Trets característics del mètode: “Nou mecanisme del piano”

Canary Islands (Fig. 2). Considerable interest in the spoken Berber lan­

guages and their origins had developed by the middle of the 19th century, but no written sources are available before some Shleuh manuscripts from the 16th or 17th century written in Arabic script, except a few short Berber sentences in an Arabic manuscript from the 12th century and a number of Berber words and proper names quoted in works of Arab mediaeval writ­

ers. The Libyco-Berber language is spoken by some twenty million people from the Siwa Oasis in Egypt to the Atlantic and from the Mediterranean southwards into the Sahara. It shows many correspondences of a phono­

logical, morphological, syntactical, and lexical nature with Semitic, but these affinities can readily be explained within the general framework of Afro-Asiatic languages. Libyco-Berber preserves the features of an ergative language type to a greater extent than Semitic and its declension system is based on the opposition of an active subject case (casus agens) to a pred­

icative or non-active case (casus patiens). In the singular, as a rule, the active subject case is characterized by the w-prefix, while the a-prefix is marking the predicative or non-active case (§32.1-7). Beside a stative con­

jugation (e.g. hnin, "he is gracious") and two non-aspectual tenses, viz. the imperative (e.g. atom, "follow!") and the jussive (-Ikdm-) (§38.2), which is used also in subordinate clauses, Libyco-Berber has two verbal prefix-forms, viz. the imperfective and the perfective, that indicate the aspect, i.e.^

Fig. 2. Geographical distribution of Libyco-Berber

whether the action is considered as a lasting process or as a concluded action; e.g. the basic stem of -Ikdm-, "to follow":

A vowel lengthening characterizes in Tuareg the intensive stem, like in some Semitic and Cushitic languages, and affixes may be added in all dialects to the verbal root in order to express the causative, reflexive or reciprocal, frequentative, or passive meaning of the verb. A l l these stems occur also in Semitic languages, except the last one which is paralleled by the Egyptian "pseudo-passive":

intensive stem, e.g. -Ikām-; -lākkdm-\

causative s-stem, e.g. -S9rt9k-, "cause to f a l l " ;

reflexive / reciprocal m/rt-stem, e.g. m3trdg-, "be freed";

frequentative i-stem, e.g. -tdffdġ-, "go often out";

agentless passive f/w-stem, e.g. -ttwadddz-, "be crushed".

Despite numerous lexical variations (e.g. " f o x " , uššdn in Kabyle but âhdggi in Tuareg) and important phonetic changes (e.g. "heart", Tuareg dwl, Tachelhit ul, Tamazight uz, Tarifit wr), Libyco-Berber is still essen­

tially one language, the numerous dialects of which show but relatively slight differences, although Tuareg and some eastern idioms appear to be its most archaic forms of speech. Tuareg is important also because it has but few borrowings from Arabic, which are instead numerous in other Berber dialects, viz. Tarifit or Rifan in northern Morocco, Tachelhit or Shleuh in the south of the country and in Mauritania, Tamazight in the Middle Atlas region, Kabyle and Tachaouit or Chaouia in Kabylia and in the Aurès (Algeria), Zenaga in southwestern Mauritania, etc. However, the borrowings from Arabic are mainly lexical, exceptionally morpho­

logical or syntactical. I n Tuareg, one must reckon also with possible loanwords from Songhai, an important isolated language spoken in Tombouctou (Mali), in the Niger valley farther south, and in the city of Agades in the A i r oasis of the Sahara (Niger).

The term ta-maziġ-t is used nowadays in Moroccan and Saharan dialects to designate the Berber language in general, and someone speaking Berber is an a-maziġ (plur. i-a-maziġ-drì). The word a-maziġ has a long history, since it is attested as a North African personal name in Roman times, while some Libyco-Berber tribes are called Mazices or MG^IKSC; in classical sources. Ibn Khaldun

(1332-1406) considers Mazigh as a forefather of the Berbers.

Aspect

-lākkdm-LIBYCO-BERBER 37

2.15. The Berber-speaking Tuaregs have a writing of their own, the tifīnaġ, a plural apparently related to Greek (poiviK-, "Phoenician, Punic". Its origin may go back to the 7th-6th centuries B.C., as indicated by monuments and inscriptions ranging over the whole of North Africa.

Most of the ancient inscriptions (about 1200) date however from the times of the Numidian kingdoms (3rd-1st cent. B.C.) and of the Roman Empire (Fig. 3). As a rule, they do not indicate vowels, not even the ini­

tial w-, a-, /- of the case prefixes which have thus to be supplied, e.g.

nbbn nšqr' corresponding approximately to *i-nbabdn n-u-šqura\ "the cutters of wood (were)..." (Dougga, 2nd century B.C.). There is also a large corpus of Libyco-Berber proper names quoted in Punic, Greek, and Latin sources. However, it is not easy to connect the phonological, mor­

phological, syntactical, and lexical elements of this antique documenta­

tion with the modern Berber forms of speech. The Numidic noun gld,

"king", pronounced nowadays idgid in Tarifit because of the phonetic changes g > z and // > g, gives a small idea of the problems facing the linguists. Nevertheless, the uninterrupted continuity of the Libyco-Berber idioms appears to be accepted nowadays by all reputable schol­

ars in the field. The orthography of Tuareg in Latin characters, officially adopted in Niger and in Mali, does of course not reflect the dialectal richness of the language, although it undoubtedly presents some advan­

tages.

The modem Berber dialects reflect the ancient loss of original gutturals, but they have more pharyngalized emphatics than Common Semitic, also more palatalized and fricativized consonants. The changes d > d, d > t, d > d, g > ġ, k

> g, k > ġ, q > ġ, r > r, s > s, t > t, s > z are quite frequent, as well as g > z, k >

š, l> z, 11 > ġ, 11 > â,rr> g, z > š (>ẁ), z > z, b > b, d > d, t > f; e.g. Tachaouit ti-ġdtt-dn, "she-goats", to compare with Hebrew gddi and Arabic ġady, "young goat". Besides, original pharyngalization can disappear (e.g. Tachaouit dddhhast < *ta-dahhākit, "laughing"), a secondary pharyngal may be inserted before t (e.g. Tachaouit dz-zdht < Arabic dz-zdyt, "olive oil"; Kabyle ta-bdġliht

< ta-bdġlit, "mule"), and various assimilations may occur (e.g. Tarifit ydšša <

*yikía, "he ate").

PHONETIC OLDER PRESENT-DAY FORMS

VALUE FORMS Consonants Clusters

.

b ^E3

0

^bt

m 3 u cj mt

f nb

P X <=< >o nd

t X t -r- nd

t Î X B 6

d _{V A}

nu

d _H

m

d ₃

E

t H >

mi r

³

E

n

- 1

I nt

T t

V

n

f

1 ii = < II It

r

a o • o

^{rt GO ©}

s _CD

0

^St

z — X

X

z # zt

«

s r -

T

Š

M w £ 30Q 6G

^St

+9

z zt

y

í ?i

^{i 1/ nk}

_{: i : t}

k

ir

^{• • ng}

g

n v ^ :

^gt í ^í

i .1. T gyt

w _{II =} «

ġ •

h • *

• •

q • • •

h :

CHADIC 39 D . Chadic

2.16. The Chadic languages, so called from the name of Lake Chad, are spoken in Western and Central Africa, i.e. in northern Nigeria, northern Cameroon, western and central Chad, and, in the case of Hausa, Niger.

They form the most variegated branch of Afro-Asiatic with some 125 dif­

ferent languages, a recent subdivision of which is presented in Fig. 4. The chief idiom of this family is Hausa, a large group that has only recently been described in a satisfactory way. The Hausa speakers constitute the single^most numerous group in northern Nigeria and in southern Niger.

The language has become the general lingua franca in northern Nigeria and the number of people speaking Hausa as a secondary language is con­

siderable. Hausa is written traditionally in an orthography based on the Arabic alphabet, and an original Hausa literature does exist, composed mainly in the dialect of Kano which became the standard literary lan­

guage. The dialect differences are not sufficiently serious to interfere with mutual intelligibility. As result of Islamic influence, numerous Arabic words have been borrowed, particularly in the spheres of religion, crafts, and technology. The importance of Hausa cannot be underestimated, but in general East Chadic languages, as Mubi, Kwang, Kera, Migàma, Bidiya, spoken in northern Cameroon and in the Chad Republic, seem to be more archaic and to provide more parallels to Afro-Asiatic. Distinctive Afro-Asiatic features that can be shown to exist also in Chadic are the affixed morpheme t with the triple function of feminine / diminutive / sin-gulative (e.g. Hausa yazo, "he came", tazo, "she came"), the -n/t/n gen­

der-number marking pattern in the deictic system (masculine, feminine, plural), the m- prefix forming nouns of place, of instrument, and of agent, the formation of noun plurals, among other ways, by adding a suffix -n and by inserting a vowel -a-, the formation of intensive or "pluriactional"

verbs by internal consonant gemination, and an asymmetrical conjuga-tional system involving suffixed feminine and plural markers in addition to pronominal prefixes. There are also some highly probable etymological connexions between Chadic and Afro-Asiatic. For instance, mutu means

"to die" in Hausa, while the Old Akkadian corresponding verb is muātu.

In both languages, mutum means "man". In East Chadic (Migama), sin means "brother" like in ancient Egyptian, while náàsb, "to breathe", cor­

responds to Egyptian nsp, to Semitic nasāpu, and to Cushitic nēfso (Boni), with metathesis. The Mubi aspectual opposition between bēni, "he built", and binnāa, "he is building" (Mubi), is undoubtedly related to the conju­

gation of the Semitic verb bny.

Branch Subbranch Group Language

CHADIC FAMILY

(Hausa, Gwandara) (Bole, Kanakuru...) (Angas, Goemai...) (Ron, Kulere...) (Bade, Ngizim...) (Warji, Pa'a...) (Zaar, Boghom...) (Tera, Ga'anda...) (Bura, Margi...) (Higi, Bana)

(Mandara, Lamang...) Matakam (Matakam, Gisiga...) Sukur (Sukur)

(Daba, Hina...) (Bata, Gude...)

MASA

Kotoko Musgu Gidar Somrai Nancere Kera Dangla Mokulu Sokoro Masa

(Kotoko, Buduma...) (Musgu)

(Gidar)

(Somrai, Tumak...) (Nancere, Gabri...) (Kera, Kwang) (Dangla, Mubi...) (Mokulu)

(Sokoro, Barain...) (Masa, Zime.,.)

Fig. 4. Diagram of Chadic languages according to P. Newman (1977).

PROTO-SEMITIC 41

2.17. The five branches of Afro-Asiatic are not really parallel to each

In document L’escola pianística de Carles G. Vidiella (página 71-85)