Six macrofamily protolanguages

SIX PROTOLANGUAGES COMPARED

Afroasiatic, Amerind, Dené-Caucasian, Eurasiatic, Niger-Congo & Nilo-Saharan 1

Six Protolanguages Compared according to the qualities of six macrofamily protolanguages and their living language descendants Afroasiatic, Amerind, Dené-Caucasian, Eurasiatic, Niger-Congo & Nilo-Saharan

Pieter Uys

2

Contents

Maps & Illustrations

Introduction

3

Sprachbund

5

Sprachbund

5

Consonants

6

Consonant Inventory

6

Vowels

7

Vowel Inventory

7

Vowel Harmony

9

Vowel Harmony

8

Ejectives & Implosives

10

Ejectives & Implosives

10

Gender

12

Gender & Noun Classes

11

Affixes

13

Clusivity of “we”

15

Adpositions

14

Word Order

16

Incl & Exclusive We

15

Morphological Typology

18

Subject – Object – Verb

17

Thoughts

21

Vowel Harmony illus.

8

Bibliography

24

Table: Comparison

24

3

Intro

Genetic linguistics is an approach to linguistics in which languages are classified according to their family relationships. The world’s languages are divided into families, each of which has developed from a common ancestral protolanguage. The larger families are further divided into subfamilies.

A language family is a group of languages which is genetically related on the basis of a common ancestor, or protolanguage. Such a group of languages shares features and vocabulary inherited from the ancestor. Historical linguists employ the comparative method to reconstruct a protolanguage. By examining related languages for cognates (words bearing a resemblance on account of their common descent), linguists can postulate the original forms from which the cognates emerged. This method uses lexical categories like pronouns, body parts, kinship terminology and numbers, that are the most stable terms and most resistant to change. Morphological features are equally important for establishing kinship.

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Sprachbund A sprachbund is an ensemble of neighbouring languages within a defined geographical area and without a close genetic heritage, which share certain structural features. The correspondences or similarities arise from language contact. Areal linguistics is about the diffusion of structural features across the languages and dialects of a defined geographical area.

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Consonant Inventory The largest consonant inventories are found in Southern Africa (Khoisan and Niger-Congo families), the Caucasus and the northwest of North America, the last two belonging to or areally influenced by Dene-Sino-Caucasian descendants. Several Ntu languages (part of the Niger-Congo family) in the southern part of the continent, such as Sotho and Xhosa, have enlarged their consonant inventory by borrowing clicks and other sounds from languages of the Khoisan group.

As for Protolanguages, the formidable consonant inventory of Dené-Sino-Caucasian stands out. For one thing, all of its stops and all of its affricates have the choice of voiced or not or ejective. All in all the arsenal comprises 50 phonemic consonants and eight phonemic vowels. This majestic phonology encompasses complex sibilant-affricate and resonant combinations, of which the cognates in Eurasiatic pale in their simplicity.

Another of its treasures is the wealth of lateral affricates like / dl, tl and tl’/. All of them survive in the East Caucasian languages Avar, Andi and Tsez, and in Na-Dene, in words like Navajo ‘dloo’ “ground squirrel”, ‘-tle/-tlee’ “socks” and ‘tl’ee’ “night”. Three series of sibilants and sibilant-affricates appear before the phonemes /s, c, c̓, ʒ/, before the palatals /ś, ć, ćʼ/ and after /š, č, čʼ, ǯ/, of which the traces linger in Basque. Plus a series of uvulars /ʁ ɢ x, χ/ which is rare elsewhere.

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Vowel Inventory The average number of monoftongs in the world’s languages is five, and the most frequent vowel system has five qualities.

Certain small language groups, such as the Berber languages (Afro-Asiatic) and the Northwest Caucasian languages have as few as two vowels.

European languages like English, French, Danish and German have large inventories. The 26 vowel phonemes of Standard Danish (14 short and 12 long) correspond to 21 morphophonemes (11 short and 10 long). The European area also includes a number of languages with vowel harmony restrictions on the distribution of their vowels, such as Finnish, Hungarian and Turkish and its relatives which extend to the East.

In Africa, large vowel inventories predominate in a broad band between the Sahara and the Equator, among Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan and AfroAsiatic languages.

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Vowel Harmony Some languages in Asia, Europe and Africa employ vowel harmony. It means that a word may contain only the approved vowels of a certain set. The criterion may be front or back position, nasal or palatal articulation, lip rounding or the position of the tongue root. Vowel harmony is a process of assimilation in which the sounds of a word are shaped aesthetically. The result is called metaphony and it serves Eurasiatic, Niger-Congo and the NiloSaharan languages very well.

In Eurasiatic languages it usually means that a word has either front or back vowels and that the vowels of the suffixes or declensions get in line with the “Anlaut” of the root. Some languages employ lip rounding harmony too, which occurs together with front-back harmony. African and Mongolian languages tend to use tongue root position (ATR) harmony.

The Niger-Congo languages that have two sets of vowels: /i e ə o u/ and /i ε a ɔ υ/ use only one set in a word. Even in languages without vowel harmony, restrictions are often placed on a word’s second vowel. Nilo-Saharan might have borrowed tongue root position harmony from the Niger-Congo family but it might also be an ancient inherent trait of Proto-Nilo-Saharan.

Vowel harmony is strongest in the Uralo-Siberian (Finnish, Hungarian) and Transeurasian (Turkic, Mongolic) branches of Eurasiatic, and in the Niger-Congo family. It does not seem to be important to the Afroasiatic family although there are Arabic dialects with vowel harmony, and historically the phenomenon of Babylonian vowel harmony is well known. That was after the Akkadian language gained a fourth vowel, /e/ (on top of /a/, /u/ and /i/) by virtue of Sumerian which in many ways was the polar opposite of Akkadian.

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Vowel Harmony https://linguisticmaps.tumblr.com/post/120811630523/31-vowel-harmony-very-characteristic-of-turkic

Linguistic maps featuring several grammatical and phonological features, created by R. Pereira, a graduated linguist and conlanger.

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Ejectives and implosives Ejectives are voiceless stops (plosives) or affricates, while implosives tend to be voiced stops. Ejective stops are written with a raised apostrophe after the symbol that is used to represent the mouth action; thus /p’/ represents a bilabial ejective stop and /k’/ a velar ejective stop. Ejectives abound in the Northwest and Northeast Caucasian languages and in Kartvelian, and are also found in Amerind.

Implosives occur in sub-Saharan Africa and in Southeast Asia. The phonetic symbols for implosives are the letters used for voiced stops modified by a hook to the right at the top, as in /ɓ, ɗ, ɠ/.

Implosives and ejectives are found in the following African language groups: Chadic, Khoisan, Ntu (Zulu), Cushitic (Oromo in Ethiopia, Iraqw in Tanzania and Dahalo in Kenya ) in Nilo-Saharan (Komo and Ik) and in Omotic (Kullo and Hamer).

Linguistic maps featuring several grammatical and phonological features, created by R. Pereira, a graduated linguist and conlanger.

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Gender & Noun Classes Proto-Dene-Sino-Caucasian had noun classes, marked with prefix *u- for male and *i- for female, while prefix *w-/*b-/*m- encompasses parts of the body, bodily fluids and some animals. Prefixes *r/*d cover more animals and natural phenomena with *s and *a. This system is robust among the languages of the Northeast Caucasus, and far to the east where the Hindu Kush and Karakoram meet, and even in Siberia on the banks of Yenisei. Elsewhere relics of the class markers cling to a few Basque and Tibetan nouns.

The number of noun classes in Niger-Congo languages can reach 23. They accommodate male, female, animacy, inanimacy, places, plants, more animals, diminutives and abstractions.

On the other hand, Eurasiatic and Nilo-Saharan had no such thing, not even her or him. Only much later did some Nilotic tongues like Turkana and Bari pick them up from speakers of Afroasiatic. And the Indo-Europeans acquired three genders, most probably from the Nakh-Dagestani languages.

So that leaves one family who’s had him and her from the start – Afroasiatic in whose prototongue is proof.

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Gender, Animate & Inanimate https://linguisticmaps.tumblr.com/

Linguistic maps featuring several grammatical and phonological features, created by R. Pereira, a graduated linguist and conlanger.

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Affixes An affix is a bound morpheme that occurs before or within or after the base of a word. An affix may thus be a prefix, infix or suffix that modifies the meaning of a word. https://linguisticmaps.tumblr.com/

Linguistic maps featuring several grammatical and phonological features, created by R. Pereira, a graduated linguist and conlanger.

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Adpositions Prepositions and postpositions are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations or designate various semantic roles.

https://linguisticmaps.tumblr.com/image/184464412838

Linguistic maps featuring several grammatical and phonological features, created by R. Pereira, a graduated linguist and conlanger.

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Inclusive & exclusive “we” In Eurasia, only a few Dené-Sino-Caucasian languages in the Caucasus make a distinction between “we with hearer included” and “we with listener excluded”. In the Americas, nearly half of all languages have it. Dravidian and Munda languages have an inclusive/exclusive distinction, while languages in northeast Asia with such a distinction include Evenki, Ainu and Nivkh.

Just off the Asian mainland, the feature is found in most Austronesian languages and in non-Pama-Nyungan of northern Australia. It is nearly universal in both groups and frequent among the Pama-Nyungan languages. In Africa, it’s rare.

In many Amerind languages, the inclusive-exclusive distinction is reflected in the verb.

Linguistic maps featuring several grammatical and phonological features, created by R. Pereira, a graduated linguist and conlanger.

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Word Order Gell-Man and Ruhlen prove that the Mother Tongue had SOV word order. Except for instances of diffusion, the direction of syntactic change is mostly from SOV to SVO. After that phase, SVO becomes VSO/VOS before reversion to SVO through diffusion, although diffusion is not the most important factor in the development of word order. The two rarest word orders – OVS and OSV – derive directly from SOV. Five of the six branches of the Dené-Sino-Caucasian macrofamily have exclusive SOV word order. (Subject-Object-Verb). The other branch, Sino-Tibetan, has mainly SOV except Chinese, Bai and Karen with SVO (Subject-Verb-Object).

In Eurasiatic, 149 languages have SOV, 59 have SVO and 6, (the Island Celtic languages), have VSO. This remains a mystery and the search for substrates continue.

Nilo-Saharan has SOV, SVO and VSO. Songhai and Saharan have SOV while Kuliak and the Nilotic languages have predominantly VSO. Niger-Congo has 35 SOV and 264 SVO, and the Ntu-group has 1 SOV and 118 SVO. ‘The distribution of word order types in the world’s languages, interpreted in terms of the putative phylogenetic tree of human languages, strongly supports the hypothesis that the original word order in the ancestral language was SOV. Furthermore, in the vast majority of known cases (excluding diffusion), the direction of change has been almost uniformly SOV > SVO and, beyond that, primarily SVO > VSO/VOS. There is also evidence that the two extremely rare word orders, OVS and OSV, derive directly from SOV.’*

*Gell-Man, Murray & Ruhlen, Merritt. (2011). The origin and evolution of word order. Santa Fe Institute, Stanford University.

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SOV Word Order https://linguisticmaps.tumblr.com/post/130564019038/sov-word-order-most-common-word-order-and-present

Linguistic maps featuring several grammatical and phonological features, created by R. Pereira, a graduated linguist and conlanger.

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Morphological Typology of the Protolanguages Different morphological types emerge from the known macrofamily protolanguages. For example, the highly polysynthetic Proto-Dené-SinoCaucasian is the ancestor of the isolating Chinese languages, and of the polysynthetic North Caucasian languages.

Agglutination and fusion are forms of inflection; agglutination is one-dimensional while fusion is multidimensional. Languages with a high frequency of inflection are called “synthetic languages”. Languages with so much inflection that it’s difficult to distinguish an inflected word from a sentence are called polysynthetic languages.

Finnish is an example of an agglutinating synthetic language while Sanskrit is an example of a fusional synthetic language. In this paradigm, English would be an analytical language with fusional elements.

Proto-Dené-Sino-Caucasian was a highly polysynthetic language employing both agglutination and fusion, which used both prefixes and suffixes.

The noun class system included masculine, feminine, animate and inanimate. Among its descendants are analytical languages like Chinese, polysynthetic inflectional languages like the NW and NE Caucasian languages, and the agglutinative inflectional tongues Basque, Burushaski and Navajo.

Its vast phonological system of 50 consonants included three series of sibilant-affricate and resonant combinations, as well as lateral affricates / dl, tl and tl’/ plus an uvular series /ʁ ɢ x, χ/. The presence of ejectives is a feature it had in common with Amerind and Afro-Asiatic. Another possible correspondence is the distinction between inclusive and exclusive “we.”

The verbal system accommodated up to four prefix positions before the root. Prefixes indicated categories like aspect, tense, mode, valence, and pronominal agents and/or patients.

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The Proto-Amerind language was polysynthetic, using both prefixes and suffixes. The noun could take a series of suffixes and prefixes to indicate diminutive, demonstrative, kinship, age, reciprocal and more. Also, a gender ablaut and age-differential Ablaut system. Four-vowel systems (lacking the /u/) occur frequently). Proto-Amerind had glottalized consonants. Well-known Amerind languages with ejectives include Cochabamba Quechua, Yucatec Mayan and Navajo. Implosive glottal consonants are found in nine Native American languages. Two-thirds of the languages with glottalized resonants are in the Americas. Inclusive vs Exclusive “we” has a high incidence.

Proto-Eurasiatic was an inflectional agglutinating language that used ablaut and preferred suffixes to prefixes. Among its descendants are fusional inflectional languages like Proto-Indo-European, Latin and Sanskrit, agglutinating inflectional languages like Finnish and Turkish, and analytical languages with elements of fusional inflection, like English.

Proto-Afroasiatic was a fusional inflectional language that used ablaut, prefixes, infixes and suffixes. Among its descendants are the modern Arabic dialects that are analytic with inflectional elements of both a fusional and agglutinating nature. Grammatical gender (he/she) is inherent in the protolanguage. One of the most notable features of Afro-Asiatic phonology is the system of triads in the stops and affricates; each series is composed of three contrasting members: (a) voiceless (aspirated), (b) voiced, and (c) glottalized (ejectives called “emphatics” in Semitic grammar).

According to Ehret the system included 40 consonants: b, c, c', d, dl, dz, f, g, gw, y, yw, h, 1}, j, k, kW, k', kW', 1, t, m, n, Jl, tJ, tJw, p, p', r, s, s', s, t, t', tl', ts, w, x, xw, y, z, ?, £.

Proto-Nilo-Saharan was a fusional inflectional language that used both prefixes and suffixes. Among its descendants are analytical languages like Central Sudanic and inflectional agglutinating languages like Nilotic and Nubian. According to Ehret, the protolanguage had 44 consonants, and 6 or 7 vowels. Nilo-Saharan languages are tonal with complex vowel systems; some use tones to mark inflections like case, aspect and person.

Although the north-western group displays analytical elements and agglutination, they retain the core characteristics of the inflectional type, especially root-internal vowel change. The verb frequently involves extensive marking for features like person, voice, number, tense, aspect, or voice, where consonant mutation often accompanies such morphological processes. In general, Nilo-Saharan has suffixes than prefixes but declensional and derivational prefixes show greater resistance against phonetic erosion or merger with lexical roots than the suffixes.

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Proto-Niger-Congo was an inflectional agglutinating language. Among its descendants are inflectional agglutinating languages like the Ntu Group and isolating languages like those of the Kwa and Benue branches. Proto-Ntu has been reconstructed with a small set of 11 consonants and seven vowels: *p *t *c *k *b *d *g *j *m *ɲ; *i *ɪ *e *a *o *ʊ *u; plus High- and Low tones.

Consonant inventories expand substantially, especially in the Southern African groups that borrowed clicks and other consonants from the Khoesan languages. Zulu has 50 consonant phonemes, Xhosa 66 and SeSotho 39. Advanced Tongue Root vowel harmony is prevalent. In the root structure written (N)CV(V), (N) represents the nasal in combinations like /mb, nd, nt; ɲj, ɲc ŋg, ŋk/.

One of the most important morphological features of the Ntu Group is the system of nominal classes, of which the proto-language probably had 23.

Each of the classes has a pronoun, prefix and a set of concords to integrate adverbs, adjectives and verbs. The verbal stem has a set of prefixes and sometimes an inflected ending. Closed syllables are avoided. Word order is overwhelmingly SVO.

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Macrofamily

Gender/ Class

Affixation: Mostly prefixes; infixes or suffixes Vowel inventory Consonant inventory

Emphatic, Glottal or Pharyngeal Set Vowel harmony Rounded front vowels Morphological typology Verbal Agent & Patient marking Inclusive + Exclusive WE

DenéCaucasic

Amerind

?

Four noun classes: Animate M + F Inanimate I Inanimate II

Equal P & S

i u e o a

Afroasiatic

Equal P & S

i e

ɨ ə ä /æ/

u o

M+F

Eurasiatic Latent: Anatolian: Animate vs Inanimate Later: PIE M+F+N

NiloSaharan Noun classifier system (Blench)

Niger-Congo Proto-Ntu data 19 noun classes in Proto-Ntu

More suffixes

More suffixes

More suffixes than prefixes

More prefixes than suffixes in Proto-Ntu

i u a

i u e o a

i, ɪ, e, ɛ, a, ɔ, o, ʊ, u

i, ɪ, e, ɛ, ə, a, o, ɔ, u, ʊ

Large

50+

32 [Bomhard 36 (6])

23?

40+ (Ehret)

11

Yes

Yes

Yes

?

Yes

No

No

No

No

Latent

ATR

ATR

No Fusional and agglutinating inflexion

Yes Fusional and agglutinating inflexion

Yes Fusional and agglutinating inflexion

Yes Fusional and agglutinating inflexion

No Fusional and agglutinating inflexion

No

Yes

Yes

?

?

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

?

?

No

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Agglutinating inflexion

Conclusion

The oldest protolanguage of Africa (Proto-Nilo-Saharan), and the oldest one of Europe (Proto-Dené-Sino-Caucasian) were contemporaneous with Afroasiatic.

(Estimated chronology: 16,000 BC to 9,000 BC) Some millennia later, the largest language family of Africa (Niger-Congo) and the largest one of Eurasia (Eurasiatic) were also contemporaries. The difference between the younger ones and the older ones is that both of the younger ones had a less complex phonological and morphological structure.

The distributional pattern in Africa reveals that Nilo-Saharan was spoken over a contiguous area of North and North-Central Africa which was penetrated and broken up by Niger-Congo.

Dené-Sino-Caucasian dominated the Eurasian landmass north of the Mediterranean and the Middle East, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, including the Karakorum and the Hindu Kush.

Eventually Eurasiatic languages like Indo-European, Uralic and Transeurasian displaced the Dené-Sino-Caucasian languages so that only the Basque area, the North Caucasus, the Hunza and Nagar Valleys of Pakistan, and a few remote spots along the banks of the Yenisei River in Siberia remained.

Afroasiatic first expanded into North Africa with the Chadic branch which took a northern route through the Sinai peninsula, and encountered Nilo-Saharan on the way. Then the Cushitic branch in the Arabian Peninsula crossed the Bab-el-Mandeb to settle the Horn of Africa. Here also Afroasiatic encountered NiloSaharan languages. (Omotic might have arrived before Cushitic).

The next migration from the Near East involved Berber and Egyptian. Egyptians settled in the Nile Valley while Berbers spread over the Maghreb and Sahara and did not stop until they reached the Canary Islands.

Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo have a strong connection to Borean, as Wim van Binsbergen claimed. The question arises whether Dené-Sino-Caucasian and NiloSaharan were direct successors of Borean. And when and why did the younger group displace the older one on both continents? It seems that Niger-Congo might have displaced Nilo-Saharan in the Sahel and North Central Africa only after the Chadic disruption in West Africa.

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Is also seems that Afroasiatic did not displace Dené-Sino-Caucasian anywhere in Eurasia unless Sumerian was of PDSC lineage.

Closer to historical times the Semitic branch lived in close proximity to the Proto-Indo-European in northern Mesopotamia and eastern Anatolia, with ProtoKartvelian nearby.

Despite the vast age difference, remarkable correspondences tie Eurasiatic to Amerind, while the phonology of Amerind most closely resembles that of the DeneSino-Caucasian family.

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Committee of Koinoetymology and Post-Metaphysical Thinking, ICKPT, 2017. Pp. 132 The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. https://wals.info/feature.

protolanguage boreal borean sprachbund linguistics

historical linguistics genetic linguistics

Nilo-Saharan languages language in prehistory

Niger-Congo languages

protolanguages

language contact areal linguistics

Niger-Saharan Dené-Sino-Caucasian Eurasiatic comparative

language families linguistic convergence borean roots Nostratic mother tongue

grammatical gender genetic linguistics Chadic Cushitic Semitic Omotic Berber Egyptian Akkadian Sumerian Caucasian

Sino

Chadic Cushitic Semitic Omotic Genetiese taalkunde historiese taalkunde boriese stamme vokaalharmonie

vowel harmony ablaut uralo-siberian phonology altaic semantic shift proto-world mother tongue proto-human protosapiens language macrofamily Uralo-Siberian Transeurasian Altaic Uralic Athabascan Kartvelian Nakh-Dagestanian

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