by Patrick C. Ryan
(9/14/98)
A. In terms of the terminology of the recently deceased and highly respected G. A.
Klimov, the Proto-Language spoken prior to 100,000 BPE woud be characterized
as "active-type"; and I have detailed some of the characteristics of this stage of
language development earlier in this essay.
Near the end of the period (?-100K BPE: active-type), during
which African
languages were separated from those of the rest of the world, the first steps
toward word differentiation were made by the grammaticalization of the stress-accent as a
device for distinguishing momentary and durative temporal
relationships (alienable and inalienable properties).
A combination of monosyllables like:
"RO M[H]O, "being raised-human"
(durative/inalienable [possession])
was interpreted similar to the way in which we might interpret the word
"adult"
but "adult" as a mental concept could not really exist before this
combination of
monosyllables was lexicalized; which was accomplished, at first, by a simple
reduction of the interval of time between production of the two monosyllables,
contrasting with a longer interval between words not similarly more closely
bound together.
If we were to regard the common practice around the world of denoting a group of humans by a term that originally meant "human(s)" or "adult(s)" as normative, an appropriate designation for the earliest humanity would be:
"RO-M[H]O
1. Since we are used to thinking of formations like "plurals" as inflections, it may
cause some readers to pause when I state that the earliest construction of
"plurals" was of one noun modifying another noun adjectivally, with the second
noun designating a collective concept. As an example, one of the "plurals" of
"human" was
"RO-M[H]O=F[H]A
which was "human pack", a group of "humans" of a definite small number, which
looks like it should correspond to the common Egyptian plural of -w
for
masculine nouns (though I suspect strongly from Coptic phonological evidence
that the Egyptian plural really consisted -iw, i.e.
-¿A-FA, "much-number" or
-HHA-F[H]A, "many-pack"; but conceivable also:
-¿E-F/F[H]A, "-like + number
/ pack" ).
2. This contrasted with:
RO "M[H]O, "raise(d)-human"
(momentary/alienable [possession])
which was interpreted as "hero", a human who has been temporarily "raised".
3. In English, we have an analogous circumstance in the distinction we make
between:
"blackbird and black "bird.
where the black bird ("blackened") may have been a seagull present at an oilspill.
4. With commentual nouns ("verbs"), the pattern seems to be different.
There, the
distributional/aspectual element seems to draw the stress-accent one syllable to
the right (if we are correct in analyzing the underlying form as durative):
"T[?]A-R[H]A, "trembling" (durative)
+
HHA, perfective
=
T[?]A-"R[H]A-HHA, "shattered (intr.)"
(cf. IE *dra:-, *shattered)
5. During this period, two different procedures for ideational classification were developed:
a. The African/SEAsian/Australian (principally) method consisting of prefixing classificatory elements to nouns (and there were only "nouns" at this early date);
1) Cf. Chinyanja m/mw- (Class I), transparently from PL MHO, "human"; and a- (Class II), almost certainly from PL HHA, "many (animate)";
a) Many of the languages of present day Africa and SE Asia and Australia still utilize this classification method as a living mechanism of their languages.
1)) These languages can generally only be compared by way of the Proto-Language root-monosyllables (1) with languages out of their ranges because many of the complex roots (CVC(V)) seen in languages derived later did not exist in the Proto-Language at the time of the African separation (even though other independently formed CVC(V)-roots have now been developed in African-derived languages).
b. Major Asian languages formerly utilizing prefixal classification, e.g. Sino-Tibetan, have lost these prefixes as a procedure of lexical formation, and have either maintained them in a recognizable form (Tibetan) but with faded significance or masked them beyond easy recognition through extensive phonological changes (Mandarin Chinese).
1) Unless the classifier can be isolated and identified, it is usually not very productive to attempt to compare the vocabulary of SE Asia/Australia with other languages of the world.
c. However, this method of classification was minimally utilized by non-African/SEAsian/Australian languages like Nostratic (Indo-European and Afrasian) since there exist meagre traces of its former presence in a handful of IE prefix plurals but very clearly in Afrasian:
1) On the other hand, there are languages like Sumerian that, at least in the verb, show a complex mixture of prefixes and suffixes for classification and inflectional purposes.
6. The non-African/SEAsian/Australian method consisting of suffixing classificatory elements to nouns consisted of forming compounds with nouns indicating general qualities or concepts; e.g.
a. P[?]F(E), "foot, track "--- for animal names
(R[H]EP[?]F(E), "leopard-track", i.e. "leopard
[Egyptian 3b(ii), "panther"; cf. also IE eribh- in Greek
ériphos, kid])";
b. P[?]F(O), "leg" --- for place names;
c. T[?]S(O), "arm, branch" for tools;
d. These elements and others are only apparently suffixes. The stress-accent
shows that the first element was adjectival so that "R[H]EP[?]FE
should be
understood as "leopard-track", pars pro toto; however, the principal linguistic
benefit from the formation of this compound is that it enabled a conceptual
distinction to be made with other "falling" entities like "rain".
e. These "suffixes" are familiar to IEists in their reflexes -bh, -bh, and -dh.
7. Both language areas had been classifying by:
a. combining an "adjective" with its noun as illustrated above:
1) ROM[H](O), "grown human", i.e. "adult" (Sumerian
lam-3, "spouse";
Egyptian *rm in rmT, "man(kind)"; and IE *ro:m-,
"*adult", in Latin Ro:ma:];
2) HHAR[H](A), "water bird", i.e. "sea eagle" [Sumerian ara-2 (Jaritz Comb. 2549(2)) er-, "eagle";
b. combining a Topic with its Comment:
1) T[?]AR[H](E), "(onto the) hand(side)-fall", i.e. "sleep (IE dre:-, "sleep");
c. by combining a temporal adverb with its verb, creating a non-concommitant (anterior or posterior time) "tense": ?E ("then") + R[H]E ("come") in Sumerian (e)re, "go"; and IE ere-, listed under 3. er-: or-: r-, "put into motion"; many of these verbs reached separate lexical status;
1) This is the source of the ubiquitous Basque i/j-, a prefix signifying non-present tense, unrecognized by Vasconists like R. L. Trask (1997:211, "The function of this prefix is not known.");
a) Undoubtedly R. L. Trask would be surprised to learn that the common ending of the Basque "perfective participle", -i, is cognate with PL ¿A, which has reflexes of -i/y with a perfective meaning in a great many languages of the world (e.g. Egyptian -i(i)) since he steadfastly maintains the absolute isolation of Basque from any other world language but the extinct Aquitanian.
d. by combining with:
1) RO, "raised" for comparatively higher degrees; and
2) MO, "(spread) overall" for very high degrees;
e. by combining the simplex with elements which were distributional like:
1) HHA, "many (animate)"; ¿A, "much (inanimate)", etc., which has been detailed in Part Two of this essay;
1. The ancient wide semantic range of the monosyllables had effectively been
somewhat narrowed by nouns functioning as adjectives through the medium of
the stress-accent.
2. Classifiers, both prefixal and suffixal, continued to produce increased lexical refinement; and when the final vowels of CVCV-compounds were lost as an effect of the stress-accent, new lexical units were created, which exist as CVC-roots in most of the languages of the world.
3. Either Australoid underwent a unique historical experience that is different from what we might expect from the time of separation indicated by the genetic studies of Cavalli-Sforza (since it apparently never developed a common method of vocabulary enlargement and refinement; and, as a consequence, any but the simplest morphemes are originally different), or the time of separation of this population has been misestimated. One of these two circumstances must have obtained if we are to account for the incredible diversity in the forms of even rather basic concepts that we see among the Australoid-derived languages.
4. With these developments under way, language could evolve to the next evolutionary plateau postulated by Klimov: the ergative-type.
END OF PART THREE
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1. E.g. in Moré, an African language of the Niger-Congo family: bá, "father, esteemed person"; and má, "mother, aunt"; are cognate with PL P[?]O, "male ("swollen=phallus {but possibly 'testicle'}")"; and MA, "mother (breast)". In languages derived later than African languages, the form is usually a reflex of the compound ?A, "family" + these elements: ?A-P[?]O, seen in IE awo-s; and ?A-MA, seen in IE amma.
2. The numbers (#) refer to individual signs in Jaritz 1967.