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NACAL 42 The North American Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics Conference Program Leiden University, February 14-16, 2014 Abstracts Purpose and Temporal Clauses in Sidaama Anbessa Teferra (Tel Aviv University) Adverbials have various functions in the grammatical structure of a language. They can modify a clause from the point of view of time, manner, place, purpose, etc. The main aim of this paper is to investigate the morphological and syntactic structure of purpose and temporal clauses in Sidaama, a Cushitic language spoken in south-central Ethiopia. In purpose clauses the subordinate clause is marked by /gede/, a formative which can also co-occur with nouns to form a postpositional phrase. In such clauses, /gede/ is always preceded by an imperfective aspect while the verb of the main clause has no aspectual restrictions: it can be in imperfect, perfect or present perfect. In addition, the subject and the object can be either co-referential or non-co-referential. If they are co-referential then the subordinate verb will be in nonfinite form to which the dative postposition /-te/ is attached. This subordinate structure is optionally followed by the converb of the “quotative” verb /y-/. Temporal clauses may mark either sequential or simultaneous events. The sequential marker is /wote/ ‘at the time, when’ which is preceded by the conjugated verb /y-/ ‘say’. In such structures the matrix clause can be in perfect or present perfect. Sequentiality can also be rendered by means of periphrastic expressions. If the subordinate verb expresses an event which took place before the action indicated by the main clause, it will be in non-finite form which is followed by the locational alba-nni ‘before’. If it is the opposite case, then a verb in perfect aspect is followed by gedensa-nni‘after’. There are two different suffixes for marking simultaneous actions. If the subject and object are co-referential, the subordinate verb is marked by /-anni/. However, if they are not co-referential it is marked by the person-sensitive /-anna/. In both instances there is no restriction regarding the aspect of the main clause. Male drums and female drums: natural gender and inanimate nouns in Omotic languages Azeb Amha (Leiden University) Most Omotic languages make a two-way gender distinction (masculine vs. feminine), which are overtly marked on nouns, pronouns, verbs or nominal modifiers such as adjectives. Gender is assigned to animate nouns on the basis of sex. Such a system readily classifies humans and higher-animates into two classes: biologically female beings are feminine and the male ones are masculine. However, in certain grammatical contexts, e.g. when the noun is definite, inanimate nouns must be marked for gender. Depending on the language, the default gender of inanimate nouns is either masculine or feminine. Interestingly, for the expression of various physical, functional or other aspects of the inanimate nouns, the default gender may be switched. Thus in languages in which feminine gender is the default gender, reference to inanimate nouns may be made using the masculine gender. In the paper I will describe such changes to the default pattern by examining representative text from the two systems: languages in which default gender is feminine and those in which default gender is masculine and attempt to identify the meanings achieved by the gender-switch on inanimate nouns. In addition, I will discuss cases in which gender-specifying nouns equivalent to ‘mother’ and ‘father’ in English are used in various Omotic languages to distinguish different types of objects, e.g. ʔíndo darbe ‘female drum’ vs. ʔáde darbe ‘male drum’ [lit. ‘mother drum’ and ‘father drum’] in the Oyda language. The lexicostatistics of Central Cushitic (Agaw) Paul D. Fallon (University of Mary Washington) Bender (1971) and Blažek (1997) briefly examined Agaw in their larger treatments of Cushitic lexicostatistics. With the publication of Appleyard (2006), it is now possible to conduct an in-depth analysis of Agaw internal language relations. Embleton (1986) found that accuracy of tree construction improved with the length of word list used. This study uses the list of 720 items in Appleyard (2006). It codes the data according to the protocols outlined in Grant (2010), producing cognancy grids for the four main Agaw varieties studied here: Blin, Xamtanga, Kemantney and Awngi. An example is given below: Cognacy Cognate Gloss Blin Xamtanga Kemantney Awngi Status set spread ‘two’ läŋa liŋa liŋa laŋa aaaa 4 ‘wet’ (adj.) kʷʼətʼa qʷətʼən xʷätäni soɣen aaab 3-1 ‘wall’ kʷana kʷina kab jə ər aaBC 2-1-1 ‘wind’ (n.) wälwälfigya aɣmäza nəfás AbcD 1-1-1-1 In the example for ‘two’, the forms in each cognate are similar and of common origin, and so are assigned the lower case letter a for each language. In the example for ‘wet’, the first three languages are cognate, while the last, Awngi, uses a different Agaw root, which is encoded b. For ‘wall’, Blin and Xamtanga share a lexical origin, while the forms in Kemantney and Awngi use two different recognized loans (from Amharic), indicated by capital letters. In the last form for ‘wind’, no language shares a common origin. The form in Blin is recognised as a Tigre loan, while the Awngi form is borrowed from Amharic. The importance of this approach is that it allows the analyst to stratify the cognates into different periods during which time different languages innovated, according to the patterns of shared cognates. In the example above, the pattern aaaa may safely be attributed to Proto-Agaw, and aaab may be used as evidence for Proto-Northern Agaw. Lexical synapomorphies (shared innovations) are also discovered and are compared to morphological ones (Appleyard 1988). In this way, the data reveal more about the history of the language. Data are compared to the earlier analyses of Bender and Blažek. The resulting tree is compared to that in Appleyard (1984). Selected References Appleyard, D.L. 1984. The internal classification of the Agaw languages: A comparative and historical phonology. In James Bynon (ed.), Current progress in Afro-Asiatic linguistics: Papers of the Third International Hamito-Semitic Congress, 33-67. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Appleyard, David. 2006a. A comparative dictionary of the Agaw languages. (Cushitic Language Studies, 24). Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. Bender, M.L. 1971. The languages of Ethiopia: A new lexicostatistic classification and some problems of diffusion. Anthropological Linguistics 13(5).165-288. Blažek, Václav. 1997. Cushitic lexicostatistics: The second attempt. In Alessando Bausi & Mauro Tosco, Afroasiatica Neapolitana: Papers from the 8th Italian Meeting of Afroasiatic (HamitoSemitic) Linguistics, Naples, January 25-26, 1996. (Studi Africanistici Serie Etiopica, 6), 171188. Napoli: Istituto Universitario Orientale. Embleton, Sheila M. 1986. Statistics in historical linguistics. Bochum: Brockmeyer. Grant, Anthony P. 2010. On using qualitative lexicostatistics to illuminate language history: Some techniques and case studies. Diachronica 27(2).277-300. On the structure of sound and broken plurals in Moroccan Arabic Mohamed Lahrouchi (CNRS) In Moroccan Arabic, like in many other Afroasiatic languages, a single noun may have more than one plural form. For instance, tˤasˤwera ‘photo’ has plurals tˤsˤaw"r and tˤasˤwerat, while kasˤetˤɑ ‘tape’ leads to kwɑsˤetˤ and kasˤetˤat. Morphologically speaking, these are genuine plurals referring to what Semitists commonly call broken and sound plurals. From a semantic perspective, however, a crucial difference arises: tˤasˤwerat and kasˤetˤat indicate a definite number usually occurring with numerals, whereas the corresponding broken plurals have collective readings. This study presents an interface approach which aims to determine the structural location of number and capture the empirical contrast between broken and sound plurals. In line with recent work on number and plurality (Acquaviva 2008, Lowenstamm 2008, Kramer 2012), it is argued that the sound plurals are associated with the standard Num projection, whereas the broken plurals are associated lower in the structure with the n projection. External evidence for this analysis is drawn from the phenomenon of emphasis spread. In Moroccan Arabic, the coronals tˤ, dˤ, sˤ and zˤ spread their emphatic feature to the neighbouring segments over domains larger than the syllable. The nature of these domains remains unclear ranging from the stem to the phonological word or utterance. From our perspective, the nP is the maximal domain of emphasis spread in nouns. In this view, the internal plurals containing an emphatic consonant will be entirely emphaticized, while the external plurals will be affected only partially. For instance, dˤlˤoʕ ‘muscles’ will be emphatic from one end to the other while in dˤ"lˤʕat, the suffix –at along with the onset consonant ʕ will remain unaffected. ‘Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to theeʼ (Gen. 3:18) - Two Aramaic Substrate Words in Palestinian Arabic Mila Neishtadt (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Aramaic, the dominant spoken language in Palestine during the Roman and the Byzantine periods, was only gradually superseded by Arabic after the Arab conquests. Whereas the existence of Aramaic substrate elements in Syro-Palestinian vernacular Arabic had been widely agreed upon and is still evident especially in the lexical component, scholars have long debated the nature and extent of the phenomenon. In this paper I shall present a basic methodological approach to the problem of detection and identification of Aramaic substrate elements in the lexical component of Palestinian Arabic. Using rigorous linguistic criteria and supportive evidence we can conclude whether a certain ‘candidate’ Aramaic substrate word is an Aramaic substrate-word or not, and to what degree of likelihood. As a rule of thumb a candidate substrate word should be absent from Classical Arabic or be used in a different meaning. Among the linguistic criteria applied are: (a) Morphophonology – consonant correspondence, noun pattern etc.; (b) Semantics; (c) Attestation and distribution in Aramaic; (d) Attestation and distribution in Arabic. Cumulative evidence will help us resolve each case. Some words will seem to qualify by all accounts; in others (durdār) it will be only the meaning which will reveal their Aramaic origin. For others (qōṣ) – attestation (or non-attestation) and distribution in Arabic, Aramaic and finally - Biblical Hebrew will be determinate. The latter example should be added to the relatively short list of Canaanite/Hebrew decay words which survived in Palestinian Arabic via Aramaic from the Biblical period to present days. A variationist approach to mergers in contemporary Palestinian Arabic in light of Semitic diachrony Uri Horesh (Northwestern University) How distant are languages: the case of the Arabian Peninsula etr emánek (Charles niversity) The paper deals with measuring distances among the languages based on their grammatical and phonological characteristics. The article works with the data from a number of various linguistic forms documented from the Arabian Peninsula, all of them from the Semitic family. Comparison is made on the level of different groups of languages, such as Arabic, Sayhadic (Epigraphic South Arabian) and Modern South Arabian languages, but also among the dialects of Arabic only. Resulting models do not necessarily contribute to the picture of genetic differentiation of the language forms involved. On the other hand, they are instructive in many other respects as they reflect possible other influences that affected the development that took place in individual languages or language groups and enable also to search for correlations with other types of data. Is Judeo-Arabic a Semitic language variety? Benjamin Hary (Emory University) This paper will deal with issues of classification along the lines of NACAL 42 theme. While Arabic is clearly classified as a Semitic language, the question remains, are all of its varieties can also be classified as Semitic as well? Many of the Arabic varieties are mixed in nature, for example, Maltese, which has many elements from Indo-European family, especially the Latin sub family (Sicilian, Italian, French, but also recently English), but can it still be considered Semitic? Judeo-Arabic faces similar issues of classification. While its structure is clearly Semitic, it has many elements from Hebrew and Aramaic, which are also Semitic languages. Consequently, on the surface, then, the answer is simple and Judeo-Arabic should be classified as a Semitic language. On the other hand, Judeo-Arabic is also a Jewish language, or better yet, a Jewish religiolect, but then, will it change its classification? What are some of the criteria we need to revisit concerning classification? Issues of classifications are not simple and this essay will treat this question, showing its complexities. Is Ancient North Arabian more diverse than we thought? A classification of Taymanitic Fokelien Kootstra (Leiden University) Taymanitic is classed as part of Ancient North Arabian (ANA) and was spoken in the oasis of Tayma during the second half of the 6th scripts and language varieties that makes up ANA is often described as a ‘dialect continuum’. These language varieties are assumed to be sister dialects, or even the direct predecessors of early Arabic. However, closer inspection of Taymanitic inscriptions shows that it did not undergo any of the Arabic innovations. The innovations that it did undergo, seem to place it in the North West Semitic (NWS) branch. Therefore, Taymanitic cannot be seen as a sister variety nor a predecessor of Arabic. To gain greater insight into Taymanitic grammar, a corpus of approximately 350 published and unpublished inscriptions were examined. This corpus contains number of longer inscriptions, which showed more than just the name and lineage of the author of the text. Based on an analysis of these texts Taymanitic seems to look very little like Arabic. For example, like most ANA varieties, it has a definite article h- instead of ʾal-; it has a demonstrative form z(n), not ʾallaḏī and it probably has a feminine plural form ending in –ā instead of the Arabic form –na. To answer the question ‘where does Taymanitic belong then?’ we should probably be looking at NWS, as Taymanitic seems to share some of its innovative features. One of the most peculiar being a possible construct plural, similar to the form used in Aramaic and Hebrew.While examining several inscriptions it will become clear that Taymanitic holds many surprising features, which makes it plausible to state that we are dealing with a separate language variety that is closer to NWS languages like Hebrew and Aramaic than to Arabic. Afroasiatic “smith” Václav Blažek (Masaryk niversity) In the contribution all available terms designating “smith” in Afroasiatic languages are summarized and etymologized from the point of view of etymology. As conclusion the main directions of semantic motivations are characterized. Genetic evidence for earliest Afroasiatic in northeast Africa Grover Hudson (Michigan State University) Human prehistory relies on the evidence of archaeology, linguistics, and, more recently, genetics (notably Cavalli-Sforza et al 1988). Correlation of genetic data with populations by geography was recognized in the 1940s with A/B/O blood groups (Cavalli-Sforza 2000: 15). For reasons of their evolutionary similarities, correlation of genetic and linguistic groups is also expected, certainly for older and more widespread language families such as Indo-European and Afroasiatic (AA) which date from ca. ≥ 6-10 kya. For such proto-languages, archaeological evidence of origins is hard to find, and controversial, as for AA (Natufian? Bar Yosef 1998), and the genetic evidence can seem decisive (Militarev 2002, Ehret, Keita, and Newman 2004). Geneticists have begun to make associations of genetic evidence, especially Y chromosome and MtDNA haplogroups, with language families including AA (Lancaster 2009, Boattini et al 2013), and, because of its great genetic and linguistic diversity, Northeast Africa with its presumptive role in the ‘African Eve’ and ‘Out of Africa’ stories (Pagani et al 2012, Kivisild et al 2004). Probably because of its technical complexity and jargon, historical linguists have hardly begun to refer to this genetics evidence. However, geneticists’ use of linguistics is sometimes problematic, as in the assumptions of Cavalli-Sforza 2000: 145 that AAs are ‘Caucasians’ and of Kivisild et al 2004: 753 that Ethiopian Semites ‘are considered to be descendants of South Arabian conquerors who trace their ancestry back to Moses and King Solomon’. So if not for its techniques and findings, the work should be evaluated by linguists for its use of linguistics. After background, this paper examines the findings and linguistic assumptions of Kivisild et al 2004, Lancaster 2009, Pagani et al 2012, and Boattini et al 2013, with particular regard to AA origin in the Levant or the Horn. Cognitive biases and statistical innumeracy in comparative Afroasiatic linguistics Dan Ungureanu (Charles University) The scope of my speech is twofold : the first, to describe in terms of cognitive psychology the biases of comparative linguists (not logical or factual errors, but cognitive biases) The second is to offer a personal contribution to the field of comparative linguistics. We will expand the observations of Rolf Theil, R. Ratcliffe and Marijn van Putten about Semito-Hamitic (Afro-asiatic). I. First Part : Cognitive Biases in Comparative Linguistics It is important to describe comparative linguistics in a cognitive psychology frame. The mind does not function as a perfect logical device. The mind does not function as a pocket calculator. In the real world, we have to make swift decisions based on incomplete data. In the Paleolithic, the man could not wait to run until he clearly saw a tiger. One had to decide to run or to attack on incomplete, imprecise, equivocal data. Our mind has developed shortcuts. When facing incomplete data or sheer noise, our mind tends to transform it into signal, or interpret noise as signal. Our mind, and its shortcuts, called heuristics, was developed for survival, for attack and retreat, not for scientific research. Some research, in physics, chemistry and medicine, can rely on experiment. Historical and Comparative Linguistics cannot. We will speak about cognitive bias, Wason selection task, Dunning-Kruger effect, and the classical fallacy of composition and fallacy of division. The human mind was wired to see patterns, and not noise. Even when we see noise, and know that is noise, we see patterns, coherence, meaning (pareidolia). We will illustrate the most frequent, the most pervasive cognitive biases in Historical Linguistics. We will later speak about Statistical Illiteracy in Historical Linguistics and how cognitive biases and statistical illiteracy make us grossly underestimate the amount of false positives. II. Comparative Linguistics beta : Is it still possible to compare languages if the number of possible cognates is under the threshold of noise? Could we stiill compare languages, if the sheer number of coincidences, supposed cognates, is under the limit of noise ? We will propose a typological method of using even small vocabularies for comparison, even when the number of comparable words is small. We will illustrate this in the frame of Afroasiatic. There is, fortunately, a difference between random coincidences and real old cognates. When daughter languages separate from a proto-language, they lose (and keep) words in a certain, clear order. As shown by Dyen, Kruskal, Black, and others after them, every word in a vocabulary is like a radioactive element : it has its own half-life, which can be calculated. Let us postulate two pairs of languages, languages A and B : languages C and D. If languages A and B have 1 % of coincidences scattered randomly in the vocabulary, they are not related. Languages C and D have 1 % of the vocabulary. We will consider them as related. coincidences, clustered in the core of We will also show what counts as core of the vocabulary, and will illustrate the method using AfroAsiatic (Semito-Hamitic) as support. We will show if, and how, one can prove that Semito-Hamitic exists, and if it is polytethic or monotethic. Modality, impersonality, and predicativity: one more look at the negation of infinitive construct in Second Temple Hebrew Uri Mor (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) Second Temple Hebrew (LBH, QH, and Ben Sira), unlike Classical Biblical Hebrew, has two ways of negating a predicative infinitive construct: with ( לאe.g., שלוא כתוב ה ֵר[הטהו מתו] ֵבה ועל MMT B:76–78); or ;]לרבעה כלאי ועל לבוש [ו כתוב שלוא] יהיה שעטנז ושלוא לזרוע שדו ו ֶכ [רמו כלאי with ( איe.g., כלבי ש ֵֶ וד ֵֶ ק ֵה למחני ֵי ֵב ֵה ֵל in contemporary Aramaic, expresses prohibition and is similar to the positive predicative infinitive construct; and the latter expresses different modal meanings (including prohibition) and is close to existential sentences. The similarities and dissimilarities between these two patterns have been the subject of several scholarly discussions (e.g., Kieviet 1999; van Peursen 1999; Qimron 1986: 71), but in spite of Kieviet’s thorough research the relation between the patterns is still a matter of debate, as is the question of their syntactic structure. An examination of the two patterns (and other similar ones) from a more historical perspective, in light of the morphosyntactic changes in the verbal system of Second Temple Hebrew (e.g., Cohen 2013) and its sentence patterns, suggests that these are two distinct historical patterns with two distinct syntactic behaviors: the former equals a finite verb or a nominalization, and the latter a whole predication. The paper will introduce the development and syntactic character of each pattern, and will discuss alternation between them. Additionally, it will be argued that the predicative usage of the infinitive construct is not the result of ellipsis, as suggested before (Cohen 2013), but rather the outcome of a combination of factors, one of which is reanalysis of sequences of prohibitions. References Cohen, Ohad, The Verbal Tense System in Late Biblical Hebrew Prose (HSS 63; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2013) Kieviet, P. J. A., “The Infinitive Construct Combined with the articles לא, י, איin the Hebrew Bible: Syntax and Semantics,” Dutch Studies on Near Eastern Languages and Literatures 4 (1999): 5–26 van eursen, W. T., “Negation in the Hebrew of Ben Sira,” in Sirach, Scrolls, and Sages: Proceedings of a Second International Symposium on the Hebrew of the Dead Sea scrolls, Ben Sira, and the Mishnah, Held at Leiden University, 15–17 December 1997 (ed. Takamitsu Muraoka and John F. Elwolde; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 223–243 Qimron, Elisha, The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls (HSS 29; Atlanta: Scholars, 1986) ;ואיMMT B:58). The former pattern, which is also found Pre-Hebrew syncope in the construct state: mamlāḵā / mamléḵeṯ, kāṯ etc. Benjamin Suchard (Leiden University) / kéṯe , A small number of Biblical Hebrew words of the mVq ālā and qV Vl patterns have seemingly irregular forms in the construct state, indicating possession by a following noun or noun phrase: mVq ālā becomes mVq let and qV Vl becomes q el. The exact quality of the vowels in the construct state varies, but these forms seem to behave like the so-called segolates, i.e. they ended in a consonant cluster at one point. This is strikingly different from the expected forms: according to the known Hebrew sound laws, the construct states of these words should be mVq lat and q al, respectively. reviously, scholars have either done no more than note the ‘apparent interchange’ between these nominal patterns, without attempting to explain it, or propose shaky, often self-contradictory explanations, invoking analogy based on non-existent forms or ad hoc differences in accentuation, some even going through a complete overhaul of the reconstruction of Proto-Semitic to arrive at an explanation that covers the data. The alternation can, however, easily be explained by positing a quite natural sound change deleting the second of two unstressed, short vowels in open syllables when preceding another unstressed syllable: unstressed *CVCVCV(:) > *CVCCV(:). Thus, mVq alatu mVq altu and qV Vlu qV lu in the construct state, which then regularly result in the attested Biblical Hebrew forms. The counterexamples to this sound law can all be plausibly explained as resulting from analogical restoration. As will be argued in this talk, this newly postulated sound law receives support from other parts of the Hebrew lexicon, shedding light on several other previously unexplained anomalies. These, together with the unexpected construct states already mentioned, allow us to date the sound change to the second millennium BCE. Proposed origins of the Canaanite shift Janling Fu (Harvard University) The Canaanite Shift ā ō has long been noted as a regular sound change characterizing a limited geographical scope (e.g., Bauer-Leander 1923) that is first attested in the 16-15th BCE in texts of the New Kingdom in Egypt, and thereafter in the corpus of the Amarna letters (see most recently Suchard 2012, Huehnergard 2013). While significant debate has arisen over whether the Canaanite shift is limited in scope to stressed positions as opposed to being an unconditioned sound change, less attention has, to my knowledge, focused on the question of its origins. And yet the conditions of its occurrence, namely, in a circumscribed geographic region during a period generally marked by increased interaction with Egypt, prompt the consideration that the Canaanite Shift might come as the result of language contact (see Thomason 2001). In this paper, I will outline the current understanding of the Canaanite Shift and then push toward several lines of evidence that I believe will support this tentative understanding. Metathesis in the hitpa'el binyan: an Optimality Theoretic analysis Kyle S. Jones (University of California, Davis) The prototypically reciprocal and reflexive verbal paradigm in Modern Hebrew (MH), known as the hitpa’el binyan, consists of a prefix [Cit-] which attaches to the verbal root (as, for example, in [Citpalɛl] “pray”). When followed by a sibilant consonant (specifically [s], [ʃ], [z], and [ts]), the [t] of the hitpa’el prefix consistently metathesizes with the sibilant consonant. Why should this be the case and how can this be accounted for in Optimality Theory (OT)? Refining the previous OT analysis of metathesis in the hitpa’el of Tiberian Hebrew (TH) by Coetzee (1999), I will demonstrate that MH ranks the constraint *t + SIB above LINEARITY, allowing metathesis to surface as the optimal way of dealing with a phonotactic constraint against [t] + sibilant clusters. Metathesis serves also to preserve the [t] of the hitpa’el, the only stable morphological indicator of the paradigm. I will also review literature (e.g. Hume (2004) and Blevins and Garrett (2004)) discussing metathesis more generally, which suggests that stop/fricative combinations are universally disfavored and often subject to repair by metathesis.I conclude by arguing that the phonetically-based "evolutionary phonology" approach pioneered by Blevins (2004) is the best way to account for the facts of MH hitpa'el metathesis. The Old Egyptian śḏm(.w)=f passive and its implications for the origin of the internal passive in Central Semitic Chris H. Reintges (CNRS) 1. Old Egyptian, the earliest stage of the Ancient Egyptian language (2650–2150 BCE), is a language with multiple passives (Reintges 1997). The concern of my talk is with the so-called śḏm.w=f passive, which is marked as passive voice by means of the stem-final suffix –w. However, the –w suffix is not systematically rendered in hieroglyphic writing. Rather, there is an (ortho)graphic contrast between plene and defective spellings of śḏm.w=f passives, as illustrated by the following example from the Pyramid Text corpus. (1) 2. I will first present arguments that the passive voice formative –w actually represents a vocalic suffix –u and explain the contrast of plene and defective writings in terms of different spelling conventions. In general, hieroglyphic writing does not express the vowel pattern an inflected verb form, unless the word-final vowel is part of an inflectional ending or constitutes an inflectional ending by itself, as in the case at hand. 3. The Egyptian facts may shed new light on the diachronic origin of the internal passive in Central Semitic languages. The internal passive in Classical Arabic is derived by shifting the vowel sequence /a a/ to /u i/ in the perfect conjugation, e.g. qatala ‘he killed’ vs. qutila ‘he was killed’. It has almost entirely disappeared in modern Arabic colloquial dialects. Mauritanian Arabic, by contrast, has an innovative passive pattern, which is formed with a u−prefix in the perfect conjugation, e.g. baxxar ‘he perfumed with incense vs. u− baxxar ‘he was perfumed with incense’ (Kaye and Rosenhouse 1997: 297–298) and which looks like the mirror image of the suffixal u−passive in Old Egyptian. 4. Even though there are no traces of internal passives in Akkadian and Ethiopian Semitic, we are not necessarily dealing with a group–internal morphological innovation. Rather, both Ancient Egyptian and Proto-Semitic must have drawn the u−passive from a common pool of passive voice markers. The eventive-stative alternation in Coptic Egyptian Bendjaballah, Sabrina (CNRS) Reintges, Chris (CNRS) Coptic Egyptian, the most recent stage of Ancient Egyptian (Afro-Asiatic, 3rd–11th c. CE), has a complex verbal system, in which stem forms, or templates, are morphologically derived by associating a consonantal root with a particular structural pattern. This is exemplified with the biliteral root √KT 'to build' in the table below, together with the aspectual semantics and argument structure of the stem (Reintges 2004). The first three stem patterns are categorially verbal nouns, or infinitives, which, due to the presence of nominal features, can freely occur in various types of event nominalizations (pəə− kɔt ‘the act of building’). By contrast, the Stative is an indisputably verbal category. Based on the analysis of different verbal classes (e.g. the inchoative-stative class), we show that the Stative is less complex than the Absolute State in terms of the verbal morphosyntax: the Absolute State is therefore derived from the Stative (contra Kramer 2006). We furthermore argue that the template of the Absolute State is structurally more complex than that of the Stative, whereby complexity is manifested either in vowel alternations (apophonic derivation in biliteral roots: ɛ -> ɔ) or in additional material (propagation of the second root consonant in the inchoative-stative class: hɛm 'be hot' -> hmom 'become hot'). The larger picture is that in the Coptic verbal system, syntactic derivation is in a close relationship with templatic morphology. References Kramer, Ruth. 2006. Root and pattern morphology in Coptic: Evidence for the root. In C. Davis & et al. (eds.) Proceedings of NELS 36, 399–412. Reintges, Chris. 2004. Coptic Egyptian (Sahidic dialect): A Learner's Grammar. Cologne The Noun Prefixes of Eastern Berber and their significance for the reconstruction of Proto-Berber Marijn van Putten (Leiden University) The vast majority of Berber nouns have an initial element that marks Gender, Number and ‘State’ (akin to case marking). The prefixes look as follows in the Western Berber dialects: Free state Annexed state m.sg. a-maziɣ w-maziɣ m.pl. i-maziɣən y-maziɣən f.sg. ta-maziɣt t-maziɣt f.pl. ti-maziɣin t-maziɣin Several studies have been dedicated to the origin of these prefixes, and they are generally attributed to ancient deictic elements that, perhaps, functioned as definite and indefinite articles. While the historical explanations seem to work for the Western Berber dialects, the data from the Eastern Berber languages spoken in Libya and Egypt have thus far not received any attention. This is regrettable as the prefix situation of the many different Eastern Berber languages appears to be different from the western varieties. In this presentation, I will examine the noun prefixes of the Libyan Berber languages of Ghadames, Awjila, Nefusa, El-Foqaha, Sokna and the Egyptian Berber language of Siwa. I will show that these prefix systems cannot be derived from the western Berber system, and therefore has implications for the reconstruction of the Proto-Berber noun prefixes. Gutturals in the reconstruction of Berber Lameen Souag (LACITO (CNRS)) Over the past decade, the increasing availability of data on the highly divergent Southwestern branch of Berber (Zenaga, Tetserrét, and some substrata of Northern Songhay and Hassaniya) has permitted new advances in the reconstruction of proto-Berber – notably, the reconstruction of a glottal stop (Kossmann 2001). However, this reconstruction raises problems on several levels. Within Zenaga, ʔ corresponds both to pan-Berber Ø < *ʔ and to pan-Berber ɣ; the latter in turn sometimes corresponds to Zenaga ɣ (or even x and g). Within proto-Berber, we observe that verbs securely reconstructible as triliterals with initial or medial *ʔ consistently form their imperfectives differently from sound triliterals (cf. Prasse 1972); the same is true within Zenaga, even in cases where ʔ corresponds to pan-Berber ɣ. This paper will demonstrate that Tetserrét data casts light on the split in correspondences of ɣ, which is reconstructible for proto-Southwestern Berber at least, while Zenaga phonotactics combined with general patterns in Berber verbal conjugation explain the apparently anomalous behaviour of "laryngeals" in proto-Berber imperfectives. Typological and diachronic considerations on the Berber negation system Vermondo Brugnatelli ( niversità di Milano-Bicocca) Mena Lafkioui ( niversità di Milano-Bicocca, Ghent niversity) The morphosyntax of negation in Berber is rich and complex, and appears to be the outcome of multiple processes that have taken place over different time-periods from prehistory to the present day. The most noteworthy issue is the tendency towards a redundant marking of negation, not only by means of discontinuous morphemes (circumfixes) but also through the use of special “negative verb stems” — a feature that is attested in nearly all of the Berber-speaking area, regardless of the type of negative affixes in use. In this paper, we attempt to single out the main processes that have led to the present stage, taking into account the etymologies of prefixal and suffixal negative morphemes, the origin of negative stems and the role of the so-called Jespersen’s cycle in the evolution of Berber negation. The typology of Bedouin dialects: new data from Lebanon Younes Igor (Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle Paris III) The dialects of arabic have been traditionnaly classified as bedouin or sedentary. This distinction has been adopted whole sale accross the Arab World. In the western parts, the split is usualy described in accordance with different arabization waves : pre-hilalian (sedentary) and hilalian (nomadic). In the eastern parts, the arabization process is much less clear cut. Indeed, historical record provide ample evidence for the presence of arabic-speaking groups since ancient times in the region. While the sedentary/bedouin distinction remains broadly meaningfull, it blurs the inner variety of the dialects spoken in the east of the Arab World. Dialectologists such as Cantineau (1936, 1937), Palva (1985) and Ingham (1986) have identified different sub-groups amongst the bedouin dialects : north-west arabian, central Jordan bedouin arabic, Syro-Mesopotamian sheep-breeders (group C), camel-breeders (divided into group A for ʿNiza confederation and group B for Šammar confederation), satellitary (group Bc) and southern najdi. The last four are subgroupings of the more general Najdi type while central Jordan bedouin arabic is considered transitional between group C Najdi and north-west arabian. Basing ourselves on first hand linguistic data collected accross eastern ans northern Lebanon, we will reconsider the bedouin dialect typology as described by Cantineau and suggest the existence of another subgroup within the Najdi type that we propose to call group Ca. We will also discuss the validity of applying the term « bedouin » as a valid distinction accross the whole Arab World. A possible b- preformant in Arabic Jérôme Lentin (INALCO (Paris)) One may reasonably argue that, in Arabic (as in other Semitic - and Hamito-Semitic - languages), a not insignificant number of lexemes (verbs or nouns) can be analyzed as resulting from the prefixation to an existing form of a consonantal element (other than t-, n-, m-, ’-, w-, y- and s-, or more marginally h- et š, used in morphology). These preformants (‘root extensions’, ‘root-determinatives’ etc., or, in Diakonoff’s terms, ‘root-formative morphemes’ or ‘complements’) have not been extensively studied for this language. In a previous study, I have examined the cases of q-, ḥ-, z- and ‘-. I propose now to turn to b-, which also seems well-attested. A list of examples from Ancient Arabic and various dialects will be produced. Quadriconsonantal words will be given first, since the supposed prefixation of b- is more obvious (qulla / baqlūle ‘clay jar’; bēsa‘ ‘to enlarge (a place), to give space’, cf. √WS‘; marqūš / mutaraqqiš and mubarqaš ‘spotted’). Then triconsonantal words for which the ancient process of the prefixation of b- can be traced will be examined (especially with roots where C2 = C3: hassa “to make sb’s lot low”; bahasa “to wrong sb”; ṭaḥḥa = baṭaḥa ‘to spread’, or with roots with C1, C2 or C3 = W/Y). Finally, some hints will be made to analogous examples in some Semitic and Hamito-Semitic languages. Glottal-initial verbs ʾaẖaḏ/ʾakal in contact situations: data from Amman Arabic Enam Al-Wer (University of Essex) The conjugation of glottal-initial verbs ’axaḏ/’akal varies across Arabic vernaculars. In the traditional central and northern Jordanian dialects (which are of the Hōrani type), marking of ‘person’ agreement is morphologically neutralised in the imperfect of 1st pers sing and 3rd pers masc sing, rendering the ambiguous form bōkil ‘I eat/he eats’. In Amman, the Jordanian dialects that have this system (e.g. the dialect of Salt) are in contact with Levantine varieties that mark agreement with ‘person’ in these forms; thus: bākul ‘I eat’ vs. byākul ‘he eats’. The contact situation in Amman seems to have triggered change at two levels in the speech of Ammanis with a Jordanian dialectal heritage (as opposed to Palestinian heritage). Firstly, it triggers structural change by introducing a distinction between 1st pers and 3rd pers masc; in this development, the previously unmarked form bōkil is reallocated to the 3rd pers masc only, and a new form, bākul, is introduced for 1st pers. Secondly, it triggers a change in the phonetic form of the 3rd pers sing masc, bōkil > bōkol, and further byākol. The data show that while the structural (paradigmatic) development has been focused to a large extent the phonetic realisation of bōkil ~ bōkol ~ byākol is diffuse, showing a relatively high degree of variation. The paper provides an analysis of this feature within the framework of variationist theory and the principles of new dialect formation. The data upon which the analysis is based come from ‘the Amman project’, which investigates the formation of the city’s dialect. They were collected using the standard format of a ‘sociolinguistic interview’ mostly, in addition to elicitation. These are supplemented with data obtained from earlier research in various other localities in Jordan. To the future and back again: the case of North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic ‘wants’ Paul M. Noorlander (Leiden University) The title of this abstract is intentionally ambiguous. On the one hand, its primary concern are two verbs meaning ‘want’ and on the other hand, it is the third person singular form of these verbs that is of particular interest to the repetitive grammatical history of the future in North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic (= NENA). The NENA future preverbal particle bəd- and its eroded equivalents ultimately go back to a prospective construction or immediate future (practically English ‘be about to’) composed of an impersonal participial form of b- complementizer d- and the subjunctive (Nöldeke 1868:295; Maclean 1895:122; Cohen 1984:520; Pennacchietti 1994a:281 nt 77, 1994b:137-8). The prospective semantics of this verb are evident in Late Aramaic varieties, such as Jewish Babylonian Talmudic and Classical Syriac, akin to its cognate in Najdi Arabic (Ingham 1994:121). The particle bəd is used similarly in early NENA, but fully replaces the original future as in many languages of the world, including AfroAsiatic (cf. Bybee and Pagliuca 1987, Bybee et al. 1994; Hopper and Traugot 1993:24; Heine and Kuteva 2002:310-11). For example, a future particle derived from the verb ‘want’ is a well-known trait of the Balkan languages, such as Greek tha (< thelei ina ‘he wants that’) and Bulgarian šte (< ‘he wants’). What is striking is that we find the same development repeated in certain Jewish dialects of NENA. A distinct root for ‘want’, which is ʔby, is employed first as prospective auxiliary, then the third person singular becomes once again fossilized as a future particle. Grammatical borrowing in Syrian Turoyo Bruno Herin (INALCO (Paris)) Turoyo, a neo-Aramaic language whose closest recorded ancestor is Syriac, was spoken until recently in ur ʿAbdin, in southern Anatolia. Neo-Aramaic languages are classified in four branches: Western neo-Aramaic, Neo-Mandaic, North Eastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) and uroyo-Mla so. Mla so being now probably extinct, uroyo remains the only member of this branch. Amongst these, uroyoMla so and NENA share most of their innovations. Speakers of Turoyo started to migrate to Syria and Lebanon in the aftermath of the large scale massacres that many Christian minorities of Anatolia endured in the beginning of the 20th century. The majority of the uroyo speakers left their homeland in the 60s and 70 of last century and migrated to various European countries, to point that the fate of the language now lies almost entirely in diaspora, leaving the presence of the language in southern Anatolia only vestigial. In the light of Classical Syriac, uroyo remains amazingly conservative compared to the NENA varieties in its phonology and much of its grammatical material. Although Qəltu varieties of Arabic were spoken in the area, bilingualism uroyo-Arabic was not widespread in ur ʿAbdin. Most of its speakers knew Kurdish, and more marginaly Turkish. Nevertheless, Arabic already had a sizeable impact on uroyo, both in the grammar and lexicon. In Syria, the linguistic ecology changed and all the speakers became bilingual Arabic- uroyo, and many speakers maintained proficiency in Kurdish. Following the framework developed by Matras (2009) and basing myself on first hand linguistic data collected in āmišli and a āniyye as well as recordings from recent Syrian migrants in Belgium, I will investigate the Arabic and Kurdish components in contemporary Syrian uroyo. reliminary results, as expected, indicate less Kurdish derived material and an overall licence to integrate a large range of Arabic elements. Arnold, Werner (1990). Das Neuwestaramäische. V. Grammatik. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Coghill, Eleanor (forthcoming). Borrowing of verbal derivational morphology between Semitic languages: the case of Arabic verb derivations in Neo-Aramaic. Häberl, Charles (2009). The Neo-Mandaic Dialect of Khorramshahr. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Jastrow, Otto (1992). Lerhbuch der uroyo-Sprache. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Jastrow, Otto (1993). Laut- und Formenlehre des neuaramäischen Dialekts von Mīdin im r ʿAbdīn. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Khan, Geoffrey (2008). The Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Barwar. Leiden, Boston: Brill. Matras, Yaron (2009). Language Contact. Cambrisge: Cambridge University Press. Ritter, Hellmut. rōyo. Die Volksprache der syrischen Christen des r ʿAbdīn. A: Texte, Vol. I-III. Beirut (1967:1971); B: Wörterbuch. Beirut (1979); C: Grammatik. Stuttgart (1990). The classification of Late Aramaic Aaron Michael Butts (Yale University) Syriac has traditionally been classified as a late East Aramaic dialect along with Mandaic and Jewish Babylonian Aramaic (see, e.g., Rosenthal 1939; Fitzmyer 1979). This classification was, however, questioned by Boyarin (1981), who argued that Syriac shares several innovations with the late West Aramaic dialects of Christian Palestinian Aramaic, Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, and Samaritan Aramaic. On this basis, he rejected the family-tree model (Stammbaum) of classification opting instead for a geographic approach (or in his words “convergence model”) to late Aramaic classification according to which Syriac shares the most isoglosses with Mandaic and Jewish Babylonian Aramaic but also shares some isoglosses with the West Aramaic dialects. The present paper re-evaluates Boyarin’s proposal in light of research that has been conducted in the intervening three decades. Particular attention is devoted to theoretical issues of language classification as well as to the history of Aramaic. Bibliography Boyarin, D. 1981. “An Inquiry into the Formation of the Middle Aramaic Dialects,” in Bono Homini Donum. Essays in Historical Linguistics in Memory of J.A. Kerns, ed. Y. L. Arbeitman and A. R. Bomhard, vol. 2, 613–649. Fitzmyer, J. A. 1979. “The hases of the Aramaic Language,” in A Wandering Aramean. Collected Aramaic Essays (SBL Monographs 25), 57–84. Rosenthal, F. 1939. Die aramaistische Forschung seit Th. Nöldeke’s Veröffentlichungen. Leiden. The 'enclitic' 'particle' -n in Ugaritology: substantial flaws in its substantiations and methodical demands for a necessary reinvestigation of the data Jörg Hartlieb (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and Excellence Cluster TOPOI Berlin) The phenomenon of additional consonants like -n with otherwise complete word-forms is widespread in Ugaritic (as well as other Semitic) texts. Recent and most ugaritological literature on that domain, exemplified in the standard reference grammar, categorize this phenomenon as enclitic particle or morpheme. But this – seeming – consensus rests on substantial flaws of linguistic analysis: Firstly, relevant linguistic concepts like emphasis, enclitic, particle or morpheme and their proper mutual relationships are not defined sufficiently to allow falsifiability and traceability as necessary conditions for sound scholarship. Secondly, categorization is based on syntactic description and choice of cognates is based on formal similarity, contradicting the fundamental linguistic principle of differentiation between form and function. Thirdly, cognates are adduced without formal stemmatization by a chain of known sound-laws and functional stemmatization by a chain of plausible semantic changes, leaving these etymologies as claims without traceable and therefore falsifiable or verifiable substantiation. Fourthly, etymologies (diachronic level) are presented as pledge for a morpheme-status, although only actual function in texts (synchronic level) is decisive to substantiate such claims. Fifthly, functions are proposed based on few or even single independent examples, constituting an insufficient base for statistically convincing conclusions. In sum these flaws invalidate the current consensus-view and therefore necessitate a reinvestigation of the data. To avoid similar flaws this reinvestigation has to analyze, utilize and thereby integrate the state of the art of all relevant auxiliary disciplines (e.g. historical linguistics; linguistic typology; phonetics; linguistics of morphemes, clitics,...) as preliminary indicated here, gaining linguistically founded and approved criteria and methods as framework. By using such a solid and broadened framework a new consensus may be possible, that integrates the observations of the – in fact considerably diverging – majority and minority views on -n and even -m, including recent research arguing for a phonetic/prosodic phenomenon. Ge‘ez qätali and the putative proto-Semitic *qatāl- infinitive: connection or concoction? Adam Strich (Harvard University) For every G-stem verb in Proto-Semitic, according to the consensus reconstruction, there is said to have existed a corresponding fully inflected substantive of the form qatāl-, where, as per scholarly convention, qtl are used as “dummy” consonants. This substantive, traditionally called the “infinitive,” is supposed to have corresponded, roughly, to the English gerund: referring to the act or state depicted by the verb without limitation as to tense, aspect, mood, person, number, or gender; and exhibiting all the morphological and syntactic properties of nouns in addition to some of the syntactic properties of verbs, such as the ability to govern direct objects. The strength of this reconstruction lies in the fact that it matches the situation attested historically in Akkadian. Although there are no varieties of West Semitic that unambiguously exhibit such a system, these do contain a number of diverse and diffuse phenomena that are commonly regarded as developments therefrom, including the Biblical Hebrew infinitive absolute (Tiberian qātōl), the sui generis Arabic form qatāli, the infinitives of several NeoAramaic languages, and the Ge‘ez active participle qätali. The last of these is generally regarded as having developed from the putative qatāl- infinitive combined with the gentilic suffix *-ī-. This etymology that is then taken as evidence for the existence, at some point in the prehistory of Ge‘ez, of a predictable, productive, and paradigmatic qatāl- infinitive—as in Akkadian—which supposedly preceded the historically attested system of G-stem infinitives, which is far more heterogenous. In this paper, which is but one part of a much larger reevaluation of the infinitive in Proto-Semitic, I shall examine and reject these claims, invoking both Robert Hetzron’s Principle of Archaic Heterogeneity and the internal evidence of the Northern Ethiopian Semitic languages. In their place, I shall offer an alternative derivation of the qätali active participle.