Contact-induced language change in selected Ethiopian Semitic Languages (original) (raw)
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Semitic Languages in Contact, 2015
Semitic Languages in Contact contains twenty case studies analysing various contact situations involving Semitic languages. The languages treated span from ancient Semitic languages, such as Akkadian, Aramaic, Classical Ethiopic, Hebrew, Phoenician, and Ugaritic, to modern ones, including languages/dialects belonging to the Modern Arabic, Modern South Arabian, Neo-Aramaic, and Neo-Ethiopian branches of the Semitic family. The topics discussed include writing systems, phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon. The approaches range from traditional philology to more theoreticallydriven linguistics. These diverse studies are united by the theme of language contact. Thus, the volume aims to provide the status quaestionis of the study of language contact among the Semitic languages. With contributions from A.
Grammatical Changes in Semitic: A Diachronic Grammar of Amharic.
2017
""Non-Semitic features are visible in every aspect of the grammar and lexicon of Ethio-Semitic languages (ES). Some scholars attribute this to pidginazation, a hypothesis which posits that ES originated from a Cushitic substratum and a Semitic suprastratum. The latter is assumed to have been brought by a Semitic group (or a wave of groups) who migrated from South Arabia into Ethiopia around 500 BCE. However, since the Ethio-Semitic group contains the most diversified languages of the Semitic family and has preserved core Semitic features, a counter-proposal which considers ES to be an autochthonous group has become standard these days. The short period of Amharic history does not prove the hypothesis that ES originated from a mixture of Semitic and Cushitic. Most of the non-Semitic features that contemporary Amharic exhibits are recent innovations. Current Amharic lacks pharyngeal sounds as do the other South Ethio-Semitic languages with the exception of Shonke-Tollaha Argobba. The glottal sounds have also limited distribution in modern Amharic (MA). Old Amharic (OA) has these typical Semitic sounds. Current Amharic seems to be developing postpositions and is characterized by circumpositions. In OA the postpositional elements as relational items did not exist. Neither did circumpositions exist. OA is characterized by a mixed word order. A transitive clause in MA has unmarked SOV order. Relative clauses and adjectives must also follow their head noun. OA was not rigid in this regard. Although structures like those in modern Amharic are attested, we find a VSO order in OA. Relative clauses and adjectives may also follow the noun that they modify. Because Amharic has been serving as a language of administration for over a millennium, it has developed unique polite forms for second and third persons. These polite forms underwent a number of fascinating changes throughout history. Except for third person, Amharic has preserved the Semitic personal pronouns. This book describes the historical grammar of Amharic which furthers our understanding of the changes that Ethio-Semitic languages underwent. The research is based on ancient manuscripts and grammatical works of different periods. ""
2018
This paper discusses some aspects of the functional competition between nominal morphology and verbal morphology to express low transitivity in different IE languages with respect to other areally contiguous language families. In West and North IE (Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic), experience predicates often select oblique experiencers, which are also common in Finno-Ugric. In West and North IE, the inherited middle conjugation is decaying or lost altogether , replaced by structures based on the reflexive pronoun. By contrast, in South and East IE (Anatolian, Greek, Early Indo-Iranian and Tocharian), the middle inflection is still productive and represents the main strategy to encode experience predicates, in addition to denominal verb formations; in these languages, oblique experiencers are much more rare than in West and North IE. South and East IE languages have striking correspondences with Semitic, which is also poor in oblique experiencers and in impersonal constructions in its earliest varieties. In Ancient Semitic, the experiencer is regularly the subject of the clause, while low transitivity is expressed by a highly articulated verbal morphology. Accordingly, the preferred use of verbal suffixes or of oblique cases to express low transitivity-both inherited from PIE-tend to be reinforced in different IE areas by the contact with different language families where these strategies are also more or less productive.
The Indo-European and Semitic Languages . Saul Levin
American Anthropologist, 1972
ciple of marked and unmarked linguistic categories, the discussion of the relation between syntactic and semantic structures, and linguistic change in social contexts, are three examples of such important new developments. The reviewer agrees with the author that the orientation of the book, on the whole, has not suffered. An understanding of the development which has occurred since and which will be made in the future will presuppose an insight into the relations described in the book. The Indo-European and Semitic Languages. SAUL LEVIN. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1971. xlii + 775 pp., illustrations, chapter notes, appendix, index. $25.00 (cloth). Reviewed by GEORGE CARDONA University o f Pennsylvania and Center f o r Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences This work attempts t o establish a relation between Indo-European (IE) and Semitic by considering, in greater detail than any comparable work known to me, morphologic and syntactic materials. The author treats
2. Semitic verb structure within a universal perspective
Language Processing and Acquisition in Languages of Semitic, Root-Based, Morphology, 2003
The distinctive character of a Semitic stem is usually identified by the root-andpattern structure, whereby a stem consists of two interdigitated segmental units, a consonantal root and a vocalic pattern. 1 Interdigitation is governed by a prosodic template which determines the syllabic structure of the stem, i.e. the number of syllables, vowel length, and gemination. The vocalic pattern and the prosodic template together form a binyan, which may be accompanied by an affix. This type of word structure appears quite different from the more familiar structure involving morpheme concatenation. Is Semitic morphology indeed so different? Within this volume, which highlights the distinctive aspects of Semitic morphology, I reconsider this question, claiming that the Semitic stem structure is not so peculiar, at least not to the extent that is usually believed. I will show that phonological phenomena constituting evidence for the consonantal root, the vocalic pattern, and the prosodic template in Semitic languages can also be found in non-Semitic languages. I will argue that the difference between Semitic and non-Semitic languages is not a matter of type but rather a matter of degree and combination. The phenomena characterizing Semitic-type morphology, i.e. those which constitute evidence for the consonantal root, the vocalic pattern, and the prosodic template, can be found in other languages but often to a lesser degree. In addition, while each phenomenon can be found in other languages individually, their combination within the same language is not found outside the Semitic family. The discussion is divided into two parts, one concerned with the consonantal root (Section 1) and the other with the binyan (Section 2). Section 1.1 offers a brief review of McCarthy's (1981) structural interpretation of the classical view of the Semitic stem, based primarily on root cooccurrence restrictions. Cooccurrence restrictions in other languages are presented in 1.2 as evidence that in this respect Semitic languages are not unique. Section 1.3 discusses a universal approach to cooccurrence restrictions within the theoretical guidelines of Feature Geometry. Section 2.1 presents the phonological properties identifying a verb in Modern Hebrew, which include the vocalic pattern, the prosodic structure, and prefixes.