Book reviews / Рецензии Kirill Babaev Russian State University for the Humanities In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory. Essays in the four fields of anthropology. In honor of Harold Crane Fleming. By John D. Bengtson (ed.) Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2008. XXIV + 476 pp. The volume under discussion was published in hon- Genetics and genogeography have recently become our of Harold Crane Fleming, a distinguished veteran an important part of prehistoric studies, and pioneer- anthropologist with deep specialisation in linguistics ing experiments of L. Cavalli-Sforza (1991) and his and language prehistory. His particular passion in this followers to link genetic data with cultures, ethnicities domain have been African languages, on which he and languages are gaining substantial popularity. One published a great number of significant papers fol- of them is carried out in Shomarka Omar Keita’s arti- lowing his long term trips to Ethiopia, working cle “Geography, selected Afro-Asiatic families, and Y- mostly, though not exclusively, with Chadic, Omotic chromosome lineage variation: an exploration in lin- and Cushitic languages. Through his studies, Harold guistics and phylogeography”. The author deals with Fleming has always emphasised that only a complex Y-chromosome genetic data of various ethnic groups interdisciplinary approach can lead us to uncover the of Afro-Asiatic (or Afrasian) language speakers. As it prehistory of humankind — a task he has always been turns out, many of the ones that are located in Africa working upon in person. belong to the same haplogroups — which, therefore, The book is a solid attempt to vindicate this very may confirm their common origins. The author claims approach. It contains a collection of articles written by to find the same traces in Semitic data to back the the- specialists in various fields of anthropological studies ory of the African origins of Afrasians; however, this — including genetics, archaeology, linguistics, cul- does not seem evident. There are further doubts re- tural studies and human biology. The lifetime idea of garding links with Berber genetic data, which, ac- Harold Fleming, therefore, is well reflected here: to cording to earlier discoveries, lies closer to Eurasian bring together people who can answer questions on stocks than to African ones. deep human past multiplying knowledge of several The article by Christy Turner named “A dental an- interconnected disciplines and creating a synergy to thropological hypothesis relating to the ethnogenesis, boost the progress. A great endeavour, indeed. origin, and antiquity of the Afro-Asiatic language The collected papers are divided into five major family: peopling of the Eurasian-S.Asian triangle IV” blocks in an attempt to follow the disciplinary princi- considers traits of dental morphology of Homo ple: African Peoples; African Languages (synchronic sapiens fossils to resolve the same problem: the origi- studies); African Languages (classification and pre- nal homeland of Afrasian language speakers. Con- history); Languages of Eurasia, Oceania, and the trary to the previous author, the author supports the Americas; and Human and Language Origins. How- idea of Near Eastern origins of Afrasians, namely the ever, some inconsistencies may be noticed: papers on Natuf archaeological culture of the region. In the light genetics are placed into the first and final sections, of the latest reports (Militarev 2009), this relation while issues of mythology are discussed in parts I and seems promising. Sadly, the author’s phrase ‘the hy- IV. This is probably done on purpose, to strengthen pothesis of non-African origins of Afro-Asiatic finds the impression that all humanities are interrelated and support in the fact that the Semitic branch ... is the cannot be easily classified. most important in terms of number of speakers’ (p. 18) We will go through the materials one by one in the does not withstand serious criticism. order they are presented, focusing more on linguistic Daniel McCall describes the phenomenon of the studies as the present Journal implies. calendar 7-day week in the culture of ancient civilisa- Journal of Language Relationship • Вопросы языкового родства • 2 (2009) • Pp. 139–174 Book reviews / Рецензии tions in his “African weeks”. He turns to a well- Unfortunately, no examples are presented to support known parallel between the 7-day week in the ancient the reconstructions, which are mostly taken from ear- Mediterranean, originating from Babylon, and the lier works of the author. The author concludes that same tradition among the Akan people of Ghana. An there was a common phonetic innovation in East and amazing migration of the cultural custom is suggested South Cushitic, and another one common for Beja and by the author to have emerged due to the gold cara- South Cushitic. The latter, according to the author, van trade across Sahara which lasted for thousands of may suggest a Beja-South Cushitic node in the internal years between the Mediterranean and the ‘Gold classification of the family. Coast’, the homeland of the Akan. The author analy- The issues of phonetic and morphological devel- ses possible correspondences in the names of the opment in Chadic languages are discussed in Herr- weekdays between European cultures and this remote mann Jungraithmayr’s “Erosion in Chadic”. He de- African one. scribes a very intriguing, but still poorly studied, issue “Gender distinction and affirmative copula clauses of the difference in development speed between vari- in Zargulla” by Azeb Amha is the first article of Part II ous languages of the same stock. Indeed, some lan- of the book. It provides an insight into the problem of guages of the group / family always seem more pro- gender marking in one of the Omotic languages: sur- gressive, while others are rather conservative. The prisingly, the old opposition of masculine and femi- process of language change and proto-language sys- nine is reinterpreted as neutral / emotional shading of tem destruction is called erosion by the author, who the copula. Typologically, this kind of development is then analyses it for Chadic. Based on this criterion, he a rare case, worth being studied on a wider range of proposes to divide the languages of the family into data, and a nice example of how the Afrasian gender three basic groups: ‘Old Chadic’, preserving much of system has eroded in Omotic. Proto-Chadic in its phonetics and morphology; ‘Mid- Another synchronic study is contained in “Riddling dle Chadic’, showing significant shifts; and ‘New in Gidole” by Paul Black, who finds and classifies Chadic’, the most progressive and innovative lan- rules of building popular riddles in two East Cushitic guages which have reduced or dropped much of their languages of Ethiopia: Gidole and Konso. prehistoric shape. It is interesting to see that some The longest paper of the volume, “A lexicostatisti- languages may be archaic in preserving vowels and cal comparison of Omotic languages”, is written by progressive in consonantism, or vice versa. The issue Václav Blažek; it opens the third part of the book. This clearly deserves deeper research, with a discussion of is a serious and detailed analysis of the subject, con- the reasons for different rates of language change taining both a retrospective review of the existing re- which, in our opinion, should include external lan- constructions of Proto-Omotic and the author’s own guage contacts as one of the main drivers of the lan- estimates. Blažek adduces two of the most recently guage change. established and reliable systems of phonetic corre- Philippe Bürgisser (“On Kunama ukunkula “elbow” spondences between the Omotic languages (one by L. and its proposed cognates”) not only addresses the Bender and the other by M. Lamberti & R. Sottile), as etymology of this body part lexeme in one of the Nilo- well as the language tree diagrams of Omotic built by Saharan languages, but also gives some lexical corre- H. Fleming and L. Bender. Based on the Swadesh 100- spondences to strengthen the possible relations be- word lists for fourty Omotic dialects, the author sug- tween Nilo-Saharan and two isolate languages of the gests his own version of the language diffusion chart, region, Shabo and Kadu. Further on, pros and contras which amends Bender’s tree in some details without of the two existing Proto-Nilo-Saharan reconstructions changing the whole picture. A good corpus of recon- (by L. Bender and C. Ehret, respectively) are analysed. structed Proto-Omotic roots for the Swadesh list is en- The author’s view is that Bender’s sound correspon- closed. The author concludes that the breakup of the dences are poorly worked out, and that both versions Proto-Omotic language community took place ca. are not strict enough due to far-fetched semantics, 7,000 years ago. which is entirely true. However, one of the author's Christopher Ehret's contribution to the volume is further statements — ‘I don’t share Ehret’s faith in the entitled “The primary branches of Cushitic: seriating existence of exceptionless sound laws’ — is something the diagnosis sound change rules”. The basis of the that we can hardly accept. Exceptionless sound laws study is the comparison of the reconstructed phone- are not a matter of faith, but rather a basic principle of mic systems of Proto-Cushitic and its core branches: comparative linguistics; observed deviations from a common innovations are considered to reflect the postulated rule are usually due to other rules, some- structure of the proto-language’s dialectal diffusion. times still waiting to be discovered. 140 J. D. BENGTSON (ed.). In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory “The problem of pan-African roots” by Roger given according to their time depth. The author is re- Blench is a collection of lexical comparisons between luctant to admit Altaic as a family of languages, but the four language macrofamilies of the continent mentions that some arguments in favour of the made by the author in the recent years.