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The Omotic languages are a traditionally recognized but disputed grouping of languages spoken mainly in southwestern Ethiopia, around the Omo River region, and in parts of southeastern Sudan (Blue Nile State). This classification conventionally includes the Damotic (North Omotic), Mao, Dizoid, and Aroid (South Omotic) languages.
They are generally classified within the Afroasiatic family, though their inclusion in it, as well as the validity of Omotic as a coherent language group, are questioned by some linguists.
The North and South Omotic branches ("Nomotic" and "Somotic") are universally recognized, with some dispute as to the composition of North Omotic. The primary debate is over the placement of the Mao languages. Bender (2000) classifies Omotic languages as follows:
Apart from terminology, this differs from Fleming (1976) in including the Mao languages, whose affiliation had originally been controversial, and in abolishing the "Gimojan" group.[clarification needed] There are also differences in the subclassification of Ometo, which is not covered here.
Hayward (2003)
Hayward (2003) separates out the Mao languages as a third branch of Omotic and breaks up Ometo–Gimira:
Bosha† is unclassified; Ethnologue lists it as a dialect of Kafa but notes it may be a distinct language.
Classification
Omotic is generally considered the most divergent branch of the Afroasiatic languages. In early work up to Greenberg (1963), the languages had been classified in a subgroup of Cushitic, called most often "West Cushitic". Fleming (1969) argued that it should instead be classified as an independent branch of Afroasiatic, a view which Bender (1971) established to most linguists' satisfaction,[3] though a few linguists maintain the West Cushitic position[4][5] or that only South Omotic forms a separate branch, with North Omotic remaining part of Cushitic.[citation needed] Blench notes that Omotic shares honey-related vocabulary with Cushitic but not cattle-related vocabulary, suggesting that the split occurred before the advent of pastoralism.[6] A few scholars have raised doubts that the Omotic languages are part of the Afroasiatic language family at all,[7][8] and Theil (2006) proposes that Omotic be treated as an independent family.[9] However, the general consensus, based primarily on morphological evidence, such as pronominal prefixes, grammatical number and plural form, as well as prefix conjugation is that membership in Afroasiatic is well established.[10][11][12]
The Aroid (South Omotic) languages were first included in "West Cushitic" by Greenberg; they were excluded from earlier classifications by Italian Cushiticists such as Enrico Cerulli and Mario Martino Moreno,[4] and their inclusion in Omotic remains contested.
Glottolog
Hammarström, et al. in Glottolog does not consider Omotic to be a unified group, and also does not consider any of the "Omotic" groups to be part of the Afroasiatic phylum. Glottolog accepts the following as independent language families.
The Omotic languages have on average slightly less than thirty consonantphonemes, which is a comparatively high number, but is also found in other primary branches of Afro-Asiatic. Commonly used are bilabial, alveolar, velar and glottal plosive, various fricative, alveolar affricates and /w/, /j/, /l/, /r/, /m/, /n/. What is typical for the non-glottal plosives is that they are each represented by a voiced, a voiceless, and an ejective phoneme; All three types can also be found in fricatives and affricates. Most Omotic languages have additional consonants. Examples of this are the Implosive in South Omotic (/ɓ/, /ɗ/, /ɠ/) and the Retroflex of the Bench. In some cases, consonants can also occur geminated. Representatives of the Nordomotic and Mao have five to six vowel phonemes, the quantity is partly a difference in meaning; In contrast, much more extensive vowel systems are typical for South Omotic.
All Omotic languages for which sufficient data is available are tonal languages, which usually only distinguish two tones (high and low), some languages have more tones: Dizi distinguishes three, Bench six. Certain Omotic languages such as Aari and Ganza (Mao) have tonal accent systems in which each independent word has exactly one high tone, whereas in most languages the tones are freely distributed.
Morphology
Nouns
The Omotic languages distinguish between the nominal categories number, case,[16] and definiteness. These categories are marked by different suffixes, which can be fusional or analytic depending on the language. The two genders in all omotic languages for which sufficient data are available are masculine and feminine; they essentially correspond to natural gender. The case system distinguishes the omotic languages as accusative languages; other cases form various adverbial determinations. A number of omotic languages have an absolutive case, which marks the citation form and the direct object (examples from Wolaita):[17]
A typological peculiarity, which is also isolated within Omotic, is the person and gender dependency of the nominative in Bench (either -i˧ or -a˧, depending on the person):
a˦tsin˦-a˧ “a woman” (3rd person sg. femininum)[19]
In most languages, the singular is unmarked, while the plural has its own suffix. It is possible that plural suffixes in some languages arose from a partitive construction. This is supported by the length of certain plural suffixes, formal relationships to the genitive singular and the fact that the determining suffix sometimes comes before the plural suffix, which is typologically unusual:[21][22]
Dizi kìan-à-kʾankàs dog+det.+plural “the dogs”[23]
The personal pronouns distinguish similar categories to the nouns in most omotic languages; However, the genera are usually only marked in the 3rd person singular. The personal pronouns usually have their own stem for each number-person-gender combination, to which case suffixes are then added, which are the same for all persons. Some of the pronouns show similarities with other Afro-Asian language families and can therefore be traced back to Proto-Afro-Asiatic; Certain South Omotic personal pronouns can be explained as borrowings from the neighboring Nilo-Saharan:[25]
The case endings of the personal pronouns and the nouns are usually identical:
Aari: Accusative -m: yé-m "you", fatir-in-ám "the corn"
Possessive pronouns in particular have their own forms:
Aari: yé "yours," ʔéed-te "a man's"
Reconstruction
Bender (1987: 33–35)[27] reconstructs the following proto-forms for Proto-Omotic and Proto-North Omotic, the latter which is considered to have descended from Proto-Omotic.
English gloss
Proto- Omotic
Proto-North Omotic
ashes
*bend
bird
*kaf
bite
*sats’
breast
*t’iam
claw
*ts’ugum
die
*hayk’
dog
*kan
egg
*ɓul
fire
*tam
grass
*maata
hand
*kuc
head
*to-
hear
*si-
mouth
*non-
nose
*si(n)t’
root
*ts’ab-
snake
*šooš
stand (vb.)
*yek’
this
*kʰan-
thou (2.SG)
*ne(n)
water
*haats’
we (1.PL)
*nu(n)
ye (2.PL)
*int-
green
*c’il-
house
*kyet
left
*hadr-
elephant
*daŋgVr
sister, mother
*ind
armpit
*šoɓ-
boat
*gong-
grave
*duuk
vomit
*c’oš-
Comparative vocabulary
Sample basic vocabulary of 40 Omotic languages from Blažek (2008):[28]
↑ I. M. Diakonoff (1998) Journal of Semitic Studies 43:209: "It is quite evident that cultural ties between Proto-Semitic and the African branches of the Afrasian macrofamily must have been severed at a very early date indeed. However, the grammatical structure of [Common Semitic] (especially in the verb) is obviously close to that of Common Berbero-Libyan (CBL), as well as to Bedauye. (Bedauye might, quite possibly, be classified as a family distinct from the rest of Kushitic.) The same grammatical isoglosses are somewhat more feebly felt between Semitic and (the other?) Kushitic languages. They practically disappear between the Semitic and the Omotic languages, which were formerly termed Western Kushitic, but which actually may not be Afro-Asiatic at all, like their neighbours the Nubian languages and Meroitic."
↑ Rolf Theil (2006) Is Omotic Afro-Asiatic?Archived 2021-02-24 at the Wayback Machine pp 1–2: "I claim to show that no convincing arguments have been presented [for the inclusion of Omotic (OM) in Afro-Asiatic (AA)], and that OM should be regarded as an independent language family. No closer genetic relations have been demonstrated between OM and AA than between OM and any other language family."
↑ Gerrit Dimmendaal (2008) "Language Ecology and Linguistic Diversity on the African Continent", in Language and Linguistics Compass 2/5:841: "Although its Afroasiatic affiliation has been disputed, the allocation of Omotic within this family is now well-established, based on the attestation of morphological properties that this family shares with other Afroasiatic branches."
↑ Güldemann, Tom (2018). "Historical linguistics and genealogical language classification in Africa". In Güldemann, Tom (ed.). The Languages and Linguistics of Africa. The World of Linguistics series. Vol.11. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp.58–444. doi:10.1515/9783110421668-002. ISBN978-3-11-042606-9. S2CID133888593.
↑ Mammo Girma: Yemsa Verb Morphology. Some Inflections and Derivations. 1986, quoted from Bender 2000, p.120; Clay marking according to the different forms in Lamberti 1993, p.190
1 2 Mary J. Breeze: Personal Pronouns in Gimira (Benchnon). In: Ursula Wiesemann (Ed.): Pronominal Systems. Narr, Tübingen 1986, ISBN 3-87808-335-1, pp. 47–70, p. 53.
1 2 Bender, Lionel M. 1987. "First Steps Toward proto-Omotic." Current Approaches to African Linguistics 3 (1987): 21–36.
↑ Blažek, Václav. 2008. A lexicostatistical comparison of Omotic languages. In Bengtson (ed.), 57–148.
↑ Aklilu, Yilma. 2003. Comparative phonology of the Maji languages. Journal of Ethiopian studies 36: 59–88.
Sources cited
Bender, M. Lionel (2000). Comparative Morphology of the Omotic Languages. Munich: LINCOM.
Blench, Roger (2006). Archaeology, Language, and the African Past. Oxford: AltaMira Press. ISBN9780759104662.
Fleming, Harold (1976). "Omotic overview". In Bender, M. Lionel (ed.). The Non-Semitic Languages of Ethiopia. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University. pp.299–323.
Hayward, Richard J., ed. (1990). Omotic Language Studies. London: School of Oriental and African Studies.
Hayward, Richard J. (2003). "Omotic: the 'empty quarter' of Afroasiatic linguistics". In Jacqueline Lecarme (ed.). Research in Afroasiatic Grammar II: selected papers from the fifth conference on Afroasiatic languages, Paris 2000. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. pp.241–261. doi:10.1075/cilt.241.13hay.
Newman, Paul (1980). The classification of Chadic within Afroasiatic. Universitaire Pers Leiden.
Lamberti, Marcello (1991). "Cushitic and its Classifications". Anthropos. 86 (4/6): 552–561.
Lamberti, Marcello (1993). Materialien zum Yemsa. Studi Linguarum Africae Orientalis, Band 5. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter. ISBN3-8253-0103-6.
General Omotic bibliography
Bender, M. L. 1975. Omotic: a new Afroasiatic language family. (University Museum Series, 3.) Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University.
Zaborski, Andrzej. 1986. Can Omotic be reclassified as West Cushitic? In Gideon Goldenberg, ed., Ethiopian Studies: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference pp.525–530. Rotterdam: Balkema.
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