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  • Hetzron - The Agaw Languages (1976)

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    A description of the Agaw languages (Cushitic).

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    A description of the Agaw languages (Cushitic).

    Droits d'auteur :

    © All Rights Reserved
    Téléchargez comme PDF ou lisez en ligne sur Scribd
    Signaler comme contenu inapproprié
    553 vues52 pages

    Hetzron - The Agaw Languages (1976)

    Transféré par

    Allan Bomhard
    A description of the Agaw languages (Cushitic).

    Droits d'auteur :

    © All Rights Reserved
    Téléchargez comme PDF ou lisez en ligne sur Scribd
    Signaler comme contenu inapproprié
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    AAL 3/3 - Hetzron Monographic Journals of the Near East General Editor: Giorgio Buccellati Afroastatic Gnguistics Editor: Robert Hetzron, Santa Barbara Associate Editor: Russell G. Schuh, Los Angeles Advisory Board: Aviel Bloch, Berkeley John B, Callender, Los Angeles Talmy Givén, Los Angeles ‘Thomas G. Penchoen, Los Angeles Stanislav Segert, Los Angeles ‘Volume 3 Issue 3 June 1976 The Agaw Languages by, Robert Hetzron @ Undena Publications Malibu 1976 AFROASIATIC LINGUISTICS AAL includes contributions in linguistics within the vast domain of Afro Articles of general, theoretical interest using Afro studies are included Baitor: Robert Hetzron (1346 San Rafael, Santa Barbara, Ca. 93109, USA) ‘Advisory Board: A. Bloch, J. B. Callender, T. Givén, T. G. Penchoen, S. Segert (Hamito Semitic) languages. ie material, descriptive, historical and comparative MONOGRAPHIC JOURNALS OF THE NEAR EAST ‘MINE is a system of journals on the Near East, with each journal devoted to a specialized study area, and each issue consisting of a single article. Current journals in the system are Afroasiatic Linguistics and Assur. General Subscription For a prepayment of $12.50 the subscriber selects random issues from within the entire system as desired, up ‘0 a total of 200 pages. The subscriber is also entitled to (1) periodical lists of abstracts from all journals inthe system, and (2) reservation to any journal within the system, whereby issues of a given journal are sent on approval immediately upon publication (and may be returned within two weeks). Library Subscription ‘A prepayment of $12.50 for each journal in the system secures all isues ofa single volume as soon as they ai Published. ‘This subscription schedule does not allow the selection of random issues; in return, a discount is provided in the form of a greater number of pages for the basic price of $12.50 (since a volume will normally include more than 200 pages). Library subscriptions are available to both institutions and individual scholars. Individual issues are numbered sequentially within each volume. Each issue has its own pagination. A volume is closed when a total of between 200 and 250 pages is reached. A ttle page and a table of contents listing all issues within each volume are sent to all subscribers at the close of a volume. Periodicity in the order of appearance of issues is not predetermined. A volume, however, is generally completed within one year. Institutional and Professional discount of 20% on single subscriptions (higher on larger orders). Payment must accompany orders from individuals. A handling fee of 70d will be charged to Libraries if order is not prepaid. Order from: UNDENA PUBLICATIONS, P.O. Box 97, Malibu, California 90265, US.A. © 1976 by Undona Publications. ‘All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photo-copy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Monoghaphic Journats of the Near East Agnoasiatic Linguistics 3/3 (June 1976) THE AGAW LANGUAGES * Robert Herzron University of California Santa Barbara, California 93106 ‘A short presentation of the speakers of Agaw and a critical survey of the Linguistic literature on this group of Cushitic Languages are followed by a concise conparative-descriptive gramar, summing up what is known about these languages at present, with occasional historical reconstructions. CONTENTS page CONTENIS. 22.2... eee bd00c005nodacoa 1 1. NOMENCLATURE 6 oe ee qocaoccdccdcn ee ae Ld Ag DDL BoouuboguGoodGq0bn eee 2 12. Bilin 2 bd bboooaosae so fee ees 13. k/xVom eee ns Ses ee eet 1d. Quara/Falasha DPD DIDI Dit eee 1.8. Awiya-Danot = Ammgi ) 1222 poGnodonnbendcadnenoes fio4 2, THE AGN LANGUAGES © eee eee 5 STUDIES ON AGN oe ee eee ee es) A SKETCH OF AGAW ee eee tee 10 PR TEEN GucgodabdGounoucnoaashGaduaas 23% 10) 4.0.1. Sources 2222 22D P IIIT III DIDI PDP iiiiiit 10 4.0.2. The branches of Agaw 22.222 D DDD IDI DI II DII I 10 dey Picaohoay it ee granme is ernest eg a (REG Te gddcodgundodebaGddnoddesuaaao rt RIE eT ooagcbddt ddd 4nbsodscod0codanoG st 41113, Prosody 212 112 fe oo Se iz 4.14 Some morphophonemic aitemations 222222220002 cae iz Oy eieasa eid tn oonsonant ferertiontee ee ees eee rete ee 2 @A2. Amgi devoicing. 2. IID D DIDI l 3 4.1/4.3. Awngi assimilation of vocalic height’ ¢ 2. 2. 22 e 13 4.1/4.4. Bilin vowel harmony... ee ee ete eee 14 4.2. Morphology eo ce 4 (ERGO ao oonoodeon u 4.2.1.1, Gender and nunber | ° pit 4 PERE (eon tos cuobdmcocoscoodsdadcme ld “I am very grateful to Dr. H.-J. Sasse for generously supplying his unpublished data on Kemant. Dr. M, Saltarelli also sent me sone unpublished material. Drs. M.L. Bender and A. Zaborski read a draft of the manuscript and proposed some changes. I am indebted to them. AAL 3, 31 2 Robert Hetzron [AAL 3/3 4.2.1.2.1, Sentence-case oe eee 16 2182126 cal civa eee eee eres meee a8 . 4:2.1.2-2.1, Nonagreeing genitive’ | 111211! 18 412011212121 agreeing genitive... 12222) acy 4.2.1.5. Adjectives si vv eve tsrtcreseccccrss Dit aw Goa: proncena Perey ener ne ene eee vieeeees 19 42.2.1, Personal pronoms’ 22D DTT ITI T III IS DhDb) as 4121212. Demonstrative prams 222222 22D TTT ITTIIIE! 2 4.2.3. Verbs... ew bee teeta pened ste stnsaee OD 4.2.3.1. Person, gender and number-marking 2 2.61 eee eee eee A A2.SuL.L, Prefix-conjugetion ss 2222222 II i! a 4121511121 suttixcconjugations | 121222 IIII i) 2 4.2.3.1.2-1. Sone verb-classes | 21221! 2 423111212! Sone suffixes.) 21D ID1 4.2.3.1.2.3. The element kRY/x"/y ole 24 4.2.3.2. Tenses, moods, aspects (in main verbs). - 27 4.25151 Subordinate verbs vs vse we ws 28 423341, Gomer ITIL IL iTiiiiiit 128 412131312! Miscellaneous Subordinate forms 221111 ees 42131313. The relative sss eee lll lle Brac 4.20504, Negation «o's ee STIs d DIlliiil w 4013151 Deverbative derivation |) 22D TDD D DI IIIII IIL! 3 h2gsleVerbs ses lll lili iill Diiii 4.2.3.5.2, Nominals 22.2 e eee ee ee ee 4.2.3.6. Special verbs 2.) tlt PIiiDiiD 3 4.3. SM ee eset secs essrvrrrsrrrraes lilow 4.3.1. Word order sc eee ee ee ee uM A3.ded, Simple sentences | 11122 DDD ITITIITIIIIIn ou 31112! Compound sentences Lill 3s 1511151 Order of qualifiers 36 Pre er ener etc Mt 36 1. Gender and futher’ agreenent DIllil 3 12! Case in qualifier-qualitied constructions’ 11222111 37 "5! The function of the headnoum in the relative Clause |) 1) 38 fais eee eee tet ttt veel) 3B fon lit iiiiit eee see 38 wl, Sentence-question 222.2! epee seer, 2! Pronominal questions 12222222222 22220002 x ticles eer Diili 8 eee eet b eee e ene nee 40 1, NOMENCLATURE "agaw' is the term used for a number of closely related Cushitic languages. In current classi- fications, Agaw is represented as the only menber of, thus, identical with, the Central Cushitic group. UW Amw ‘This is the general tem used for the whole group, borrowed from Amharic agi. In the liter- ature, it has also been spelled Agau, (French agaou), Agow, Agew. It corresponds to the self- designation of the South-Westem group of Agaws (speakers of Kuniil and Awngi), the others call MAL 3, 32 1975] The Agaw Languages 3 themselves by the names listed below.’ The modern Ammgi version of this name is aut, but in the Last century Beke (184540) still transcribed Aghagh& (gh=y) for ‘Agaw-land’, today audyo with the ending -yo ‘house, home’.? It is thus reasonable to reconstruct ay"t of older ag*Z, which would explain the Anharic form with a velar and a labial: agdw. The carliest occurrence of this name is from 525 AD by the Greek traveller Cosmas (see Conti Rossini 1904:183, fn.1). The 11th century dynasty of Ethiopian rules of Agaw descent (from Lasta) is now under the name of zag"c, analysable into zi- North-Ethiopic ‘of’ + ag*e ‘Agaw', used in the area where "Agaw' would no more be a self-designation today. It may be hazardous to propose an etymology for this name. Bruce's ag-oha "shepherds of the river’ (fn. 2) was rightly rejected by Beke (1845:90-1) and Beinisch (1884, 1:5), Let me only list a few words of Amgi that bear a reasonable phonetic resenblance! ay- ‘to be’, agi 'man', aq- 'to know'.* Also spelled Bilen, also known as Bogos. the etymology of bitén (self-designation batin, Tigrinya boten) is’uiknom. “According to Reinisch (18829), bogos is a Tigre word meaning ‘warrior, conqueror’. The Bilin or Northem Agaw are divided into two main groups: Bet Taq*e* and Bet Targe. Bet is Somitic for ‘house’. Tag*e, more exactly Ta?aq”e,and Targe. sound quite similgr: It may be that originally these tw words were isoglosses distinguishing the two groups.® What could then their meanings be?® OF all the Agaw idioms, only Awmgi, and possibly Xanta, have a prefix-based verbal conjugation (4.2.3.1,1.), the rest use suffixes only (4.2.3.1.2.).” Yet most scholars agree that the prefix- conjugations’are archaic and must have disappeared in'most instances. Now, in Amgi t2q@ means 'you (sg.) know’. Since 'Do you know Agaw?' is the most natural conversation-opener, the expression for ‘you know’ could be a very convenient isogloss for practical distinction. Thus, ta?aq"e may just be a very old form for 'you know’, still prefix-conjugated, possibly used’in the group called Bet Taq"e. What could then explain the * in ta1ge? Very interest ingly, while ag/ax is the pan-Agaw root for 'know', Xamir, the closest relative of Bilin, uses the root ateq.” Bet Targe is the southern group and’ is thus geographically closer, to Xamir. In this light, it is quite probable that their ancient expression for 'you know" was ange, with a prefixal t-. Modern Bilin has ax? for "know’ (q+ %). ‘A tem for ‘Aga’ referring to their relatives or to their ancestral group, is found also in the other languages: Bilin agiu (Reinisch 1887:20), Xanta agdu or a0, ‘Kenant agar, 2CE. also Bruce's Agohd which Beke (ibid.) rightly attributes to the imperfect transcrip- tion of the y sound by Bruce's scribes. “The latter two may be related, cf, homo sapiens, Amharic has awagqé, literally 'knower' for ‘adult, “Reinisch (1887:345) suggested that Takue was a mistaken notation by W. Minzinger for Ja%-qin "sons of Ta’a", but Conti Rossini (1907:352) also gives 4a%aqué which corroborates the final -e. SLike the Muxar distinguish between an anii-bet and an the speakers of the dialects respectively use. bet according to the pronoun 'I' "Naturally, there is a tradition claiming that the ancestor of the tribe was called Tag‘e. "probably etymologically related to a verb ‘observe, see’ found in Galla and Somali. CE. Saho iég know". MAL 3, 33 4 Robert Hetzron [AAL 3/3, 13. k/eVom There are several self-designations containing this syllable: the xaMma (of Abergele), the ware (of Lasta and Wag) and the resanr. This root was tentatively explained by Reinisch (1884, T:5, fn. 4) as coming from kam "possession, wealth, cattle’, i.e, ‘cattle-owers' or ‘cattie-raisers' (cf. Conti Rossini 1912:21, fn. i). The’correspondence ¢~ A for the first two is quite regular (4.0.2.),—this may be’an old collective-feminine ending. -ant is the active participle suffix (4.2°3.5.2.).* Bruce's Tcheratz-Agaw (Sitaga-agéw in Bruce MS) is the same as Xanir, more specifically the dialect of Wag (cf. Salt 1814:351, Beke 1849:269). There has been Some confusion regarding the use of the tems "Xanta" and “Xanir." Bender (1971:226) employs the tern "Xanta” for what is known as Xanir. Beke (1849:269) already recognized that Xantéga is the sane as his Hhdmara and d'Abbadie (1841:390) signalled that the speakers of Lasta Agaw call their country Hanna oR Hanta and their language famfoniga, Here we shall continue to use the nane "Xanir” for the dialect of Lasta and Wag, and reserve "Xanta" for the Agaw of Abergele. 1.4. Quara/Fatasha ‘The two terms refer to the sane Judaizing people. “Quara" is h"ata in Agaw (Tubiana 1957:204, fn. 1) which weakens Aldga Tayyd's etymology for this nane: kYata ‘sun’ (1914 E.E.:38).? “Falasha" (4étaia) has been explained as coming from the Ge'ez word 4alasyan ‘emigrants’, re- ‘erring to the allege! Caneanite origin of this people.” Tough the phonetic correspondence fatale {atest (sg.)' 1s Satisfactory, one cannot help noticing the similarity Kat ~ gal." ‘Thus, the Ge'ez etymology may just be another instance of popular etymology. Note further thatthe language of the Quara is h*arasa with the ending ~sa (Reinisch 1885, :106-7), which Enns the resemblance with fatala oven more striking: he Falasha are also tom under the fname Kayla (derogatory according to Bender 1971:220), though for. sone authors the Kayla are ‘a separate branch of Falashas. D'Abbadie explained the term as meaning ‘he does not cross’ (Conti Rossini 1912:23, fm. 1), since they do not cross rivers on the Sabbath. 15. AwiysDamot = Awngi “awiya is as gross a misnomer as calling the language of this survey "Englishman". ‘The term ‘auiiya means in Angi ‘male Agaw person’, literally ‘son of Agaw'. "Danot" is the name of a province where Agaw used to be spoken. "In Hetzron 1969, I introduced ‘the obvious nane "Souther Agaw" for both (since they are not distinct entities). Following the preference recently displayed by several authors, the tem "Angi" (for aimé 'Agaw language’ from aw(2) "Agaw"''* -né the suffix used for nanes of languages) is used below, though the term "Souther Agaw"” is still retained for the speakers. "The popular etymology OF Kenant is Ge'ez hii anti ‘Like you', the answer supposedly given by the secretive Kenants when asked by others: 'Of what religion you are?" (Conti Rossini, 1912:21). Note that in Anharic their nane is Qonant, with an initial emphatic consonant, not with k-, which invalidates this etymology, Another popular etymology by Falashas, even nore improbable, is mentioned by Conti Rossini (1912:21, fn. 1): the. ‘Agaw expression kéndgau-toku "he retumed without profit’, a sarcastic’ characterization of the Kenant religion by the Falasha. °Tt is arenarkable coincidence that the Amgi word for "Agaw": fut, also displays similarity with the word 'sun': dui, cf. Saltarelli MS. However, the reconstruction of the older form of att as ay"< sens to me more convincing. 10Xamir has one example that may be an instance of h'~{ altemation: iegex and x"an, both meaning ‘child’. Reinisch (1884, IT.18[332]) suggested that degea contains the singula- tive ending -ra (see 4.2.1. below), but such an ending should disappear in the plural, and ‘children’ is degiit with the X, cf. gdwetrd ‘coward’, with the singulative -aa, plural: gauit. The short vocative form ie4@ should then be the result of an abbreviation. AAL 3, 34 1976) The Agaw Languages 5 2. THE AGAW LANGUAGES A short survey of the Agaw languages is found in Conti Rossini 1912 (25-34). The geographic distribution of the Agaw was surmed up by J. Tubiana (1957). It is more than probable that they originally constituted a territorial continuum, broken’up mainly by the Semitization of the population, and also by migrations. Beke (1845:91) considers them "the representatives of the original inhabitants of Abyssinia.” The northemmost group, Bilin, may not be autoch- thonous, but reached its present habitat through migration from the South, from the Lasta region.’ This is Reinisch’s conclusion (1882:9) based on the great similarity between Bilin and Xanir. Conti Rossini (1912:26) estimated their migration to have taken place at the tum of the 10th-Lith centuries. Yet it is possible that Northern Ethiopia had also been inhabited by some branches of Agaw that disappeared (got assimilated) after the Semitic immigration, witness the traces of Agaw influence on the oldest documented Ethiopian Semitic language: Ge'ez (see Hetzron £1 prep.). Anong the Southern Agaw thore is also an oral tradition about their having cone from Sogota (Lasta), but such a claim is not substantiated by Linguistic facts (cf. Conti Rossini 1905:122(20]}. Slightly modifying Conti Rossini's division (1912:25-6), Tubiana recognizes four major Gzo- GRAPHIC groups, with a question-narked fifth. This is not a genetic Classification of the various Agaw languages (see 4.0.2. below). ‘The estimates for number of speakers are taken from Bender 1971. A. NORTHERN AGAW, the Bilin in Western Eritrea, in the region of Keren. The speakers, at least 32,000, are all Tigre-Agaw bilinguals. The northern subgroup is called Bet Tague. or Haghat, and the southern one Get Targe or Gogos(see 1.2. above and Conti Rossini 1907:332ff). B, EASTERN AGAW, with Xanta of Abergelle, Northern Xanir of Wag and Southem Xamir of Sogota (Lasta). They are also bilinguals, also Speaking Tigrinya (Xamta) and Amharic (Xamir). ‘There may be 5,000 speakers altogether, but it is not certain that there are any Xanta speakers left today. C. soursesN acaW spoken in the province of Agawmadar and Mitukkil, and recently extinct in the province of Danot. It comprises about $0,000 speakers, but it’is rapidly yielding to Amharic, especially along the Debre-Margos - Bahr Dar highway. The language has been mis- called Aviya, unnecessarily distinguished from the Agaw of Danot. In the present study, it is called Amgi. D. Westen acaw, with Quara, the original language of the Judaizing Falasha (today most, if not all, of then’spesk Anharic), and with Kemant, spoken by at least 17,000 people. The’ Kunfal, who Live in the lowlands south 6f Quara (Simoons’1950:22, 45-5; Cowley 1371), geographically also belong here, but linguistically they are closer to Amgi. E, SEMIEN. Tubiana (1957:299-301) and Simons (1960:22, 42-3) report the existence of Agaw in this region, in Sahalla, but no research has been done on this group. Simoons considers then "simply an extension into the Northwest of a larger Agaw group which is centered in the provinces to the east.” What makes Agew important beyond the interest one ought to have in any human language is that it most probably constitutes the most significant substratum of the Ethiopian Semitic Languages (Hetzron, it prep.). 3. STUDIES ON AGAW In this section, I am listing only zincurstrc studies in Agaw, though sone of the works mentioned also Contain historical infomation. AL 3. 35 6 Robert Hetzron [AAL 3/3 Probably the first European to speak Agaw (namely Avngi) was the Italian missionary Fr. A, de ANGELIS (11622, see Conti Rossini 1912:32). The first attestation of an Agaw word is in uuporeH 1681, 1.15: y-guyt ‘my lord’, ‘The oldest documents of Agaw are the still unpublished translations of the Songs of Solomon, comissioned by the Scottish traveller JaMes BRUCE around 1770 (Bruce MS). He had the text ‘translated fron Ge'ez to Anharic, and from Anharic to Gafat (the only version this far pub- lished), Galla, and three Agaw tongues: Félasha, Danot-Agiiv (lumgi) and Cirata (Tcherat Northern Xanir). The selection of this specifi¢ poetic text with major philélogical diffi culties was quite infelicitous. I have read only the Danot-Agiw text, but I can report that this version is very poor indeed. The translator rendered word by word, with complete dis- regard for Agaw syntax, and seemingly did not understand many passages.” Bruce also collected comparative vocabulaty of 192 words in these languages. The Appendix of saut 1814 contains word lists of various Ethiopian languages. One of them is Agaw, nanely Xanir. sexe 1845 contains vocabularies of 13 languages. The first three are Agaw: Xanir (Hhimara or Agau of Wiag), Falasha and Amgi (Agawi or Agau of Agaunider). Beke 1849 is a presentation of the Ethiopian languages including Agaw, a5 a supplenent to a Report on the Languages of Africa nade by Dr. Latham to the British Association for the Advancenent of Science, at the Meeting at Oxford in 1847." He coordinates his presentation with those of A. d'Abbadie and J. Bruce. sAPETO 1857 includes a vocabulary of Bilin (Bogos) in its Appendix. I was unable to locate ruap 1866 which is reported to contain "an outline of the elements and a vocabulary of the Falasha language." WALOMETER 1868 consists of a sixteen-page German-Amgi word List and nine pages of grammar: the conjugation of the verbs dtkaningé [vonkavag) ‘love! and kasingé (wkason) ‘go’, a list of prepositions, mmerals, personal and demonstrative pronouns, and declension of nouns. ‘Typically, he Listed only’ four cases, Nom., Gen., Dat,, and Acc. , those found in German. Since the pronoun né (his engé) means either ‘he! or ‘she’, he did not notice the gender- distinction in Sg.3. verbs. His ama for 'she' is nothing but the feminine demonstrative pro- noun 'that one)’. His "passive" is in reality the Sg. 3m. active verb with object suffixes. ‘This was already pointed out by Porr in his detailed 1869 review of Waldneier 1869. As @ sequel to Pott's review article, praztoRIus (1869) offered observations of a comparative nature, establishing the "Hanitic’ (i.e. Cushitic) nature of Agaw, mainly on the basis of Calla. DIABBADTE 1841 is a sketch of Xanir with structural comparison with Basque. D'Abbadie 1872 is another attempt at establishing the existence of Cushitic as a group. He called it "the Languages of Kan'" on the basis of the name of the language he studied first: Kamtiga,'® com- posed of kan + tiga ‘tongue’. His sixteen typological criteria for classifying a language as Cushitic are very reasonable (e.g. special negative foms for verbs, use of causative and double causative, composite verbs, etc.). Interested in the "Black Jews of Ethiopia," JosePH HaLévy (1873) made an investigation of the language of the Falasha in Denbia. His publication contains an introduction to the Senitic languages of Ethiopia, a comparative table of words and phrases in Bilin and Falasha (mainly of Denbia, sometines also Quara) showing the relationship between then, a gramatical sketch, some texts, and a note on the position of Agaw in the "large family of languages also Comprising Egyptian, Berber, Hausa and Hoja" (ny translation, R.ll.J, i.e. Afroasiatic, Halévy's work is the first important descriptive piece on Agaw. Halévy 1911 contains Falasha prayers, mainly in Ge'ez, but some passages are in a language that looks like Agaw (it con- tains the word adda 'Lotd' and the case-ending -£i), but could not be deciphered by the best Specialist of Quara: Leo Reinisch (see his letter in'Halévy 1911:219). Vip'Abbadie uses italics for special somds. ‘Thus, “kamtiga" can be considered an adequate transcription of xamtina, the name of their language used by the Xanir. AAL 3. 36 1976} The Agaw Languages 2 cust 1883 mentions Bilin (1127-8) and Agau (all the other Agaw tongues, I,131-5) in his sumary of the Modern Languages of Africa. He used only second-hand material, but managed to sum up the data available at that time efficiently. sciwervruar 1893 lists plant-names in Ethiopian languages, including Bilin and Xamir. The most important figure in Agaw studies is doubtless the Viennese scholar ufo REINISCH. Under his direction, the Gospel of St. Mark was translated first fron Anharic to Bilin (St. Mark 1882), then from Bilin to Falasha (St. Mark 1885), both editions printed in Ethiopian characters. Reinisch studied Bilin the most intensively. His Bitin-Spracke (1882) contains a short his- torical introduction and a detailed grarmar, followed by sample texts. It is based on his ow fieldwork from 1876 on. In 1883 he published a volume of Bilin texts, and in 1887 a Bilin- German dictionary. “In 1884, he cane forvard with his second description of an Agaw tongue: Xanir, also based on fieldwork. ‘This description also contains extensive comparisons with Bilin: ‘The first volume is a grammar, the second texts and a vocabulary (Xamir-Gernan). The third major contribution of Reinisch to Agaw studies appeared in 1885 — Quara, partly based on second-hand material (texts in Ethiopian characters) and partly on direct personal research. ‘The first volume is a grammar, the second one has the texts and a Quara-German vocabulary, and the third one a German-Quara word List. In his 1909 book on personal pronouns and verb inflection in Hamito-Semitic (Afroasiatic ), Reinisch used a great deal of Agaw material. Most of his reconstructions do not withstand modern criticism. BeRTIN (1885:72-6) described the Agaw pronominal system and compared it with Akkadian. In weror 1912, Beja and Somali represent Cushitic, but in the general introduction (1-30) Bilin and Xamir’are well represented, drawn from Reinisch's publications. The second inportant personality in Agaw linguistic research was c. cowrE ROSSINI. In 1904 he published a "note" on Xamta, and in 1905 one on Avngi. Both contain a historical and ethno- logical introduction, a grammatical sketch, and a vocabulary. His presentation of Xanta is quite superficial and fragnentary. ilis study of Angi is more detailed, though still sketchy. His book on Kenant (1912) is better organized and more detailed. It is’practically a com- parative gramar of Agaw languages in which Kemant is only one of several. His Kenant material is based entirely on the notes of A. d'Abbadie. The volume contains a historical introduction, fa general survey of the Agaw languages, followed by a grammar, sone texts, and Kenant-French vocabulary with a French-Konant word list, In 1907, he published texts in Bilin, some of them also translated into Amharic and Tigre. In 1911, capomazza published a text in Bilin dealing with historical traditions. After Conti Rossini, research on Agaw seems to have stagnated for a long time. Ne find a respectable anount of Agaw material in PLAZTKOWSKY-BRAUNER'S publications on Cushitic, the Lasta (Southern Xanir), Falasha and Angi material apparently collected by herself. in 1957 she dealt with auxiliary elenents in Cushitic verbal conjugetion, such as copulas and neg- ative markers. Her 1958 article presents the determinative elenents. Her 1959 article lists causative markers in Cushitic. The one published in 1960 analyzes nimerals. She came back to the topic of verbal conjugations in @ posthumously published article (1965). All the above articles deal with Cushitic as a whole, also involving various Agaw tongues. ‘The data presented in then are interesting, often novel, but the historical reconstructions are rather Recently, two Ethiopian students under the direction of R.w. cowuey (see his 1971) published ethnological and linguistic data on an Agaw group abusively called Kungae by their neighbors, in the south of Quara. AAL 3, 37 8 Robert Hetzron TAAL 3/3 One of the problems with all the above studies is that they are pre-phonological. ‘The lack of a rigorous, functionally based transcription may be less exasperating to the phonologist than to the morphologist-syntactician. I had personal fieldwork experience with Awngi only, but I can assert that the secondary researcher who would base his work exclusively on the data offered by Waldneier and Conti Rossini would be more than once misled. It might sound frivo- Jous to be supercilious with these pioneers of Linguistic description pre-dating the great theoreticians who created a solid method of description. Yet even the relatively best authors Like Reinisch and Conti Rossini lack internal consistency, both in transcription and gramatical description. Statements are often incomplete. Sometimes’ the grammar section and the grama- tical notes in the vocabulary, or two paragraphs in the grammar are in contradiction. What is described as free variation is often an allonorphic distribution with strict distributional rules (as it appears in later studies, e.g. by Palner vs. Reinisch for Bilin, or by Sasse vs. Conti Rossini for Kemant). The first researcher of Agaw equipped with a solid knowledge of phonemics is JOSEPH TUBIANA, the author of the already quoted survey article from 1957. Tubiana 1948-51 mentions appella- tive suffixes in Kemant. His other publications on Agaw are mainly short etymological studies. Tubiana 1951-4 deals with deverbal noun derivation in Westen Agaw. Tubiana 1958 is devoted to place-names and proposes Agaw etymologies for the two Ethiopian capital cities: ‘Aksum and Gondar.’? Tubiana 1959a explains the element following man in the Amharic ex- pression mondon or mandat 'what?' (referring only to predicate) as,a borrowing from Wester ‘Agan_ dara'thing’. Tubiana 1959 offers an Agaw etymology for the Ge'ez word bantile or minti£e ‘hare'.'®’ Tubiana 1970 describes the use of the Anharic particle gam ‘but’ and relates it to the Agaw copula gin (4.2.5.6.). The real breakthrough in Agaw studies was brought about by the appearance of a series of articles by the noted linguist F.x. PaLaeR, based on his fieldwork in Eritrea. In 1957 he published a treatment of the verb in Bilin, followed by a study of the Bilin noun (1958). In 1959, the verbal morphology of another Agaw language: Awngi was the topic of an article by Palner. He is the first one to provide solid, absolutely reliable data on Agaw, He is also to be credited with the discovery that Ammgi is a tone language. These studies are character- ized by the Firthian approach to language, where special emphasis is put on formal properties, patternings, groupings, oppositions of morphological exponents, Classification is often, based on quantitative Criteria such as "five menber paradigms,” "seven, menber paradigns.” In order not to appear prejudicial, terms like "Aspect, A" or “Aspect B are used to replace the menonically preferable labels’"Past (or "Perfect"), "Present-Future” (or "Imperfect," “Nonpast"). The description is rigorous and reliable, but the prinary picture it gives is a set of systens of formal exponents rather than a system of meaningful elements. Syntactic information concerning the use of the forms is often absent, even glosses are sparingly given and are left to the reader to figure out by himself. For this reason, his statements, very precise, are often hard te decipher. Information, about a given fom may be scattered under headings like "prosodies" or "* menber paradigns" with no sumed up characterization, and syntactically related forns may not, be listed together if one of them happens to have a "five member paradign” and the other a “seven menber paradign.” On the other hand, the reader who takes the trouble of working hinself into them will find Palmer's publications’ extrenely illuminating. T find it improbable that for Gondar, purposely founded to be a capital, the Atharic~ speaking Emperor would have accepted’ an Agaw name. Let me propose an alternative etymology. jh Westem Gurage one finds a word g"andéx, 2 silver amband synbolizing kingship (just Like the crovn in other civilizations). This word, which has a meaning so perfectly matching the circumstances, may have existed also in Amharic. \3Interestingly, Awngi has Sentét4 for ‘hare, rabbit’. Is the initial consonant a prefix? MAL 3, 38 1976) The Agaw Languages 9 Palmer 1960 is "an outline of Bilin phonology." His 1965 publication presents the interesting phenomenon of aspect/time reversal in Bilin (4.2.3.6.). His 1966 article on Bilin word classes was invited by the joumal Lingua as part of a series of papers on word classes. His 1967 article is a comparative statement of Bilin and fungi. In the Cushitic chapter of TUCKER AND BRYAN (1966:495-555), Bilin and Awngi represent the Agaw group. The data were supplied by F.R. Palmer and J. Tubiana, ‘The present writer did fieldwork in Ethiopia on Amgi in 1965-6. This resulted in the follow- ing publications; se7zxow 1967 containing a description of the Avmgi numeral system along with a study of “incongruence” in Semitic (i.e. opposite gender agreenent between numeral and noun). Awngi has a similar phenomenon in measire indication. Hetzron 1969, originally Ph.D. dissertation, is an extensive treatment of the Aymgi verbal system, with spécial emphasis on morphology. A feature of this treatment is that instead of the, intuitively justified constituency of the verbal word "basis + suffix,” a division into "extended stem + truncated suffix" is used on the ground that this provides a simpler picture of verbal morphology. This approach was criticized in the three most substantial reviews of this study: Palmer 1970a, Matthews 1971 and Cohen 1971. Yet my "truncated" suffixes are precisely the full suffixes appearing after prefix-conjugated verbs (4.2.3.1.1.) and are thus independently justified. Although devoted to Ethiopian Semitic, Hetzron'1972 also contains a reconstruction of the renewal of plural-narking in P1.2/3 subject pronouns in various Agaw tongues (4.2.2). Hetzron 1974 deals with the historical reconstruction of the proto-Cushitic verbal conjugation, sug- gesting, on the basis of "impoverished" paradigns in Sonali and Ammgi, that the 1.2/3’ ending =n originally fulfilled a nodal function, In the new publication Les’fangues dans Le monde (intended to replace Les Langues du monde) the Cushitic languages are illustrated by an out- Line of Awngi: Hetzron forthcoming. Finally, Hetzron in ptep, is an attempt to show traces of Agaw substratum in Ethiopian Semitic as a'whole, and a presentation of the contribution of Agaw to comparative Semitics. In TucKeR 1967, Bilin and Amgi are used in a typological comparison of Cushitic Languages. cone 1972 deais with the problen of internal vocalic modification to mark tense in Cushitic, mainly in Beja and Awngi (see 4.2.3.1.2.3. below). C.D. JOHNSON uses a morphophonemic phenon- enon of Avngi (4.1.4.5. belox) to illustyate the concept of regressive (right-to-left) iterative rules that has to be adopted in generative phonology. BENDER 1971 is a presentation of the lexicostatistics of the languages of Ethiopia. Agaw is represented by Bilin, Xanir (cf. 1.3.), Kemant and Angi. A basic 99 word list is given in 103 languages including the above four (238-9, 279). Percentages of shared basic vocabulary of 12 Cushitic languages, including these four,’are given in Tables 5 and 7 (174-5), and Section 6.4. (209-11) compares’ Semitic and Agaw vocabulary. voucorou'skri has compiled a substantial atount of Agaw material in his comparative historical phonetics of Cushitic (1973). sasse 1973 is @ review of Bender 1971. Sasse 1974 demonstrates the existence of a subject case (distinct from the absolute case) in Kenant. This is the first competent treat- ment of Kenant. In sumer 1969, waRIO SaLTARELLI collected data on Amngi (of Injebara) , Kemant (Chilga) and Bilin (Gelas) (MS). le plans to publish his material, with a phonetic/ phonenie analysis, after another trip to Ethiopia. zanorsk1 MS deals with consonant altemna- tion in Agaw plurals. Zaborski forthe. has a chapter devoted to Agaw. For general surveys of Agaw, I have already mentioned Beke 1849, Cust 1883 and one chapter in Conti Rossini 1912. Furthermore, Bryan 1947 also mentions Agaw’ (13-4) and includes a biblio- graphy. Tucker and Bryan 1956:121-2 is a listing of Agaw languages with a few data about geographic location, followed by a bibliography claimed to be complete, on pp. 201-2. LEVA 1969:48-9, 245 is a’bibliographic account of Italian contributions to the stuly of Agaw. AAL 3, 39 10 Robert Hetzron [AAL 3/3 4, A SKETCH OF AGAW 4.0, Introduction 4.0.1, SOURCES In the following sketch, Bilin data are taken from publications by F.R. Palmer, Kemant from Sasse (most private communication) ,'* Xamta from Conti Rossini, Xanir and Quara from L. Reinisch and Amgi from R. Hetzron (partly unpublished material).’ When data by other authors, or by the above authors but for other Agaw languages than the one mentioned next to their nane, are used, they are narked by the following abbreviations: Bk, for C.T. Beke, CR for Conti Rossini, ’H for J. Halévy (Falasha of Denbia ~ Quara), P for F.R. Palmer, PB’for H. Plazikowsky-Brauner (Lasta = Souther Xamir, Falasha ~ Quara), R for Reinisch’and S1 for Saltarelli, It follows that only data by the following authors are to be completely trusted: Palner (Bilin unless otherwise marked, Angi), Sasse (Kenant unless marked CR), Saltarelli and Hetzron (Angi unless marked CR). Original transcriptions are kept, with very slight modifications. The following synbols re~ place the parenthesized ones in the original: 3 (f), & (el, j Uj, 3, dil, a (nl, y (a, PB ol, x Oy fl, (Rt yl, @ (Pe, a). For Avmgi, ¢ Stands for the affricate [13], tran- scribed by Conti Rossini as g. In a few cases, Quara data have been transliterated fron Ethiopian characters. Here a general warning can be given: transcriptions where vowels have macrons (2) or are underlined are not to be trusted (see 4.1.2. below). Iii the illustrations, glosses in quotation marks are often accompanied by literal, morphemic translations, in quotation marks in parentheses. In such translations, + indicates morphemic boundaries that are necessary to point out in that specific case (but not all of them). A hyphen - is used between English words that are rendered by one word in Agaw. Labels for grammatical categories in such morphemic translations begin with a capital letter. 4.0.2, ‘THE BRANGIES OF AGAW Tt should be obvious by now that there is no such thing as "Agaw language”. Agaw is consti- tuted of a number of closely related, but not necessarily mutually intelligible, languages, so that each deserves a separate description. Furthermore, within one language there are Gialectal and subdialectal variations. Perforce, the different Languages will here be repre- sented by the dialect that happened to be studied by somebody. Sometimes, contradictory data on the sane language reflect dialectal variation. To ny lnowledge, Sasse is the only fone who has consistently paid attention to dialectal variation in his study of Kemant. ‘There has been no reconstruction of the genetic subdivision of Agaw tongues to speak of, The close relationship between Bilin and Xanir on the one hand, Quara and Kemant on the other, and finally between Kunfal and Amgi, has been noted. Xanta and Xamir have been considered two varieties of the sane language, but this is entirely due to a terminological misunder- standing (see 1.3.). In fact they are quite different. Even the meager data on Xanta clearly show that it has sone independent features of its own found nowhere else in Agaw, e.g. the Conjugation of the nonpast (4.2.5,1.2.). The only serious attempt at a subdivision is found in Conti Rossini 1912:29-30. “It is based on the treatment of what appears to be an etymolo~ gical 2. In Bilin and Yanir, such a *¢ is often represented by at. For instance, the Semitic loanword ‘andt 'year' appears as andxa in Bilin (R) and amid in Xamir (Reinisch 1884, 222-4). It is interesting to note that the ¢ + change did not take place in the sane manner in the two languages, Xanir has more x's in the verbal conjugation, whereas Bilin has a genitive marker x, still t in Xanir. This isogloss separgtes these’ two from the rest which have a partical change ¢ + y. The word for ‘year’ is antin in Xanta and anét in Awngi with no change, but it is anya in Quara and an’e in Kemant, yet all of these languages have instances of t + y change in the marking of the second’person of the verb (4.2.5.1.2. and 4.2.3.1.2.1,). It is hard to evaluate the genetic classificatory significance of this isogloss. let me express my deep gratitude to Dr. Sasse for patiently answering all my questions in VAAL 3, 40 1976) The Agaw Languages un Awngi stands apart from the rest in several respects, e.g. by having an indifinite aspect in the verb, -Cé is a comitative (directive or locative elsevhere), -da is a locative (-dé is a comitative elsewhere, 4.2.1.2.1.); in the lexicon, n- 'say' (y- elsewhere), atti- ‘Lack! (bé- elsewhere). Some'of the special features of Ammgi are shared with Sidato, such as the negative marker -té- (-g- elsewhere, 4.2.3.4.), the word Gua for 'sun' (k*ara elsewhere), etc., see Conti Rossini 1905:125 and fn, 44, 4.1, Phonology 4.1.1, CONSONANTS: The typical feature of the Agaw consonant system is the presence of the following phonenes: fhe volar nasal o, the uvulars ¢ andy. The labialized back consonmts ky 9¥, Q's 2", (¥", oY) are also’found elsewhere. ‘The retroflex (cacuminal) q of other Gishitic ianguages is missing, though the alternation 2/t in several cases (4.0.2. above, but also Amngi haxé "he dies'/katé'"I die') may reflect the earlier existence of siich a consonant, which later merged with other consonants. Glottalized (ejective) consonants occur only in Semitic borrowings, with the exception of Bilin k' and k'™ which are often found in genuine Agaw words (cf. Reinisch 1882:11). In view of the great phonological similarity between Bilin and Tigrinya/ Tigre (Palner 1960), it is reasonable to surmise that the glottalized articulation is here due to the influence of Senitic tongues, i.e. originally uvular q reinterpreted on the phonetic level as an ejective k’, e.g. Bilin’k'*at- 'sce' vs, Keman xa£ ‘id.’ cf. 4.1.4.1. In fact, Reinisch (188212) does’nention different articulations for this phonene according to genetations. In the following, we shall use the symbol ¢ also for k!. Bilin further has an * (‘ayén) and ah. Avmgi c cofresponds to 4 or, elsewhere,'® and in the dialect investi- gated by me dz occurs only in the word sedza 'four' and its derivatives.'* Consonantal. gem- ination is rare, but attested (Awmgi, Kemant (SI), Bilin (S1)). Note that, the Agaw counterpart of general Cuchitic mis g, e.g. Galla Lama/Agaw £Vna "two", Calla miné/Xanir-Axmgi nan ‘house’, etc. 4.1.2. VOWELS Reinisch and Conti Rossini always indicate length for vowels, but Palmer's, Sasse's and Hetzron's observations show no phonemically relevant length, for Bilin, Kenant and Avmgi at Jeast.'” Another annoying habit of the pre-phonemic transcribers is inconsistent marking of the Ewa a, as ¢, 4 or & (while & and Z stand for e and i respectively).'* A Swa preceding a Jabialized back’consonant is marked by them as an underlined back vowel, e.g. uk for probable ak”. The phonemic status of 9 is not clear, Usually it is nonphonemic, introduced mainly to break up undesirable consonant clusters.'? In the system of these transcribers, @ stands for an a, and their a would be more adequately rendered by d. *Stor example, Awngi cew-, Quara 3ab-, Xamir séb- 'do'; Amgi cSned, Bilin Sénka ‘fly’. \the dialect of Amgi studied by Palner (1959) has no z, only dz, cf. fn. 24. For Xanta, Conti Rossini indicates a minimal pair based on length: ou ‘he'/oit "they", but this may also be another type of difference, e.g. diphthong vs. single vowel. For exanple, Conti Rossini's ni/nz for 'he/she'”in'Kenant appears as né/niy in Sasse's material. What makes no distrust Reinisch’ transcriptions completely is that his macrons (for Tength) and stress-marks make no sense when confronted with Palner's perfectly reliable tone-narks. Mor instance, Reinisch (1882:11) mentions a vocalic 1 which can be “heard” as it, properly at. Halévy is the only one who, misprints apart, consistently marks the wa by £ or &. 19Sasse Lists 2 under "underlying, vowel segnents" for Kenant. Saltarelli also feels that Kenant > is "probably phonemic." In Amgi too, there are a few instances of that can not be distributionally explained: ayoyia ‘laugh’, etc. AAL 3, 41 w Robert Hetzron TAAL 3/5 Besides the five vocalic phonemes i, “e, a, “Yo, u, Bilin and Kenant have 4, Kenant also a? and Amgi ane. The latter two’ always occur at a morphemic boundary’ and represent a merger of ea for Avngi, and duyéi/oyii +” in Kemant. Kemant ’¢ also represents under- lying ayo. Aimgio freely altemates with wa (the diphthong being preferred by the older generation). In a sequence i+y, a "furtive vowel is heard: [iy ] for /iy/. For Awmgi, Palner (1959:272) also mentions e which had merged in the dialect investigated by me with @. Historically this comes from ya.?* 4.1.3. PROSODY Both Bilin and Avngi are tone Ianguages while Kemant has only stress. Inadequate work on the other Agaw tongues makes it impossible to make any statement about tone elsewhere. Tn Bilin, tone is not truly musical. "The, stressed syllable has high pitch which is "often carried through to following syliables” (Tucker-Bryan 1966:500, after Palmer). Typologically this has to be classified as a tone, for such a stress may be entirely absent from non- clitic words, e.g. bata 'dust' vs. batd ‘louse’, respectively interpretable as Mid-Mid Mid-High. In Kemant, al1 words have stress in isolation, but sone may lose it in context, This may also be a trace of an older tonal system. Avngi has four tones: Mid (V), High (W), Low (V) and Falling (V). The latter two appear in word-final syllables only, Low’ in open syllables. The Falling’ tone probably owes its existence to the contraction of diphthongs with a High first mora, *agéa + agé 'man-Accusative', and the Low one to a vocalic reduc- tion: when in the suffix fuya the first vowel was Teduced to,a labial appendix, the eguitonal a becane, "creaky": -y"A., Minimal oppositions: yuna ‘wonan', yiina ‘we have eaten", vind "they ate"; y'a 'T have eaten’, y'a ‘he has eaten’, etc. In Aimgi, Mid-Mid, High-High and Mid-High sequences are nomal, while there is hardly any High-Mid’ sequence within one lexical morphene.*! This is in hatwony with the Bilin tendency to carry the liigh pitch of the stressed Syllable over to the following syllables. 4a important phenonengn in the Amgi norphotonenic system is the tonal effect 4 verbal stem may have on the first syllable of the subsequent suffix. Thus, against neutral zurta + zuna ‘he has returned’, a RatstNG effect is found in zuntva + and 'yethas:serelod'; and against zurdya ‘he is returning’ (curraya) or 'he is strolling’ (cux*+ayé, where the Taising effect, can no more modify the High tone), one notes the Lommsinc effect in binky aya. + Rinkayd ‘he is scared’. Amgi also has cases of tonal dissimilation. The reciprocal ending of the verb (4.2.3.5:1.) 00° always has the tone opposite of the tone of the pre- ceding syllable: kistigrand "they exchange’, vs. t4svonvdnd "they hit each other’. The sane is true of the locative ending -da and’the ablative -des (4.2.1.2.1.): mixé-dés "from a snake’, muxi-des ‘from a village’. ‘Amgi further has a penultimate stress of intensity. It is interesting to note that for a few nous the stress is not alloyed to leave the base word, e.g. g'uzgudes ‘from that of the belly’ (guzag) vs. géz'udes 'from that of time’ (giz 'time" u genitive and des ablative). In Xamir, stress falls on one of the last two syllables, conditioned by vowel quality. 4.1.4, SOME MORPHOPHONEMIC ALTERNATIONS 4.1.4.1, BILIN CONSONANT sUTATION InBilin nous, "there is consonantal, alternation between singular and plural forms, and ina few cases, between masculine and feminine forms" (Palner 1960:111 cf. Zaborski, MS.). In the following 2°Stii1 so in Bruce's documents, kantiyati for modem kanteti 'she sees'. Cf. also PB: kaeeiate for kagett 'she can’ 21Qne exception: bédbaday 'dove', probably an expressive word. AAL 3, 42 1976] The Agaw Languages 43 pairs, the singulars have the first (in most cases voiced) consonant, snd the plurals the second, voiceless one: b/f, d/t, dis, d/S, rit, n/t, L/t, 9/3, a/b, gt le", wie", x/ky x/qy x'/q".” As can be seen, from one’ one Cannot predict the other.’ This alternation nay affect the last consonant; giuda/gitut "big knife", the second last’ (when the last one is not on the List_of the altemating consonants): gad3/ga%o7 ‘dog’, déitguna/dixkum 'sycamore', or both dox*ara/dag"at "donkey". These pairs may be important for the reconstruction of prote- Bilin consonants. The double correspondence x/k vs. x/q suggests that the second x was originally a y (cf. Kenant doy" dri, Ammgi doy"ard donkey"). x/q also suggests that the ejective pronomciation of the latter (4.1.1.) is a secondary development,— originally both were uvular stops, 2/t is also know interdialectally (4.0.2.). Since x is replaced by d after x, 2 or nj’? one has to reconstruct here an older retroflex ¢. Note that Tenir and Kenan have gone instances of gonsomant mutatjon, buf not regulstly ss in Bilin, Xanir antt 'year', singulative anna (4/t); dugal donkey", singulative digdnd (2/4); dinkin "sycamore", Singulative dunt (0/8), aki/arble "aonth' ({/b, for sg./pl-)- In Kemant, a'handful of nouns show similar alternation: éy"dy/dx"ét ‘head’ (y"/x" and y/t), before the plural ending “£9 im diy aya/dy abs ‘aokey’ [y'/—) and a/t}, with reaplice: tive plural (4,242.1) na! o/Suk ak, “ear! (e'/E"), aiy/athat ‘hom’ (y/8S. Also in Falasha GD oe Finds diyahalduqyabt“Sonkay* (0/8), Adena) dec rooster” (At). 4.1.4.2. anNGr DEVOICING ‘There is consonantal altemation in stem-final position of the verb. The voiceless consonant is used in the Sg-1c, and the imperative only: sebé ‘he fights’, sebté ‘she fights’ or 'you (sg.) fight", ‘sebné ‘we ight", but sepé, 'T fight", sép, 'fight!". The pairs are p/b, p/w tid, t1y,?? din, o/2,?* 8/3, bla, bly E/9", a/y,'@*/y". For the historical explanation of this devoicing, let me offer the following. The Cushitic suffixes come from prefix: Conjugated auxiliaries (4.2.3.1.2., Praetorius 1894:331). In this case, desé 'I study’ or "he studies’ represents the conflation of *des+7é for Sg.ic. and *des+yé’for Sg.3m., where 7 and y- are prefixes well-known from Semitic, also attested in Cushitic (4.2.3.1.1.}. It is possible that stem-final voiced consonants tended to be devoiced in a pre-pause position, hence sép in the inperative (fron *sébf ). Now, a glottal stop is the phonetic equivalent of a pause. It is the closure of the air passage. Thus, the devoicing may have operated before the glottal stop also: "seb+ + sepé. In'all other cases, the final consonant was followed by a suffix. 4.1.4.3. AMNGE ASSIMILATION OF VOCALIC HEIGHT In the vocalic domain, one finds altemations like muligisi 'nonk', moteqésd, ‘mun’ noteqéska "monks, nuns'; mibiycti "you (sg.) chew' or ‘she chews’, ‘moteyeté 'I chew" or "he chews', mo£eyetog "to chew’, In the first menbers of both sets, there is @ suffixal <4, Palmer (1959:273, 280; 1967:1492-3) represented this as vowel harmony. In Hetzron 1967:178-9, there is a wrong representation taking the first menbers as basic. Still in an erroneous Spirit, the right description is given in Hetzron 1969:8, and the right description 225g, gibendk" 'you (sg.) refuse’, but qat+ddk" 'you see', The sane is true for Xamir. *Here I accept Palmer's analysis (1959:271, 1970:207) against mine in Hetzron 1969, 2.1.4. See also Matthews 1971:150. *“The correspondence ¢/z makes it probable that dz recorded by Palmer for what I found to be az (fn. 16) is more original. **Note that, to my knowledge, this is the only piece of intemal evidence for proto-Cushitic Sg.lc. 7-1 ‘The actual attested forms have an initial vowel a- or {-. Plazikowsky-Brauner (1965:99) ‘suggested that sep- had come from *septn-, AAL 3, 43 4 Robert Hetzron [AAL3/3 in the right spirit, as a regressive assimilation, in Hetzron forthcoming, 2. It consists of the following. If the suffix -< is added to a root having e as its last vowel, the latter also becones <, and so do all the possible preceding e's as long as there is nd other inter- vening vowel. 'If the regressive chain e + < encounters an 0, this one becones an uw. There is no instanceof more than one ¢ in succession. The < triggering the change has to be suffixal, cf. Sereritt 'spider' where < is the iast stem vowel, The assimilation cannot con- municate’ through other vowels, ¢-g. ggnejantt ‘hurrying person’, nor can 0 be affected with- out a catalyzing e+ i, -gohyt "spade". A few recent borrowings are exempt from this assinila- tion: terepezt "table" C.D. Johnson (1972:74-5) used this phenomenon as an illustration of a left-Linear (regressive) iterative rule, i.e. a chain process. ‘The alternation bir 'blood'/beri ‘drop of blood’ (singulative) in Xanir (Reinisch 1884, 1:13) probably has nothing to do with the above phenomenon. It may be a mere reduction of ui- stressed to 2, bit/bard. 4.1.4.4, BILIN VOWEL HARMONY Such harmony is confined to the past tense stem and the forms derived from it (e.g. the future) (Reinisch 1882, $66, Palmer 1957:148). Example: gib+danit ‘(says) that you refused", vs. Jobedinét "(says) that you bought", where the suffixes are basically the sane. Since this is Limited to suffixes in sone tenses (but not all of then), and it does not seem to be governed by the phonemic composition of the verb sten, one wonders if this phenomenon de~ serves the appellation"'vowel harmony” in the manner it is used in languages like Turkish, Hungarian. See further 4.2.3.1.2.1. 4.2. Morphology 4.2.1, NOUNS 4.2.1.1. GENDER AND NUMBER ‘Agaw nouns distinguish two genders: masculine and feminine, and two numbers: singular and plural. Only the singular exhibits gender-distinction,?* The feminine refers to female beings or is a diminutive or pejorative (Meinhof 1912:22-s). For mass- and generic nouns, the base fom is a collective, and a singulative ending forms the singular, “Such,a singula- tive singular nay have its own plural, Xamir bé ‘noth’, singulative bea ‘a noth’, plural bixee 'a swarm of moths’. Sonetines the collective also has its plural, yielding 4,quadruple system as, in Bilin (R) dignd (cat’ dindnd ‘cats’, generic, vs. individualized ddmitxd 's/ the [specific] cat", damit 'a/the group of cats MASCULINE SINGULARS have no particular ending except in part of the nouns in Amgi: -1, e.g. diné 'rooster’ (cf. sén ‘brother’, 98) 'dog'). The feninine singular is consistently dina 'hen', séna 'sister', g4éa4 "bitch', Kemant has very rare traces xabén/xihéna "thief (m./£.}" ~4,*7 Bilin goden ‘dog'/godand "bitch"; Elsewhere one finds occasional feminine -¢(é) in Falasha (1): diwa 'rooster'/ palmer speaks of number-cum-gender as one tripartite category. 27Reinisch (1909:271-8) derives this -i from an older -ti. Yet a feminine -y is not un- attested in the Afroasiatic family. ‘The feminine of the Arabic elative is formed by a -Y (spelled so, but traditionally not’ pronounced). In pronouns, one finds masc. u and fem. <, e.g. Arabic huia/hiya, Somali wuu/uty for ‘he/she’. “On the other hand, in those Agaw Languages which have had the change ¢ + y, mainly Kenant, there are feminine -y's coning from 2, e.g. the relative/genitive feminine ending (4.2.1.2.2.2.), in the pronoun niy 'she! (from *nit). MAL 3, 44 49761 The Agaw Languages 15 diet "hen". Nove that in Bilin, a -2; appears after, feminine nous preceding an ablative or directive ending, e.g. daxna ‘old man’ or ‘old wonan', but daxnavtid ‘from an old man! and daxnaeti+€ad "Eton an old wonan' (4.2,1.2.1.). A few nouns, mainly kinship terms, have a prefixed ¢- for feminine marker, e.g. tidina (Bilin (R), Kemaht, Quara) ‘lady’ (vs. diag "ord * bin (i) toyed, Nami Guin, Quara cayet ‘paternal aunt’ (cf, eyir/aytr “father'), Bilin, (R) 2inSénz Inother-in-lax' (anSén ‘father-in-law'), Kenant tin ‘grandnother' (@n 'grandfather').” Such prefixal t- for feminine is found also in Bejg. In sone cases, Consonantal mutation (4.1.4.1,) marks gender: Bilin dan 'brother'/Sant ‘sister’, ox*xa 'Son'/ agtna ‘daughter’, also Quara fin ‘brother'/$an ‘sister’. In Bilin and Kenant, menbership in different declension classes may indicate gender distinction, see dotna right’ above, also Bilin Jona ‘wife's brother/sister', but in the accusative janis for masc. and famiét for fem., or dative nasc. jonid, fom. Janéivsd; in Xenant, x" ota 'son' or wer" in the absolute cgse, but in the subject case york" avi 'ny+son', yfex" ona ‘mysdaughter',** and in the dative wondez ‘to the son", vs. x" otded "to the daughter’. For aninals, often a prefixed word ‘nale/fenale', "father/mother') indicates sex. In Xamir the feminine denonstrative (4.2.2.2.) ~¥an is used: 2 'hom'/azién ‘Little horn’. Otherwise, only verbal agreenent shows gender (4.3.2.1.). Aungi has no stwcutarive. Elsewhere it is marked by an ending -a (Bilin (R), Xamir, some- tines -nl). The singulative ending may originally have been a feminine ending, like Avngi -a. Reinisch (1882:85) indicates that Bilin ax, "com, grain’, a collective, is a masculine, whereas its singulative axa ‘one piece of grain’ is a’feminine. Cf. also Quara nan ‘hand’, Singulative nana ‘finger’, Awngi bin ‘coffee’ (drink), bina ‘coffee bean’. puurat-narking is quite heterogeneous in the Agaw languages (Reinisch 1909:283-6, Conti, Rossini 1912:113-30). In many nouns, two plural foming processes may be simultaneously applied, evg. Bilin 9(x/gckat ‘hom’, reduplication of final radical and consonantal mitation (4.1.4.1.). Reduplication is one gf” the processes attested everywhere. Complete redupli- Gsidon 12 very tates Bilin gind/gangti, ‘mother’, Xanir arib/artbréb ‘Friday’, Falasha (H) yér/yiryir ‘nan’, zen/zenezen ‘brother’, Amngi (CR) xavia/xarinixaring 'stone', (Bruce MS): anka/ankanta "girl". In Axngi, the reduplicated element ends in -a and its second occurrence has High tone! kést/bisakiad ‘priest’, yuna/yynayiind 'yonan', Partial redupli- cation is somewhat better attested: Falasha (H) kitéga/btnborina ‘stone’, but usually the last radical is repeated: Bilin otk"

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