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The Tigre Language of Gindaʿ, Eritrea Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics

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The Tigre Language of Gindaʿ, Eritrea Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics The Tigre Language of Gindaʿ, Eritrea Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics Editorial Board A.D. Rubin and C.H.M. Versteegh VOLUME 75 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ssl The Tigre Language of Gindaʿ, Eritrea Short Grammar and Texts By David L. Elias LEIDEN | BOSTON Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Elias, David L. The Tigre language of Ginda Eritrea : short grammar and texts / By David L. Elias. pages cm. — (Studies in semitic languages and linguistics ; 75) Thesis (Ph. D., Dept. of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations)—Harvard University, 2005. Originally published as “Tigre of Habab : short grammar and texts from the Rigbat people”. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-27119-7 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-27120-3 (e-book : alk. paper) 1. Tigre language—Grammar. 2. Tigre language—Dialects—Eritrea. 3. Tigrinya (African people) I. Title. PJ9131.E45 2014 492‘.827—dc23 2014006704 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual ‘Brill’ typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 0081-8461 isbn 978-90-04-27119-7 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-27120-3 (e-book) Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Global Oriental and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Contents Acknowledgements ix List of Tables x 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Tigre 1 1.2 Tigre of Gindaʿ 1 1.3 The Literature 3 1.4 The Informants 4 1.5 Research Methodology and Text Presentation 5 1.6 Limitations 7 1.7 Abbreviations 8 2 Phonology 13 2.1 Table of Consonants 13 2.2 Ejectives 13 2.3 Plosives 15 2.4 Fricatives 16 2.5 Affricates 17 2.6 Nasals 17 2.7 Flaps/Trills 18 2.8 The Lateral l 18 2.9 Semi-vowels 19 2.10 Table of Vowels 20 2.11 i, u, e, and o 20 2.12 ə 20 2.13 a and ā 22 2.14 Diphthongs 25 2.15 VyV Sequences 27 2.16 Stress 28 2.17 Sentence Boundary Jumping 30 2.18 Morphophonemics 31 3 Morphology—Pronouns, Nouns, and Adjectives 35 3.1 Independent Personal Pronouns 35 3.2 Independent Genitive Pronoun 37 3.3 Independent Deictics and Reflexives 38 3.4 Affixed Nominative Pronouns 39 3.5 Suffixed Genitive Pronouns 39 3.6 Suffixed Object Pronouns 41 vi contents 3.7 The Relative Particle 44 3.8 Interrogative Pronouns and Pro-adjectives 45 3.9 Nouns—Base Forms and Gender 46 3.10 Nouns—Number 51 3.11 Nouns—Definiteness 54 3.12 Derived Nouns 55 3.13 Days of the week 57 3.14 Adjectives—Gender and Number 58 3.15 Denominative Adjectives 59 3.16 Numerals 60 4 Morphology—Verbs 65 4.1 The Copula 65 4.2 The Verb of Existence 68 4.3 Possession and Compulsion 71 4.4 The Reference Form and De-verbal Forms 73 4.5 The Four Conjugations 74 4.6 Compound Verbal Constructions 80 4.7 Overview of Verbal Stems 85 4.8 A Stem Verbs 86 4.9 B Stem Verbs 94 4.10 C Stem Verbs 96 4.11 D, Q, and D/Q Stem Verbs 100 4.12 B Passive Stem Verbs 101 4.13 tə-A/B Stem Verbs 105 4.14 C Passive and tə-C Stem Verbs 110 4.15 Q Passive, tə-Q, and tə-D/Q Stem Verbs 113 4.16 ʾa-A, ʾa-B, and ʾat-C Stem Verbs 115 4.17 Other Verbal Patterns 119 4.18 The Negative of the Verb 121 5 Morphology—Adverbs, Prepositions, and Conjunctions 123 5.1 Adverbs 123 5.2 Prepositions 131 5.3 Conjunctions 145 6 Syntax 157 6.1 Noun Phrases 157 6.2 Prepositional Phrases, Adverbs, and Adverbial Expressions 168 6.3 Nominal, Adverbial, and Existential Clauses 174 6.4 Simple Sentences 177 6.5 Subordinate Clauses 190 6.6 Relative Clauses 203 6.7 Interrogative Clauses 223 contents vii 7 Lexicography and Language Contact 229 7.1 Arabic 229 7.2 Tigrinya 248 7.3 Other Languages 250 Appendices 253 Appendix I 253 Appendix II 273 Bibliography 277 Subject Index 287 Acknowledgments First and foremost, I wish to thank my informants, Mohammed Adem and Hamid Mahmoud, without whose extreme generosity and helpfulness this work could not have been completed. I also wish to thank members of my doctoral dissertation committee at Harvard University, Wolfhart Heinrichs and Bert Vaux, for their insightful comments on this work. In addition, I benefitted greatly from the very helpful sugges tions about Tigre syntax and Arabic loans from the participants in the NELC Department’s 2003–2004 Semitic Philology Workshop and Prof. Heinrichs’ 2004–2005 Doctorandi Seminar. A special thank you goes to Rainer Voigt, Andrzej Zaborski, and Saleh Mahmud for their review of my most recent manuscript. Their comments were invaluable, in particular with respect to phonology, general formatting and clarity. Of course, any short- comings in this work are entirely my own. The fieldwork for this dissertation was made possible by a grant from The Frederick P. Sheldon Fund at Harvard. Numerous individuals in Eritrea pro- vided support, information, and contacts to effect my fieldwork. Though they are too numerous to mention, they include Dean Asmerom Kidane and mem- bers of the Department of English at the University of Asmara, Dr. Azieb Ogbaghebriel, Mr. Abraham, Hussen Saad, Hiruy Mengisteab, Mohammed Humed, and Saliem Gebremedhen. Additional funding during my studies was provided by The Graduate Society Fellowship for Preliminary Dissertation Research at Harvard University and the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. I cannot leave out the long line of research assistants who helped in many stages along the way: Julie Yick, Yifon Chen, Marta Szabo, Horling Wong, and especially Angela Johnson. My parents, Barbara P. Elias and Walter Elias, Jr., deserve special thanks for their love. I take this opportunity to acknowledge their undying support as I have completed this work. Lastly I wish to thank my advisor, colleague and friend, John Huehnergard, who is extraordinary—a rigorous and collegial scholar who bends over back- wards to train his students to be professional Semitic philologists. List of Tables Table caption 1 Tigre of Gindaʿ Consonants 13 2 Tigre of Gindaʿ Vowels 20 3 Independent Personal Pronouns 35 4 Independent Deictic Pronouns and Pro-adjectives 38 5 Suffixed Genitive Pronouns 39 6 Suffixed Object Pronouns—General Forms 41 7 Suffixed Object Pronouns—Specific Forms Attested in the Corpus 42 8 Interrogative Pronouns and Pro-Adjectives 45 9 Days of the Week 57 10 Cardinal Numbers from One to Ten 60 11 Cardinal Numbers Above Ten 61 12 Attested Ordinal Numbers 62 13 Forms of the Copula 65 14 The Negative of the Copula 67 15 Forms of the Verb of Existence 68 16 The Negative the Verb of Existence 70 17 The Four Conjugations 75 18 Forms of ʾəgəl + Jussive + Copula 80 19 Overview of Verbal Stems 85 20 B Stem Verbs 94 21 C Stem Verbs 97 22 B Passive Stem Verbs 101 23 tə-A/B Stem Verbs 105 24 C Passive Stem Verbs 110 25 tə-C Stem Verbs 110 26 Q Passive Stem Verbs 113 27 tə-Q Stem Verbs 113 28 tə-D/Q Stem Verbs 114 29 ʾa-A Stem Verbs 115 30 ʾa-B Stem Verbs 116 31 ʾat-C Stem Verbs 116 32 Correspondence of Tigre of Gindaʿ and Arabic Perfect Verb Forms 231 33 Correspondence of Tigre of Gindaʿ and Arabic Consonants and Vowels 245 chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Tigre Tigre is the northernmost of the Ethiopian Semitic languages. It is spoken along the Red Sea coast and in the northeastern and western lowlands of Eritrea (East Africa) and, to a lesser extent, in eastern Sudan. Estimates of the number of speakers range from a quarter of a million to 1,050,000. Most Tigre speakers are Muslims.1 Tigre is one of nine ethnic/language groups officially recognized in Eritrea, whose population is approximately 5.4 million. Ethnic Tigrinya and eth- nic Tigre together comprise nearly 80% of the country. Arabic, along with Tigrinya and English (which is not one of the nine groups), is a national lan- guage. Arabic is the language of the Rashaida ethnic group, and there are many second- language speakers of Arabic as well. While Tigrinya, Tigre, and Arabic are Semitic languages, the languages of the remaining six ethnic groups are in the Cushitic family (Afar, Hidareb, Saho, Bilin) and the Nilo-Saharan phy- lum (Kunama, Nara). Bilingualism and multilingualism are common, and the social, cultural, and linguistic situation is extremely complex.2 1.2 Tigre of Gindaʿ The town of Gindaʿ (population under 50,000)3 is in eastern Eritrea on the escarpment between Asmara and the Red Sea. The Tigre language of Gindaʿ (or, “Tigre of Gindaʿ ”),4 the speech pattern that is the subject of this work, is one of many dialects of Tigre.
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