unmarked syntactic order is SVO. Question words are in situ. Negation is sentence-final. The appendices include a proposed orthographic system and seven interlinearized texts taken from recorded natural speech.

This document is a presentation of a reconstruction of the Proto-Central Chadic lexicon, along with full supporting data. These reconstructions are presented in conjunction with my PhD dissertation on the reconstruction of the phonology of Proto-Central Chadic (University of Leiden).
You can view the data at http://centralchadic.webonary.org, and also view a summary dictionary of Proto-Central Chadic at http://protocentralchadic.webonary.org.
The Central Chadic languages are spoken in north-east Nigeria, northern Cameroon, and western Chad.
The Ethnologue lists 79 Central Chadic languages. Data comes from 59 of these languages, along with a number of dialects.

This is an introduction and basic phonology, orthography proposal and a short dictionary of Nteng, a previously undocumented language in southwestern Plateau State, Nigeria. Nteng is part of West Chadic, A3, and the paper presents evidence for its affiliation within the A3 group. The Nteng are linguistically closest to the PAN (Kofyar cluster). They also show some lexical influence from Mushere, immediately to the north. The paper argues that Nteng should be identified as a distinct languge and thus assigned an ISO code.

Archaeological research on the Iron Age occupation at Lake Chad has focused so far on sites located in the clay plains to the
south of the lake. Apart from extensive investigations on the Later Stone Age occupation (ca 1800–400 BC), the area comprising the margins and sandy plains to the southwest remained virtually unexplored. Archaeological investigations conducted by the authors and other colleagues at a few sites north of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, Nigeria, now provide original information on the initial stages of the Iron Age occupation of the area. The research has revealed that this period started around the beginning of our era. It is characterised by the arrival of iron-using human groups bringing in a new pottery tradition and a
diversified subsistence economy, presumably mainly based on the cultivation of plants, particularly sorghum. In part, they lived
in extremely large, densely populated and, probably, fortified settlements, comparable to 16th–20th century AD regional centres known from south of the lake. The paper presents the data collected at each of the sites studied and discusses the significance of the new evidence in a regional and supraregional context.

The two languages presented in this paper are Jimi and Sharwa, both classified in the Bata group of Chadic Biu-Mandara A (NEWMAN 1977b, GRAVINA 2007).
Jimi is spoken around the town of Bourrha in the Mayo-Tsanaga division of the Far North region of Cameroon. Sharwa is spoken in an area to the south of the Jimi language area, still within the Mayo-Tsanaga division. The main Sharwa town is Tchévi. The number of speakers for each language is estimated to be around 5,000 (GORDON & GRIMES 2005; BRYE & BRYE 2002, 2003).
According to lexicostatistics (BARRETEAU 1987), Jimi is most closely related to Gude, with a figure of 82% similarity. Sharwa is most similar to Tsuvan, with a figure of 81% similarity. Jimi and Sharwa have around 76% similarity.
The data for this paper was obtained during sessions aimed at elaborating a practical orthography for each of these languages. Thanks go to Father Gabriel Djibi (Jimi) and to Miss Oukedina Hadjaratou (Sharwa) for their help. For Jimi, there is also a Jimi-French dictionary (around 1,300 entries) published by the Catholic Church in Bourrha.

East Chadic B is a subbranch composed of twenty languages of the Chadic family (Afroasiatic phylum) located in and around the Guéra region in the Republic of Chad. This paper draws attention to this underdocumented group of languages by looking back over the history of taxonomical, descriptive and comparative studies. Data gathered in past studies are compiled together with data from recent field work into the most comprehensive comparative study to date. An updated internal classification, based on the results of this study, is presented. Among other modifications proposed, a currently unclassified language, Kujarge, is shown to be a member of the East Chadic B subbranch. Finally, information from grammatical studies of sixteen languages is compiled into a first step towards a typological overview of East Chadic B languages.

A short survey of linguistic contacts between Berber and Arabic in Jerba, taking into account field notes on the Berber language of Guellala and Behnstedt's articles on the Arabic spoken in Jerba. Interestingly, Arab borrowings in Berber belong to an ancient layer of Arabic dialects, showing pre-Hilalian features, while nowadays Arabic displays typical Hilalian features.

Updated version available on Zenodo: https://zenodo.org/record/4610523#.YFIQK2j7RPY


This document contains about 1300 words in the Jalkiya dialect of Barayin (with occasional words in the Giliya dialect). Barayin is an East Chadic language spoken in the Guera region of Chad. This data has been collected at different times from 2010 to 2015 both as a member of SIL and more recently as a doctoral
student at the University of Oxford. There has not yet been any effort to systematically collect words or to systematically check the accuracy of the glosses. Some words may have only been used by one speaker on one occasion.

At the end of the wordlist is a list of ideophonic expression attested in transcribed texts. Their meanings are still poorly understood.

Lagwan is a Central Chadic Kotoko language, spoken in northern Cameroon and neighbouring areas of Chad and Nigeria. It has a rich consonantal system, with consonants belonging to four
major points of articulation: labial, coronal, dorsal and labialised dorsal. The evidence suggests that this latter series, while synchronically a phonological class in its own right, has its historical source in a
labialisation prosody. The sub-lexicon of loan words has a fifth class of palatal obstruents.

As in many Afro-asiatic languages, the rich consonantal skeleton is supplemented by a poverty of vowel-slots. Underlying vowels
principally have the quality |a|, while four other vowels have emerging phonological status, with a greater number of vowel contrasts observed word-finally. The front vowels are more productive than
their round counterparts; this apparent bias is balanced by the series of labialised obstruents in the consonant system. The poverty of underlying vowels is balanced by the insertion of ‘zero vowels’ to
preserve well-formed syllabification. The zero vowel is characterised by its absence in the underlying form, its early insertion and predictability in the lexical phonology and its ability to bear contrastive tone, this being
associated within the lexical phonology.

Lagwan is a tonal language, with two tones and the syllable as its TBU. Realisation of tone is in some cases lexically specified, and in others can be predicted based on syllable structure. Lagwan is unusual in allowing syllabic consonants (both liquids and obstruents) in word-initial position. These syllabic consonants invariably bear default low tone.

The past and future categories of Old Kanembu are absolute-relative tenses with posterior taxis as their orientational mechanism. The posterior location of events in temporal domains is tied up with the communicative goal of guiding the recipient through the complex Qur'anic discourse so that the foreground information and prominent elements are clearly set off against the background events. Similar properties are reported for the past and future tenses in Kanuri and therefore the Old Kanembu data corroborates a previously postulated hypothesis that the past and future in Kanuri are inherently focus categories. Given that complexity of the Kanuri TAM system-significantly more elaborated than in the other Saharan languages-was triggered by the contact with Chadic languages and that Old Kanembu preserves archaic features going back to the 16th century and beyond, the semantic properties of the Old Kanembu past and future provide additional evidence of early Chadic influence on Kanuri.

[Paper in French]
The study of the evidence provided by the comparison of forms in different Berber languages leads to the following conclusions:
1) An ancient phase of Berber possessed a strong dynamic stress, capable to provoke lengthening and shortening of vowels according to its place;
2) The place of accent depended on the length of a phonetic word: when suffixes were added, the accent shifted towards the end;
3) preservation and dropping of vowels according to the place of accent should also be taken into account when reconstructing Protoberber "short" and "long" vowels.

This volume is divided into ten chapters and two parts:

I: Cushitic, Berber, Semitic, Omotic
and Proto-Afro-Asiatic

CHAPTER 2, ‘Negation in Highland East Cushitic’, takes a comparative look at the forms and functions of negative morphemes in languages belonging to the Highland East Cushitic (HEC) branch of Cushitic, all of which possess at least two, at the most five different negative morphemes. In all HEC languages except Sidaama, negation is indicated by negative suffixes on verbal or non-verbal predicates. In Sidaama, the negative morpheme is a proclitic, the host of which is not necessarily the predicate. After a short typological profile of the HEC languages sketched in section 2, section 3 shows which negative morphemes are used in which clause types. Section 3.1 elaborates on the standard negation strategy. Section 3.2 and 3.3 take a closer look at negative existential clauses and negative non-verbal clauses. The subsequent sections 3.4 and 3.5 are dedicated to non-declarative main clauses, i.e. imperative and jussive clauses. The negation of converb clauses is examined in section 3.6. Relative clause negation is dealt with in section 3.7. A short excursus on the means of negating verbal nouns is found in section 3.8. In section 4, the division of labour of the negative morphemes in the individual HEC languages is compared and diachronic issues are addressed. Section 5 discusses how the analysis of negation can contribute to our understanding of the internal relationships in HEC.

CHAPTER 3, ‘From Proto-Berber to Proto-Afroasiatic’, proposes that traces of fossilized linguistic structures in ancient toponymic Berber layers and their preserved relics in the modern varieties of the language enable us to access a set of characteristics of proto-Berber and identify the different stages of evolution of this language and the type of evolution it has undergone (see Allati, 2002, 2006, 2008, 2009). These Berber reconstructions are probably not without influence on our understanding of remaining elements of ancient stages still maintained in other Afroasiatic branches, and, in general, of structural features that are supposed to be proto-Afroasiatic, as well as of the evolution this family has undergone. Now, how do the proto-Afroasiatic and its evolution appear at the point where Berber reconstructions are available? For reasons of clarity and to lay out some steps to facilitate productive discussions, I would like to answer this question in the form of a set of concise points.

CHAPTER 4, ‘On Construct State Nominals: Evidence for a Predicate Approach’, argues that construct state nominals are predicates (of type <e,t>), because the only way adjectives can be interpreted in the context of constructs is if they compose with the construct as a whole. The leading semantic account on constructs, namely the one which treats constructs as individuals (of type e), here referred to as the Individual approach, succeeds in accounting for the ban on the definite determiner semantically. However, it encounters fundamental difficulties with constructs composing with adjectives. The chapter shows that these are difficulties which the predicate approach easily overcomes. However, establishing that constructs are predicates and abandoning the individual approach leave a supporter of the predicate approach with the task of explaining the ban on the definite determiner without resorting to type mismatch. To resolve this, and following a phrasal movement of a projection containing both Head and Non-Head to SpecD for definite phrases and Spec# for indefinite phrases, this chapter proposes an explanation on the ban on the occurrence of definite determiners on the head of a construct by the unavailability of a head noun in D that allows the determiner to be realised.

CHAPTER 5, ‘Ancient Aramaic and its Use in the Biblical Translation, Targum Onqelos’, explores Targum Onqelos, the translation of the Pentateuch into Aramaic. According to the Babylonian Talmud (Megila 3a), this translation is attributed to Onqelos the Convert. According to research, however, the identity, time, and place of the translation are not definite. In the matter of the translator’s identity – Onqelos (or Akylas) was the nephew of the Roman Emperor Hadrian (or Titus). He converted to Judaism in the early second century AD. Scholars are divided as to whether Onqelos’ translation of the Pentateuch into Aramaic and Akylas’ translation of the Bible into Greek were written by the same person or two different people. While the majority believe that each translation was made by a different individual, a minority claim that one individual made both translations. Targum Onqelos is a literal-semantic translation of the majority of Pentateuch verses, closely adhering to the Hebrew text without deviations, additions, or omissions. This Chapter discusses three types of Pentateuch verses for which the Targum Onqelos deviates from the typical literal mode of translation.

CHAPTER 6, Addressing Strangers in Riyadh, proposes that when addressing an adult Saudi male stranger, the terms that are used depend on the sex of the speaker, his age and the situation surrounding the interaction. In normal situations, where the address mode is formal, male speakers across all age groups usually use the terms ax (brother, and its derivatives) and ash-shaix (sheikh) for the function of addressing adult males. In addition to these terms adult male speakers (as opposed to teenagers) also use the terms ťaieb (good natured), al-ħabib (beloved one), al-ﻻali (most valuable) and abu-i (my father). This difference between adults and teenagers may indicate an increased level of politeness that comes as one ages and as one becomes more exposed to different types of addressee. However, this variation could also be the beginning of a shift in what is perceived as polite in the Riyadh society. In informal situations, adult male speakers usually use the term abu ash-shabab (father of youths) in addition to the terms above, while male teenagers also use abu (father of Ø). Working females and housewives usually use the terms axu-i (my brother) and walad (boy, especially with younger males) while younger females usually use axu-i (my brother) and law samaht (excuse me). In situations marked with anger or annoyance male speakers usually use the term abu ash-shabab (father of youths) but may prefer the terms axu-i (my brother) and abu-i (my father) if they want to maintain a polite demeanor. Terms like walad (boy) and hih or hoh (hey you), however, are considered extremely impolite if used to address adult male strangers by other males.

CHAPTER 7, Meeting the Prince of Darkness: A Semantic Analysis of English The Devil, Arabic Ashshayţān, and Hebrew Hasatan, explores the folk understanding of the English concept the devil and its Arabic and Israeli Hebrew near equivalents (ashshayţān and hasatan, respectively). Based on linguistic evidence, analysis is carried out to delineate the similarities and differences between the three concepts. The results demonstrate similarities in how ordinary native English speakers, Muslim Arabs, and native Israeli speakers categorize these beings, as well as what they think about their number, nature, and relation with people. Differences emerge when discussing where these beings live, whether or not there is a hierarchy among them, what they look like or how they are visualized, and how they are different from human beings. Using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) method, an explication is constructed for each term. The three explications, whose building blocks are universal human concepts and are translatable into most languages, provides the cultural outsider with an insider’s perspective on each of the three terms. One of the implications of this chapter is the limit of translation.

CHAPTER 8, Omotic lexicon in its Afro-Asiatic setting II: Omotic *b- with nasals, *r, *l, and weak consonants, examines Omotic lexical roots with *b- and is hoped to become the part a set of papers identifying the Afro-Asiatic heritage in the Omotic lexicon according to initial consonants. The aim of the chapter is to present new etymologies in addition to those Omotic lexemes whose etymologies have already been demonstrated by other authors. In the first part of this series, Omotic roots with *b- plus dentals, sibilants, and velars are dealt with from an etymological standpoint. The numeration of the lexical entries is continuous beginning from the very first paper

II: Asiatic Etymology versus Etymythology

CHAPTER 9, ‘A Syllabic Melodic Structure in a Japanese Obon Song – A Probable Hebrew-Aramaic Narrative'.

CHAPTER 10, ‘Asia at Both Ends: An Introduction to Etymythology, with a Response to Chapter 9’."

The Baraïn language is spoken in the Guera region of Chad (East Chadic, B3; or “Barein” [bva]). This community of approximately 6,000 speakers divide themselves into four distinct subgroups: Jalkiya, Giliya, Jalking, and Komiya. While two of the four are geographically and linguistically very close to one another (Jalkiya and Giliya), the other two speak dialects of the language that differ lexically and phonologically to such a degree that intercomprehension is not normally possible. In this situation, the speakers of these subgroups communicate with each another exclusively in Chadian Arabic—the language of wider communication. Wordlists gathered from each subgroup serve as the basis of this preliminary examination of the differences in each speech variety. The description covers phonological segments, tone, syllable structures, distribution of consonants, and lexical differences. One outstanding phonological feature is that none of the dialects have a bilabial implosive and only one has an alveolar implosive. Both of these segments were previously assumed to be universal in Chadic languages. This research was done in the context of a mother-tongue literacy program and draws the conclusion that two of the Baraïn varieties may be able to share literacy materials (Jalkiya and Giliya). However, the other two subgroups will undoubtedly need to develop separate materials.