Consonants

There is currently no consensus on the consonant phonemes of Afroasiatic or on their correspondences in the individual daughter languages.^[7][20] Most reconstructions agree that PAA had three series of obstruents (plosives, fricatives, and affricates) and that the continuants were all voiceless.^[21] There is also general agreement that obstruents were organized in triads of voiceless, voiced, and "emphatic" (possibly glottalized) consonants, and that PAA included pharyngeal and laryngeal consonants.^[22] Disagreement exists about whether there were labialized velar consonants.^[21]

Several Afroasiatic languages have large consonant inventories, and it is likely that this is inherited from proto-Afroasiatic.^[22] Vladimir Orel and Olga Stolbova (1995) reconstruct 32 consonant phonemes,^[23] while Christopher Ehret reconstructs 42.^[24] Of these, twelve in both reconstructions rely on the same sound correspondences, while an additional eighteen rely on more or less the same sound correspondences.^[25]

Both reconstructions also include a number of other consonants. While some of these are the same, they rely on correspondences in the daughter languages which cannot be reconciled.^[26] For instance, although both Ehret and Orel and Stolbova reconstruct *tʼ, Ehret gives its Egyptian correspondence as s, while Orel and Stolbova give it as d and t; and though both reconstruct PAA *tlʼ, Ehret gives its Arabic correspondence as ṣ, while Orel and Stolbova give it as ḍ.^[27] Additionally, Ehret has reconstructed 11 consonants not found in Orel and Stolbova, while Orel and Stolbova have reconstructed 2 not found in Ehret. The additional consonants are:^[28]

• Ehret: pʼ, ʃ, ts, z, dz, tʃ, dʒ, tʼ, sʼ, tlʼ, dɮ, ɣ⁽ʷ⁾, x⁽ʷ⁾
• Orel and Stolbova: ts, dz, tsʼ, tʃ, dʒ, tʼ, ɬ, tɬʼ, ʁ, χ, q, qʼ

An earlier, larger reconstruction from 1992 by Orel, Stolbova and other collaborators from the Moscow School of Comparative Linguistics including Igor Diakonoff and Alexander Militarev includes also *pʼ, *tɬ, *ʃ, *kx⁽ʷ⁾, *gɣ⁽ʷ⁾, *kxʼ⁽ʷ⁾, *x⁽ʷ⁾.^[29]

Taking Ehret's labialized velars as equivalent to Orel and Stolbova's non-labialized set, and taking Ehret's extra nasals as equivalent to Orel and Stolbova's <n>,^[25] the two reconstructions mostly agree on the following correspondences between the different branches of Afroasiatic:

Vowels

Attempts to reconstruct the vocalic system of Proto-Afroasiatic vary considerably.^[21] While there is no consensus, many scholars prefer to reconstruct a simple three vowel system with long and short *a, *i, and *u.^[34] Some of the difficulty in reconstruction is likely related to the use of vowel changes known as apophony (or "ablaut") in the "root-and-pattern" system found in various Afroasiatic languages.^[11][35] In addition to apophony, some modern AA languages display vowel changes referred to as umlaut.^[36]

Igor Diakonoff, Viktor Porkhomovksy and Olga Stolbova proposed in 1987 that Proto-Afroasiatic had a two vowel system of *a and *ə, with the later realized as [i] or [u] depending on its contact with labial or labialized consonants.^[37] Christopher Ehret has proposed a five vowel system with long and short *a, *e, *o, *i, and *u, arguing that his reconstruction is supported by the Chadic and Cushitic vowels.^[38] Vladimir Orel and Olga Stolbova instead proposed a six vowel system with *a, *e, *o, *i, *ü ([y]), and *u; they further argued that the central vowels *e and *o could not occur together in the same root.^[36] Taking a different approach, Ronny Meyer and H. Ekkehard Wolff propose that Proto-Afroasiatic may have had no vowels as such, instead employing various syllabic consonants (*l, *m, *n, *r) and semivowels or semivowel-like consonants (*w, *y, *ʔ, *ḥ, *ʕ, *h, *ʔʷ, *ḥʷ, *ʕʷ, *hʷ) to form syllables; vowels would have later been inserted into these syllables ("vocalogenesis"), developing first into a two vowel system (*a and *ə), as supported by Berber and Chadic data, and then developing further vowels.^[39]

Tones and accent

Some scholars postulate that Proto-Afroasiatic was a tonal language, with tonality subsequently lost in some branches. Igor Diakonoff argued for the existence of tone based on his reconstruction of many otherwise homophonous words.^[40] Christopher Ehret instead takes the fact that three branches of AA have tone as his starting point; he has postulated a tonal system of at least two tonal phonemes, falling tone, rising tone, and possibly a third tone, level tone.^[41]

Other scholars argue that Proto-AA had a pitch accent and some branches subsequently developed tone.^[42] Such scholars postulate that tones developed to compensate for lost or reduced syllables, and note that certain tones are often associated with certain syllable-final consonants.^[43] Zygmunt Frajzyngier and Erin Shay note that in AA tonal languages, tone usually has a grammatical rather than a lexical function, and argue that there is thus no basis to reconstruct it as a lexical feature in PAA, as Diakonoff does; they find Ehret's reasoning more sound.^[44]

Syllable structure

Igor Diakonoff argues that Proto-Afroasiatic required a consonant at both the beginning of a syllable and the end of a word, and that only one consonant was possible at the beginning or end of a syllable.^[45] Zygmont Frajzyngier and Erin Shay note that these rules appear to be based on Semitic structures, whereas Chadic includes syllables beginning with vowels as well as initial and final consonant clusters.^[16] Christopher Ehret argues that all word stems in PAA took the shape CV (with a possible alternate form VC) and CVC, with suffixes often giving the syllabic shape CVCC.^[46]

David Wilson agrees with Diakonoff that the root syllable could only begin with a single consonant, but adds a requirement that syllables have two mora weight and argues for the possibility of an extra-syllabic consonant at the end of a root (CVC-C or CV:C).^[47]

Biradical and triradical roots

The degree to which the Proto-AA verbal root was originally triradical (having three consonants) or biradical (having two consonants) is debated.^[1] Among the modern branches, most Semitic roots are triradical, whereas most Chadic, Omotic, and Cushitic roots are biradical.^[48] The "traditional theory" argues for original triradicalism in the family, as is the case in Semitic.^[49] In this theory, almost all biradical roots are the result of the loss of a third consonant.^[50][51] As early as the Middle Ages, however, grammarians had noticed that some triradical roots in Arabic differed in only one consonant and had related meanings.^[52] According to supporters of original triradicalism such as Gideon Goldenberg, these variations are common in language and inconclusive for the matter. He compares phonetic similarity between words with similar meanings in English such as glow, gleam, glitter, glaze, and glade.^[53]

Other scholars argue that the PAA root may have originally been mostly biradical, to which a third radical was then added.^[42] Christopher Ehret argues that the third consonants were derivational affixes, proposing as many as thirty-seven separate verbal extensions that subsequently became fossilized as third consonants.^[54] This theory has been criticized by some, such as Andrzej Zaborski and Alan Kaye, as being too many extensions to be realistic, though Zygmont Frajzyngier and Erin Shay note that some Chadic languages have as many as twelve extensions.^[55] An alternative model was proposed by Georges Bohas, who argued that the third consonants were added to differentiate roots of similar meaning but without the third consonant having a particular meaning itself.^[56] Biradical verbs may also have been made triradical on the model of so-called "weak verbs," which have a final radical y or w.^[52]

Many scholars do not argue for the original nature of either biradical or triradical roots, instead arguing that there are original triradical roots, original biradical roots, and triradical roots resulting from the addition of a consonant.^[50] Not all triradical roots can be convincingly explained as coming from biradicals, and there are cases where triradical roots with similar meanings appear to differ in one consonant due to root-internal changes or derivation via rhyme.^[52] Andréas Stauder argues that the evidence from Ancient Egyptian shows that both tri- and biradical verbs were probably present in Proto-Afroasiatic.^[57] Igor Diakonoff, in contrast, argued that the PAA root was originally biradical but saw the biradical roots outside of Semitic as largely the result of losing a third consonant.^[58]

Root-and-pattern-morphology

Afroasiatic languages feature a "root-and-pattern" (nonconcatenative) system of morphology, in which the root consists of consonants alone and vowels are inserted via apophony according to "templates" to create words.^[42][59] A "template" consists of one or more vowels and sometimes a consonant; consonants included in the pattern often involve gemination.^[60]

If root-and-pattern morphology originated in Proto-Afroasiatic, then an explanation must be found for why it has mostly disappeared in the Omotic and Chadic branches; if it was not present in PAA, then an explanation must be found for why it developed independently in the Semitic, Egyptian, and Cushitic branches.^[61]

Case alignment

Hans-Jürgen Sasse proposed that Proto-Afroasiatic was a marked nominative language, in which the nominative case is only used to mark the subject of a verb, whereas an absolutive case is the citation form of the noun and also marks the object.^[62] Evidence for marked nominative alignment comes primarily from the use of cases in Cushitic and the so-called "states" of the noun in Berber languages; additionally, Helmut Satzinger has argued that the forms of the pronouns in the other branches show evidence of marked nominative alignment.^[63]

Igor Diakonoff instead argued that Proto-Afroasiatic was an ergative-absolutive language, in which the ergative case marks the subject of transitive verbs and the absolutive case marks both the object of transitive verbs and the subject of intransitive verbs.^[64] Satzinger suggests that Proto-Afroasiatic may have developed from ergative-absolutive to a marked nominative language.^[65] However, Abdelaziz Allati notes that, if PAA was originally ergative-aligned, it is unclear why both the attested ancient languages and modern AA languages predominantly have nominative-accusative alignment.^[66]

Word order

Proto-Afroasiatic word order has not yet been established.^[67] Igor Diakonoff proposed that PAA had verb-subject-object word order (VSO word order), meaning that the verb would come first in most sentences.^[55] Carsten Peust likewise supports VSO word order, as this is found in the two oldest attested branches, Egyptian and Semitic.^[68] However, Ronny Meyer and H. Ekkehard Wolff argue that this proposal does not concord with Diakonoff's suggestion that PAA was an ergative-absolutive language, in which subject and object are not valid categories.^[69] Zygmont Frajzyngier and Erin Shay further note that, if Proto-Afroasiatic had VSO word order, then an explanation must be found for why two of its branches, Omotic and Cushitic, show subject–object–verb word order (SOV word order).^[55] Both sets of scholars argue that this area needs more research.^[55][69]

Grammatical gender

A system of sex-based male and female grammatical gender is widely agreed to have been present in Proto-Afroasiatic.^[70] However, Russell Schuh argues that there was no gender distinction in the plural, as this feature is found only in Semitic and Berber (see also personal pronouns).^[71] Christopher Ehret argues against the consensus that grammatical gender existed in Proto-Afroasiatic, arguing that its development is an isogloss separating all other Afroasiatic languages from Omotic, which alone preserves the original, genderless grammar of the proto-language.^[72] Other scholars such as Lionel Bender argue that Omotic has lost grammatical gender despite originally having had it.^[73]

A feminine morpheme -Vt is found widely in Afroasiatic languages.^[74] Lameen Souag argues that this feminine ending -t is probably a case of a grammaticalized demonstrative, as this feature has also independently developed in some Chadic and Cushitic languages.^[75] Diakonoff argued that the original gender system of Afroasiatic had masculine endings *-y/*-w (later *-Vy/*-Vw) and feminine endings *-H/*-y (later *-āʔ/*-āy), the later of which was later ousted by feminine *-(a)t on nouns.^[76] Marijn van Putten has reconstructed a feminine ending *-ay/*-āy from Semitic and Berber evidence: he argues that this ending comes down from the last common ancestor of Berber and Semitic, which may be Proto-Afroasiatic.^[77] Despite arguing that Proto-Afroasiatic had no grammatical gender, Ehret argues that there is evidence for natural gender in all branches, including Omotic, perhaps marked originally by an opposition of PAA *-u (masculine) and *-i (feminine), as also found in the second person singular pronouns.^[72]

In addition to grammatical gender, Igor Diakonoff argues that Afroasiatic languages show traces of a nominal classification system, which was already unproductive in the Proto-Afroasiatic stage. In particular, he noted a suffix *-Vb- used to mark harmful animals.^[78] Vladimir Orel also attests less well-defined uses for this suffix,^[79] while Ehret takes this as a suffix to mark animals and parts of the body.^[80]

Number

Afroasiatic languages today clearly distinguish singular and plural.^[42] One of the first features of Proto-Afroasiatic proposed by Joseph Greenberg was the existence of "internal-a plurals" (a type of broken plural): a pluralizing morpheme in which a vowel *a was inserted between the two final consonants of the root, possibly replacing another vowel via apophony.^[81] However, Paul Newman has argued that while plurals via vowel alteration are frequent in Chadic, they cannot be reconstructed back to Proto-Chadic or Proto-Afroasiatic.^[82] Andréas Stauder likewise argues that Coptic and Egyptian plurals via vowel change may have developed independently.^[83] Lameen Souag argues that while some form of vowel-changing plural likely goes back to Proto-Afroasiatic, many of the templates found in the branches likely do not.^[84]

Several Afroasiatic languages of the Semitic, Chadic, and Cushitic branches attest pluralization via reduplication, a feature which has often been assumed to go back to Proto-Afroasiatic.^[85] Robert Ratcliffe has instead argued that this reduplicating pattern originated after PAA, as a way to allow biradical nouns to insert "internal-a," a process which then became generalized to other roots in some languages; as an alternative hypothesis, they may have developed from forms with plural suffixes.^[86] Afroasiatic languages also use several pluralizing affixes – few of these, however, are present in more than a few branches, making them difficult to reconstruct.^[87]

In addition to a singular and plural, Egyptian and Semitic attest a dual, the endings of which can be reconstructed respectively as Ancient Egyptian: *-a(y) and Semitic *-ā (nominative) and *-ay (oblique).^[88] These endings are very similar to each other,^[83] and due to the dual's attestation in the two earliest attested branches of Afroasiatic it is also usually reconstructed for the proto-language.^[89][90] The loss of the dual in the other branches over time is a well attested feature in languages, including within the Egyptian and Semitic branches themselves.^[88]

Case system

There is widespread agreement that Proto-Afroasiatic had case inflexion.^[70] First proposed by Hans-Jürgen Sasse on the basis of his reconstruction of the Proto-Cushitic case system in 1984,^[62] Proto-Afroasiatic is usually reconstructed with a case system similar to Proto-Semitic.^[93] This gives a nominative ending*-u, accusative or absolutive *-a, and genitive *-i.^[91] Besides Proto-Semitic, evidence for these endings is derived from the Cushitic languages and has been argued to exist in Berber as well. The Egyptian nominal ending -w, found on some masculine nouns, may also be evidence of this system.^[94] Some evidence for nominative -u may also exist from the Omotic branch.^[81] By the evidence of Semitic, in the dual and plural, only the nominative and an oblique were distinguished.^[95] David Wilson, on the other hand, argues that the case endings are often not cognate in the individual branches of Afroasiatic and that this precludes their reconstruction for the proto-language.^[96]

Old Akkadian and Palaeosyrian have two additional cases, a locative in -um and a terminative case in -iš.^[91] Scholars debate whether these are vestigial cases or adverbial postpositions.^[97] The ending -iš has often been connected to the Egyptian postposition js and is sometimes used to reconstruct a Proto-Afroasiatic locative case.^[98][91] Diakonoff also believed he could reconstruct a comitative-dative case in *-dV or *-Vd, an ablative-comparative case in *-kV, a "directive" case in *-l, and an ablative case in *-p.^[99]

Derived nouns and adjectives

Personal pronouns

The forms of the personal pronouns are very stable throughout Afroasiatic (excluding Omotic),^[69] but there is no consensus on what the reconstructed set of Afroasiatic pronouns might have looked like.^[114] Most modern branches have an independent / absolute pronoun, an object pronoun, and a suffix /possessive pronoun.^[115] According to Igor Diakonoff, the suffix/possessive pronoun was originally used as the object of verbs and to show a possessive relationship, the "independent" pronoun served to show emphasis, and the "object" pronoun was used to mark the subject of intransitive verbs and the direct object of transitive verbs.^[116]

All Afroasiatic branches differentiate between masculine and feminine third person singular pronouns, and all except for Cushitic and Omotic also differentiate between second person singular masculine and feminine pronouns.^[69] Semitic and Berber also differentiate between masculine and feminine second and third person plural, but there is no evidence for this in Ancient Egyptian, Cushitic, or Chadic, perhaps indicating that there was no gender distinction in the plural in Proto-Afroasiatic.^[117] Chadic has both an inclusive and exclusive form of "we", which Igor Diakonoff and Václav Blažek reconstruct also for Proto-Afroasiatic.^[118][119]

Helmut Satzinger has argued that Proto-Afroasiatic only distinguished between the "object" and "possessive" pronouns, deriving the independent pronouns via various processes in the branches.^[120] He argues that the independent pronouns derive from various strategies combining pronominal elements with different nominal or pronominal bases.^[121] Václav Blažek reconstructs an original set of independent pronouns but argues that the ones found in most current Afroasiatic languages arose by a process of suppletion similar to that argued by Satzinger.^[122] An example of one such process is the use of the prefix *ʔan-/*ʔin-, which appears in the Semitic and Old Egyptian first person independent pronouns, the Old Egyptian, Cushitic, and Semitic second person singular and plural pronouns, and the Old Egyptian and Berber third person singular and plural independent pronouns.^[123] While Ehret reconstructs this as the original form of the first person singular pronoun,^[124] other scholars argue that this element either represents a form of the copula 'to be' or a particle meaning 'self'.^[125]

Determiners

Afroasiatic languages attest a variety of determiners, only some of which are likely to derive from Proto-Afroasiatic.^[126] As first noticed by Joseph Greenberg, Afroasiatic languages in all branches but Omotic attest a series of third person agreement markers in the form n- (masculine), t- (feminine), and n- (plural), which probably derive from Proto-Afroasiatic determiners; Omotic attests t- (feminine) alone of this set.^[127] Additionally, Omotic attests a masculine agreement form k-, while Chadic and Cushitic show a gender- and number-neutral form k-: both likely go back to a Proto-Afroasiatic determiner *k-,^[128][129] reconstructed by Ehret as *kaa 'this'.^[130] Diakonoff argues that in Proto-Afroasiatic these forms were originally demonstrative pronouns that later developed into third person personal pronouns in some branches and into genitive markers in others.^[126] Ehret also reconstructs a demonstrative *h- ('this/that') or *ha- ('this/that one').^[131]

Interrogatives

The most common Afroasiatic interrogative pronoun is *mV,^[132] which Ehret reconstructs as *ma, *mi 'what?'.^[133] Diakonoff argued that *mV ultimately derived from a demonstrative stem *m-.^[126] Only the Semitic reflexes of this root have separate forms for animate ('"who?") and inanimate ("what?") referents.^[134] The Old Egyptian and Berber descendants both appear to be used regardless of whether the referent is a person or thing.^[135] It is therefore not clear if this pronoun differentiated animacy in Proto-Afroasiatic.^[136] Lack of differentiation between "who?" and "what?" is also sporadically attested in Semitic and Cushitic, but appears to be absent in Chadic; most modern AA languages use different lexical roots to make the distinction.^[137]

Ehret also reconstructs a second interrogative *wa-/*wi- 'what?'.^[138] The PAA origin of this form is also accepted by Takács, but he reconstructs it as *ʔaw/*wa 'who?'.^[139][140]

Diakonoff also reconstructs an interrogative adjective, *ayyV-, which he claims left traces in Semitic, Cushitic, and Omotic.^[126] Lipiński, on the other hand, holds this term to be Semitic and deriving from a particle ʔay 'where?'.^[141] Takács derives this particle from PAA *ʔay/*ya, a variant of *ʔaw/*wa 'who?'.^[140]

Tenses, aspects, and moods (TAMs)

There is little agreement about which tenses, aspects, or moods (TAMs) Proto-Afroasiatic might have had: it may have had two basic forms (indicative vs. subjunctive, state vs. action, transitive vs. intransitive, or perfective vs. imperfective) or three (unmarked vs. perfective vs. imperfective).^[142] There is also debate about whether some of the forms may have been nominal (using verbal nouns), or possibly participial or gerundival, rather than purely verbal.^[143] TAMs may have been indicated by both changes in the verb stem and the use of suffixes and prefixes.^[144] Some scholars argue that prefixes were used for "eventive" (describing things happening) aspects, as opposed to the "suffix conjugation," which described states.^[145] Abdelaziz Allati, however, argues that this is a later development, which he associates primarily with Semitic.^[146]

Derived verbs