Conlangery #102: Afrihili

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Today we discuss Afrihili in some detail, a discussion made possible by William’s work tracking down the book and publishing some highlights about the language.

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  1. Jyri

    The phonologically based agreement in Afrihili attributes reminds me of some of the agreement patterns found in the Arapesh languages. They have a largely phonologically based noun class system where at least demonstratives and verbal subject prefixes can be seen to agree with echo phonemes with the end of the associated nouns. Sect. 4 in

    http://www.hum.uu.nl/medewerkers/a.dimitriadis/papers/allit-glow97.pdf

    describes the Abuq dialect which goes so far in this that it has developed a new agreement class around /p/ after loaning words ending in this phoneme which was originally completely absent in the language.

    Also, I wouldn’t be so hasty to label the pronoun system as definitely English based. It certainly might be so, but the MASC vs. FEM gender distinction only appearing in singular pronouns is a common enough feature across the globe. Adding a third neutral/neuter pronominal for inanimates or non-humans is also a fairly unmarked feature to have.

    • wm.annis

      Given the languages Attobrah was most familiar with, I’m still a little suspicious that the 3-way-singular/1-way-plural 3rd person set is inspired by English.

      Thanks for the info on the Arapesh languages!

  2. Pete Bleackley

    You mentioned that (I think) Hausa has tense-marked pronouns, formed from reduced auxiliaries. Can you point me to any more information on this? I seek, and I find not.

  3. Patrick Niedzielski

    Through the magic of interlibrary loans, I was able to get the copy of the Afrihilli grammar from the Library of Congress to give an hour long lecture on it for the Constructed Languages Club at my high school. Great presentation of it this episode!

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