Omotic

Previous research has shown that the Boro people, also known as the Shinasha, are in the process of shifting from the Borna language to Oromo and Amharic (Lemma and Wedekind 2002). However, the qualitative information gleaned from sociolinguistic interviews had not yet been quantified by the testing of bilingual proficiency. A new survey of the Boro area, completed in 2004, has combined bilingualism testing with a study of social interaction and language attitudes. This paper will present the results of the survey, showing the patterns of language vitality and language endangerment in several different Boro communities. The vitality of Borna across a wider area than expected, combined with the Boro people’s interest in preserving their language, points to the possibility that language shift will be stabilized and eventually reversed.

The main purpose of this survey was to determine whether the Gayil people of southwestern Ethiopia could understand and use literature in Aari, which is related to their speech variety. According to community leaders in that area, the Gayil cannot speak or understand the variety of Aari that has already been developed. This claim was investigated by means of sociolinguistic interviews and a Recorded Text Test (RTT) using literature published in Aari.

This study comes to the conclusion that the Gayil have very little comprehension of existing Aari literature and that the best strategy for providing them with access to written materials is to start a Gayil language development project. Gayil is a vital language, and many of its speakers do not appear to be adequately bilingual in any developed speech variety, including Southern Aari. The linguistic relationship between Gayil and Southern Aari is not close enough for them to use the same body of literature, as shown by the text test results and feedback from both test subjects and interviewees. A literacy campaign in the Gayil area would also appear to be a viable option in spite of the current low literacy rate, as a great deal of interest in literacy was expressed among the Gayil interviewees. For further details and discussion of these results, please refer to the explanations in the study that follows.

This volume is divided into ten chapters and two parts:

I: Cushitic, Berber, Semitic, Omotic
and Proto-Afro-Asiatic

CHAPTER 2, ‘Negation in Highland East Cushitic’, takes a comparative look at the forms and functions of negative morphemes in languages belonging to the Highland East Cushitic (HEC) branch of Cushitic, all of which possess at least two, at the most five different negative morphemes. In all HEC languages except Sidaama, negation is indicated by negative suffixes on verbal or non-verbal predicates. In Sidaama, the negative morpheme is a proclitic, the host of which is not necessarily the predicate. After a short typological profile of the HEC languages sketched in section 2, section 3 shows which negative morphemes are used in which clause types. Section 3.1 elaborates on the standard negation strategy. Section 3.2 and 3.3 take a closer look at negative existential clauses and negative non-verbal clauses. The subsequent sections 3.4 and 3.5 are dedicated to non-declarative main clauses, i.e. imperative and jussive clauses. The negation of converb clauses is examined in section 3.6. Relative clause negation is dealt with in section 3.7. A short excursus on the means of negating verbal nouns is found in section 3.8. In section 4, the division of labour of the negative morphemes in the individual HEC languages is compared and diachronic issues are addressed. Section 5 discusses how the analysis of negation can contribute to our understanding of the internal relationships in HEC.

CHAPTER 3, ‘From Proto-Berber to Proto-Afroasiatic’, proposes that traces of fossilized linguistic structures in ancient toponymic Berber layers and their preserved relics in the modern varieties of the language enable us to access a set of characteristics of proto-Berber and identify the different stages of evolution of this language and the type of evolution it has undergone (see Allati, 2002, 2006, 2008, 2009). These Berber reconstructions are probably not without influence on our understanding of remaining elements of ancient stages still maintained in other Afroasiatic branches, and, in general, of structural features that are supposed to be proto-Afroasiatic, as well as of the evolution this family has undergone. Now, how do the proto-Afroasiatic and its evolution appear at the point where Berber reconstructions are available? For reasons of clarity and to lay out some steps to facilitate productive discussions, I would like to answer this question in the form of a set of concise points.

CHAPTER 4, ‘On Construct State Nominals: Evidence for a Predicate Approach’, argues that construct state nominals are predicates (of type <e,t>), because the only way adjectives can be interpreted in the context of constructs is if they compose with the construct as a whole. The leading semantic account on constructs, namely the one which treats constructs as individuals (of type e), here referred to as the Individual approach, succeeds in accounting for the ban on the definite determiner semantically. However, it encounters fundamental difficulties with constructs composing with adjectives. The chapter shows that these are difficulties which the predicate approach easily overcomes. However, establishing that constructs are predicates and abandoning the individual approach leave a supporter of the predicate approach with the task of explaining the ban on the definite determiner without resorting to type mismatch. To resolve this, and following a phrasal movement of a projection containing both Head and Non-Head to SpecD for definite phrases and Spec# for indefinite phrases, this chapter proposes an explanation on the ban on the occurrence of definite determiners on the head of a construct by the unavailability of a head noun in D that allows the determiner to be realised.

CHAPTER 5, ‘Ancient Aramaic and its Use in the Biblical Translation, Targum Onqelos’, explores Targum Onqelos, the translation of the Pentateuch into Aramaic. According to the Babylonian Talmud (Megila 3a), this translation is attributed to Onqelos the Convert. According to research, however, the identity, time, and place of the translation are not definite. In the matter of the translator’s identity – Onqelos (or Akylas) was the nephew of the Roman Emperor Hadrian (or Titus). He converted to Judaism in the early second century AD. Scholars are divided as to whether Onqelos’ translation of the Pentateuch into Aramaic and Akylas’ translation of the Bible into Greek were written by the same person or two different people. While the majority believe that each translation was made by a different individual, a minority claim that one individual made both translations. Targum Onqelos is a literal-semantic translation of the majority of Pentateuch verses, closely adhering to the Hebrew text without deviations, additions, or omissions. This Chapter discusses three types of Pentateuch verses for which the Targum Onqelos deviates from the typical literal mode of translation.

CHAPTER 6, Addressing Strangers in Riyadh, proposes that when addressing an adult Saudi male stranger, the terms that are used depend on the sex of the speaker, his age and the situation surrounding the interaction. In normal situations, where the address mode is formal, male speakers across all age groups usually use the terms ax (brother, and its derivatives) and ash-shaix (sheikh) for the function of addressing adult males. In addition to these terms adult male speakers (as opposed to teenagers) also use the terms ťaieb (good natured), al-ħabib (beloved one), al-ﻻali (most valuable) and abu-i (my father). This difference between adults and teenagers may indicate an increased level of politeness that comes as one ages and as one becomes more exposed to different types of addressee. However, this variation could also be the beginning of a shift in what is perceived as polite in the Riyadh society. In informal situations, adult male speakers usually use the term abu ash-shabab (father of youths) in addition to the terms above, while male teenagers also use abu (father of Ø). Working females and housewives usually use the terms axu-i (my brother) and walad (boy, especially with younger males) while younger females usually use axu-i (my brother) and law samaht (excuse me). In situations marked with anger or annoyance male speakers usually use the term abu ash-shabab (father of youths) but may prefer the terms axu-i (my brother) and abu-i (my father) if they want to maintain a polite demeanor. Terms like walad (boy) and hih or hoh (hey you), however, are considered extremely impolite if used to address adult male strangers by other males.

CHAPTER 7, Meeting the Prince of Darkness: A Semantic Analysis of English The Devil, Arabic Ashshayţān, and Hebrew Hasatan, explores the folk understanding of the English concept the devil and its Arabic and Israeli Hebrew near equivalents (ashshayţān and hasatan, respectively). Based on linguistic evidence, analysis is carried out to delineate the similarities and differences between the three concepts. The results demonstrate similarities in how ordinary native English speakers, Muslim Arabs, and native Israeli speakers categorize these beings, as well as what they think about their number, nature, and relation with people. Differences emerge when discussing where these beings live, whether or not there is a hierarchy among them, what they look like or how they are visualized, and how they are different from human beings. Using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) method, an explication is constructed for each term. The three explications, whose building blocks are universal human concepts and are translatable into most languages, provides the cultural outsider with an insider’s perspective on each of the three terms. One of the implications of this chapter is the limit of translation.

CHAPTER 8, Omotic lexicon in its Afro-Asiatic setting II: Omotic *b- with nasals, *r, *l, and weak consonants, examines Omotic lexical roots with *b- and is hoped to become the part a set of papers identifying the Afro-Asiatic heritage in the Omotic lexicon according to initial consonants. The aim of the chapter is to present new etymologies in addition to those Omotic lexemes whose etymologies have already been demonstrated by other authors. In the first part of this series, Omotic roots with *b- plus dentals, sibilants, and velars are dealt with from an etymological standpoint. The numeration of the lexical entries is continuous beginning from the very first paper

II: Asiatic Etymology versus Etymythology

CHAPTER 9, ‘A Syllabic Melodic Structure in a Japanese Obon Song – A Probable Hebrew-Aramaic Narrative'.

CHAPTER 10, ‘Asia at Both Ends: An Introduction to Etymythology, with a Response to Chapter 9’."

This survey was conducted to investigate the need for development projects in the Northern Mao, Kwama, and Komo speech varieties of western Ethiopia. A team of four surveyors conducted two trips to the area in December 2003 and January 2004. They used questionnaires, gathered wordlists, and conducted both Oromo proficiency testing and intelligibility testing.

If language development was started in the area covered by this survey, current findings indicate project needs in the Northern Mao, Kwama, and Komo speech varieties. Although Oromo is the most important language of wider communication (LWC) in the area, the majority of people belonging to these ethnic groups have only limited proficiency in Oromo. The results of this survey confirmed the existence of a separate Komo speech variety; however, they show that development in Kwama could also benefit the Komo people. Future development in Northern Mao could benefit the Mao speakers of both the Bambassi area and the Didessa Valley.

The article analyzes the expression of understood objects in Somali. There is no object pronoun of 3rd person in Somali; this gap is usually interpreted as a “full Ø”, which saturates the valency of a transitive verb and forces a reading with an anaphoric object. The article shows that this is empirically incorrect: in certain configurations, Somali transitive verbs admit either an anaphoric or a generic reading even in the absence of either an object NP or a non-null pronoun. In order to ensure a generic-object reading, Somali has further recourse to noun incorporation. The article explores the productivity of this strategy as a detopicalizing, backgrounding mechanism and argues that the overall generality of the anaphoric reading is the result of the obligatoriness of focus marking.