Research in Afroasiatic Grammar 2 (review)

This volume consists of twenty-two papers presented at the fifth Conference on Afroasiatic Languages held at the University of Paris 7 on June 28–30, 2000. I comment here on eight of them in accordance with my background and interest. The remaining titles and authors are listed at the conclusion. This decision does not relegate those essays not discussed to any lesser category.

Karim Achab’s ‘Alternation of state in Berber’ (1–19) deals with morphological and syntactic phenomena pertaining to free (FS) and construct state (CS) in Kabyle (mostly). Achab argues that the masculine and feminine CS forms are not derived from their corresponding FS ones. Calling the Berber languages dialects is a misnomer, and referring to Kabyle as Kabyle Berber is tautological.

Elabbas Benmamoun’s ‘Reciprocals as plurals in Arabic’ (53–62) treats Form III verbs such as kaataba ‘to correspond’ as plurals. This perspective leads to the wider generalization that broken plurals occur in a unified manner in both the nominal and verbal systems. Moeover, Benmamoun ‘take[s] the singular or non-plural simple form as a basis for derivation rather than the root’ (61).

Eugene Buckley’s ‘Emergent vowels in Tigrinya templates’ (105–25) asserts that most surface verbal forms in Tigrinya derive from the perfective, and that /ɨ/ is the default, unmarked template vowel. The background for this interpretation is documented with analyses of Classical Arabic and Modern Hebrew.

Abdelkader Fassi Fehri’s ‘Verbal plurality, transitivity, and causativity’ (151–85) is a rich paper examining such concepts as verbal plurality (jarraħa ‘inflict many wounds; wound many people’) quoting a classic article by Joseph H. Greenberg (‘The Semitic intensive as verbal plurality’, Semitic studies in honor of Wolf Leslau, vol. 1, ed. by Alan S. Kaye, 577–87, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1991). Fehri attributes the origin of this idea to Morris Swadesh (1946), which is unfortunately not listed in the bibliography.

M. Masten Guerssel, in ‘The metathesis effect in Classical Arabic and the representation of geminates’ (215–40), goes against the mainstream asserting that the idea of Classical Arabic metathesis is erroneous; rather, ‘the “metathesis” effect is but the result of the interaction of autosegmental factors and the principles of phonological licensing’ (238).

Richard J. Hayward’s ‘Omotic: The “empty quarter” of Afroasiatic linguistics’ (241–61) emphasizes the ‘relative dearth of linguistic descriptions of Omotic languages’ (241). A major part of the essay is a discussion of gemination in the morphophonology of Gamo, an Ometo language of the northern group.

Robert R. Ratcliff, in ‘The historical dynamics of the Arabic plural system’ (339–62), posits a general reshaping and the loss of infrequent allomorphs as, at least, part of the explanation for the change in the Arabic (and Ethio-Semitic and Modern South Arabian) broken plural systems.

Kimary Shahin’s ‘Vowel innovation in Arabic’ (429–45) provides a theoretical account for new /ε/ and /o/ vowels in Palestinian Colloquial Arabic: ‘under pressure for greater perceptual distinction’ and ‘from imposition of pattern symmetry’ (442).

The remaining titles and authors are: Outi Bat-El, ‘Anti-faithfulness: An inherent morphological property’; Sabrina Bendjaballah, ‘The internal structure of the determiner in Beja’; Nora Boneh, ‘Modern Hebrew possessive yeS constructions’; Irena Botwinik-Rotem, ‘The thematic and syntactic status of Ps: The dative, directional, locative distinction’; Edit Doron, ‘Transitivity alternations in the Semitic template system’; Melanie Green and Philip J. Jaggar, ‘Ex-situ and in-situ focus in Hausa syntax: Syntax, semantics, and discourse’; Tabea Ih-sane, ‘Demonstratives and reinforcers in Arabic, Romance and Germanic’; David Le Gac, ‘Tonal alternations in Somali’; John S. Lumsden and Girma Halefom, ‘Verb conjugations and the strong pronoun declension in Standard Arabic’; Chris H. Reintges, ‘The syntax of special inflection...