The Influence of Cushitic on the Semitic Languages of Ethiopia a Problem of Substratum

Abstract

The student of the Ethiopic languages, 2 even though he knows that these languages belong to the Semitic group, cannot help being struck by their non-Semitic character. Even Antoine d' Abbadie, author of the Dictionnaire de la langue amarifiiia (Paris, 1881), stated in the introduction of his work (p. XXVII) that Amharic and Gurague belong to "sous-semitique", and elswhere 1 he classes in "sous-semitique" the Semitic languages of Ethiopia: Amharic, Gurague, Gafat, Harari, and the Cushitic languages: Galla, Somali, Saho-Afar. The reason which accounts for the non-Semitic character of the Ethiopic languages is the result of the influence of the neighboring languages. The Semites of South Arabia who conquered Ethiopia 4 imposed their Semitic languag<"s on a country in which Cushitic languages were and still are spoken.C 1 It is not surprising, therefore, that the Cushitic substratum has very strongly influenced the Ethiopic languages in phonology, morphology, syntax, and vocabulary.' This fact has long been recognized by students of the linguistic problems of Ethiopic. 7 There has been, however, no general inl For the abbreviations, see at the end.

A parsing view on inconsistent word order: Articles in Tigre and its relatives

“…In Tigrinya, we likewise find the alternatives Noun-Genitive and w0y-Genitive-Noun, and Noun-woy-Genitive is likewise rare (pace Leslau 1941: 41). The rarity of Noun-«0y-Genitive is borne out by an inspection of Leslau's (1941) own texts, and is confirmed by native Speakers, who tend to reject it. 8 In this sense, Leslau's examples (55a,b) are not on the same plane: while the former is equivalent to kälb(i) hawway (Noun-Genitive), the latter is only possible äs an afterthought or with very long genitives.…”

“…The point is that in Tigrinya the article is an independent word, and not a clitic. As such, it can be separated from the noun, for instance by a relative clause (59) or also by a genitive (60): (59) ?otu zo-molä säb ART.M REL-died man 'the dead man' (Leslau 1941: 194) (60) ?Qtu nay sollomat qämis ART.M GEN decoration shirt 'the decoration shirt' (Leslau 1941: 301) Leslau's French translation of (60) ('cette chemise de decoration') seems to imply that when the article precedes a genitive it has a certain deictic value, and that an NP modified by a genitive is definite by default, just like in Tigre. Compare also, with and without article:…”

Wallacea, a Linguistic Area

“…Some of the most well-described and best known are: the South Asian Linguistic Area (Emeneau 1956, 1974, Masica 1976, the Ethiopian Linguistic Area (Leslau 1945, 1952, Hetzron 1975, Ferguson 1976, Tosco 2000, the Meso-American Linguistic Area (Campbell, Kaufman & Smith-Stark 1986, Campbell 1992, van der Auwera 1998), the "Standard Average" European Linguistic Area (Whorf 1956, Haspelmath 1998, and the Mainland Southeast Asian Linguistic Area (Clark 1992, Matisoff 2001, Enfield 2005.…”

Reviews

“…Among the reasons adduced preferring an original Proto-Semitic velarization-pharyngealization theory are ( 1) documented phonetic changes and transcriptions in various Semitic languages; (2) emphatic assimilation of some Semitic roots (qtl, ktf, qfl 'to kill'); and (3) the appearance in Akkadian of lui in germane environments (e.g., lqurburn/ for *lqarbum)/'near' [p. 105]). But, most Semitists today would probably accept an original Proto-Semitic glottalization for the "emphatics", whereas Cushitic substratum is, I think, a more probable contributing factor in the case of Ethio-Semitic ejectives (see Leslau [ 1945] forfurther details).…”