On September 11-13, 2008, Naples (Italy) hosted the VIII International Congress on Afrasian Languages*, which continues the tradition of scientific meetings on the program of studying languages belonging to the Afrasian macrofamily.

The first congress on these languages was held in Paris in 1969. By this time, world linguistics had already accumulated sufficient material on the ancient written languages (Semitic, Ancient Egyptian, Coptic) and young-written or non-written languages spoken in Africa. The first results of a comparative study of individual languages of the macrofamily and entire language groups allowed scientists to raise the question of a deeper (or distant) relationship between the Semitic, Egyptian, Cushitic, Berber and Chadian families. The first reconstructions of Proto-Afrasian vocabulary and grammatical structure appeared. In comparative historical linguistics, the direction of Semitic-Hamitic and later Afrasian comparative studies was formed. Further results of Afrasian studies were noted and discussed at international congresses (under the name of Hamito-Semitic or Semito-Hamitic languages). The following congresses were held, respectively: in 1970 (London), in 1974 (Florence), in 1983 (Marburg), in 1987. (Vienna), in 1994. (Moscow), in 2004 (Berlin).

The program of the congresses includes general issues of comparative historical study of Afrasian languages: establishing more precise genealogical relationships between language families, as well as between languages belonging to the same family (especially in the area of poorly studied languages); reconstruction of ancient vocabulary, grammatical systems and phonology both in individual families and in the general Afrasian macrofamily; establishing common Afrasian vocabulary and phonology. korneslov and root structures at a deeper historical level.

In recent years, a typological direction has been developing in Afrasian linguistics: the study of the peculiarities of the grammatical structure, semantics of grammatical and lexical relations at the synchronous level in individual languages and especially in poorly studied and non-written languages and dialects of the African continent.

Among the participants of the VIII Congress, semitologists (which is quite traditional) and specialists in Chadian languages prevailed. An important phenomenon that indicates the expansion of the field of study of Afrasian languages was the large section of Berber studies.

Semitologists were represented by scientists from Italy, France, Germany, Israel and Russia, specialists in Chadian languages - from Italy, Germany, Russia, Berberologists-scientists from the Italian and French schools. Kushitology was represented by scientists from Poland and Italy, while Egyptology was represented by the only specialist from Austria. There is no doubt that this picture may be due to random causes, but nevertheless it indicates certain gaps in the ranks of Afro-Asiatic linguists.

The VIII Congress was organized by representatives of the Eastern University of Naples (Universita degli studi di Napoli "L'Orientale", Facolta di Studi Arabo Islamici e del Mediterraneo). The organizing committee consisted of: Chairman Sergio Baldi (Naples Oriental University), Mansour Gaki (Naples Oriental University), Hermann Jungreitmayr (Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main), Luigi Serra (Naples Oriental University), Henri Tournai (Center for National Studies, Paris). The program of the congress was organized according to the traditional principle: general African comparative studies, semitology, Egyptology, Kushitology, Berber studies and Chadian languages. About 40 reports and presentations were made. The forum was attended by well-known and young scientists from various research centers in Italy, France, Poland, Germany, Russia, Austria, the USA, Israel, and North Africa. Working languages-English, French, Italian.

A wide variety of research topics and problems were discussed. This does not allow you to summarize the main issues and analyze in detail all reports and messages. In this regard, I consider it appropriate to group the materials of the congress and consider them at least once.

* VIII International Afro-Asiatic Congress: Afroasiatic (otherwise - Afro-Asian) languages - a later name for a large macrofamily of languages adopted in Russian linguistics (previously-Semito-Hamitic, or Hamito-Semitic). The macrofamily includes Semitic, Ancient Egyptian with Coptic, Cushitic, Berber and Chadian languages. Semitic languages are common in Western Asia and Africa, while the rest are found on the African continent..

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based on the language principle, but on theoretical areas that are of interest to Russian Orientalists and linguists.

The main task of a number of speakers was to reconstruct the vocabulary and grammatical systems of Afrasian languages; describe poorly studied languages of Africa; typological characteristics of special morphological and lexical systems of these languages. Compared to the previous congress, this forum was dominated by reports on the typological description of Afrasian languages in synchronous and partially diachronic terms.

I will begin the review of the reports with the comparative historical direction in Afrasistics and related cultural and historical aspects of studying these languages.

At the first session devoted to general issues of Afroasiatic linguistics, A. Suzzi (Naples) in his report "Project of stratigraphic analysis of the vocabulary of languages of the Sahrawi and Sub-Saharan regions of Africa" considered the question of historical areal relations of the languages of the Afroasiatic macrofamily distributed in Africa with the languages of the Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan families. In his opinion, co-existence on the same territory and long-standing language contacts lead to interference phenomena at the phonetic-morphological and lexical levels. The study of areal "stratifications" can contribute to the establishment of relative temporal stratification and periodization of contact phenomena similar to archaeological" layer-by-layer " stratification. O. V. Stolbova (Moscow) in her report "On the terms of kinship "son/daughter" presented the results of a deep reconstruction of the corresponding vocabulary on the comparative material of Afrasian languages and convincingly showed that the phenomenon of synonymy of reconstructed terms This meaning is due to the fact that in the earliest periods available for reconstruction, kinship terms were differentiated by age. She also touched upon the meaning of the suppletive plural forms of a number of terms.

Rainer Vogt (Berlin) in his report "Semitic and Semito-Hamitic [languages]" focused on the possible results of external and internal reconstruction methods for languages with a long attested history (Semitic, Ancient Egyptian, partly Berber), and for languages with no ancient historical evidence (Cushitic and Chadian). Using examples of internal reconstruction of the prefixal verb paradigm in the Kushite and New Aramaic languages, the scientist showed how this method can be adequate: isolated New Aramaic languages do not allow us to reconstruct the ancient common Semitic paradigm, while comparative material from more conservative Kushite languages allows us to restore the ancient paradigm of prefixal conjugation. A comparative study of the verb system in the northern and southern groups of the Ethiosemitic languages, conducted by the scientist, also shows that the traditional classification of them as "north-south" is linguistically and historically unjustified. Hudson (University of Michigan) in his report "Reconstruction of the South Semitic system of independent pronouns" showed that the heterogeneous nature of the system's elements indicates its archaism rather than innovativeness. A. Zaborsky (Krakow) also addressed the problem of the correlation of archaisms and innovations in Proto-Semitic morphology. On the basis of data from the most archaic Kushite languages (Sakho-Afar, Beja, Rendille, Somalia, Baiso), he proposed a new reconstruction of the prefixal verb paradigm, which is close to the proto-Semitic one. At the same time, Kushite-Berber isoglosses were noted, which complicates the picture of genetic connections between these languages.

The development of Berberology in the light of historical linguistics was considered in his report by V. Brunatelli (Milan). After analyzing the history of Berber language studies since the beginning of the 20th century, he noted the lack of active research on the genetic relationships between individual languages and language groups within the Libyan-Berber family, as well as its external relations to other Afrasian languages.

A number of reports were devoted to specific problems of historical morphology, phonetics and etymology in Afrasian linguistics.

G. Zatzinger (Vienna) based on the material of the ancient Egyptian language addressed the traditional problem of the Afrasian consonant root. Using some examples, he confirmed the hypotheses of his predecessors about the possible secondary, later formation of three-consonant verb roots based on the primary two-consonants. In some cases, it is possible to distinguish a regular prefix consonant that reflects a certain grammatical function. At the same time, other three-consonantal roots (as in Semitic languages) go back to the general Afrasian period, i.e. they were formed even before the collapse of Afrasian unity.

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The paper "Glides and the syllabic function of Semitic vowels" based on the material of some Efiosemitic languages (Western Gurage) showed how the phenomenon of labialization or palatalization of consonants is related to the diphthongization of the subsequent vowel, which allows us to consider such vowels as composite (or diphthongs) and can explain some questions of the history of Semitic vocalism.

J. Mion (Rome) in his report "On the fluent vowel in Semitic languages" noted that this phenomenon, known for Hebrew as a phenomenon of phonetic and syllabic character, is observed in similar positions in modern North African Arabic dialects, in some Berber languages and in modern Nubian Creole. An interesting suggestion was made in the report of J. Lantin (Paris) "On labiovelar (consonants) in Arabic". In the verb roots of the same semantics, the alternation of the velar consonant with the consonants of the labial series is often revealed; this suggests that labiovelar consonants may have existed in Old Arabic. Meftah Amer and Abdallah Boumaok (Rabat, Morocco), in their collective report "On lexical reconstructions in Berber languages", proposed to identify the root angle common to the vocabulary of Tashelhit, Tamazigt, Kabyl and Tuareg languages. G. Jungreitmayr and G. Takach (Frankfurt am Main), in the light of clarifying intra-Chadian correspondences, tried to revise some former Chadian root codes. N. D. Calabro (Chicago) presented a paper on the etymology of the cultural termsglt ("seal that binds the seal"), which is marked in both West Semitic and Ancient Egyptian from the earliest historical period (Bronze Age). Its meanings are traced in various contexts, as well as its root variants.

In the joint report by F. Kasuto (Provence) and V. Ya. Porkhomovsky (Moscow) considered the terms denoting the concepts of "Gods, deities, God", based on the comparative material of translations of the Bible into European languages and the Hausa language, taking into account the cultural and linguistic context. A. G. Belova (Moscow), based on the results of etymological research of pre-Islamic Arabic vocabulary, showed that It is shown that the problems of Arabic etymology are common to both Semitic and Afrasian comparative studies, since lexical reconstructions traditionally rely on the consonant root, which creates the illusion of a large number of ancient homonymous roots and root phonetic variants.

Reports of the typological direction presented a wide variety at the congress both in terms of the theoretical issues considered and in terms of their language material. I would also like to emphasize that many issues of theoretical typology were raised and considered on the basis of rare and poorly studied languages of the Afrasian area.

G. Jungreitmayr (Frankfurt am Main) presented his report "Historical metamorphoses in Chadian languages" to review the typological changes that can be seen in Chadian languages as a whole in diachronic terms: apophony of verbal specific forms is transformed into apotony; the value of tone means increases; the root structure of cvcvc > cvc(v) is reduced; the vowel system expands, the category of the grammatical gender of the name disappears; the nominal category of a number is marked only with verb forms. As a result, a general trend in the historical development of Chadian languages is established: from synthetic languages to analytical languages.

R. Leger (Frankfurt am Main) considered the typological features of some Chadian languages that are on the verge of extinction in the region of Nigeria (Kwami, Kupto, Piya, Vidala): tone alignment, loss of plural forms of names (which is compensated for by the development of new verb and pronoun systems), and other typological features that can be interpreted in two ways - as their own innovations or as the result of contacts with the surrounding languages of the Benue-Congo family.

Two reports addressed topical issues of linguistics and cultural studies related to the so-called linguistic worldview. Mauro Tosco (Naples) in the report " Space and position in space. The Gavwada language (East Kush group)" revealed a special system of concepts of "directions in space", which were formed in the language spoken in the mountainous part of southwestern Ethiopia. Positions and movements of the subject in space are expressed by a system of indicators "up-down - at the same level". Joint report by S. Baldi (Naples) and R. Leger (Frankfurt am Main) It was also devoted to the concept of space in the languages of West Africa (Hausa, Dagbani and Filfulde). The four cardinal directions have different designations: "west-east "is determined by the movement of the sun;" north-south " - by the movement and migration of the pastoral population. Concepts of " right-le-

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In addition to the direct designation of a position in space, they develop the concepts of "correct, correct", etc.and "incorrect, incorrect", etc., respectively.

A. de Dominici (Viterbo, Italy) used a large illustrative material of the Guisey language (Chadian family) to analyze the relationship between the system of lexical tones and the system of intonation contours of utterances of different types. J. K. Batik (Naples) in his report on the basic cognitive models of utterance (emotion, perception, intention, etc.) showed that the ways of their implementation in the Hausa language (Chadian) are determined by the strategy and pragmatics of utterance.

To. Ten Sheikh (Paris) She devoted her report to the question of ways to express the state in verbs of the Zenaga language (Berber) in comparison with Arabic. She concluded that the formal distinction between state verbs and dynamic verbs in zenaga can be expressed by vowel apophony, as in Arabic. At the same time, the alternation of vowels in zenaga serves as a way of expressing modal-specific forms of the verb. Thus, the subcategory "state-action" is "superimposed" on this subcategory. Hilaire (Paris) considered the ways of expressing the voice, identified a system of indicators of completeness, transitivity of the action, the person of the subject and the person of the object of action in the primary verbs of the Hausa language. A. Mengozzi (Bergamo, Italy) based on the material of New Aramaic poetic texts of the XVII century showed how, along with archaic forms of verb conjugation, innovative verb forms characteristic of modern New Aramaic dialects were born. Gianto (Rome) in his report "On grammatical changes in Northwestern Semitic languages" presented one of the fragments of the process of historical changes in the morphology and syntax of these languages: innovations such as the fall of final vowels lead to a restructuring of the structure of the finite verb base, to the emergence of new special indicators of nominative-accusative relations, to the formation of a new definite article number. Innovations are caused not only by intra-linguistic phenomena, but also by extralinguistic factors (convergence, borrowing).

Based on the material of the Tamazigt (Berber family) language, A. Bouchery (Paris) analyzed the process of forming stable noun and verb structures based entirely or partially on Arabic loanwords. L. Serra (Naples) drew attention to the functional significance of the grammatical category of the feminine gender in Berber languages. Materials from the eastern group of Berber dialects indicate that the category of the feminine gender is characteristic of all parts of speech and is a marked form. In the modern period, indicators of the feminine gender determine the wide possibility of a new word-and form formation in these languages.

In a number of reports, considerable attention was paid to the typology of inter-level relations (between morphological and syntactic levels) in various Afrasian languages.

A. Tournai (Paris) he identified a special group of impersonal pronouns in the Kotoko language (the central branch of Chadian languages), which can replace their places in verb constructions, especially in verbs that require mandatory indication of the place or direction of action. J. Hever (Jerusalem) considered the appearance and development of special verbal indicators of relative (syntactic) tense in complex chaha sentences (the southern branch of the Epho-Semitic languages). On syntactic and prosodic ways of expressing the emphase and the development of a new system of deictic particles in the Arabic dialect of Kordofan (Western Sudan) told by S. Manfredi (Naples).

R. Henkin (Israel) in his report "Means of selection in the Arabic dialect of the Negev" reported on a system of special indicators - presentatives that introduce special speech units and simultaneously perform a distributive function in syntactic constructions. N. Paulyak (Warsaw) in her report "The impersonal subject in Hausa and other Chadian languages" found a variety of ways of expression categories of impersonality: along with unmarked syntactic constructions, there are special impersonal pronouns, special verb forms, as well as special means of expressing the impersonal action of animate beings and special "empty" subjects in impersonal syntactic constructions of the state, weather phenomena, etc. A. Mettushi (Nantes) considered ways to express the prohibitive mood of the verb in various Berber languages, showing that that verbs in negative constructions have special forms compared to the same verbs in positive phrases. Miloud Taifi (Fez, Morocco) systematized various types of determinative constructions in the Berber language tamazigt, in which the way of expressing a definition depends both on its definable and on the type of sentence - verbal or nominal. -

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Versitet, Jerusalem) traced the process of historical changes in the ways of marking the core and attribute in definitional constructions in northwestern and northeastern Semitic languages from Akkadian to modern New Aramaic.

Il-il Yatsiv Malibert (Paris) he devoted his report to the typological characterization of the "pseudo-split phrase". In modern Hebrew, a series of new syntactic constructions of oral speech appears, which represent the topicalization of a verb sentence, which, in turn, is included in the nominal construction. M. Di Giulio (Perugia, Italy) also drew attention to the typological features of oral speech in Hebrew, showing that the deep and surface structures of utterances differ significantly from those in written speech speech thanks to an extra-linguistic context that makes up for the ellipsis.

Thus, the congress to a certain extent reflected the processes taking place in modern Afrasian linguistics: expanding the typological study of young-written or non-written languages of the African continent, focusing on the structural and typological features of poorly studied languages, which undoubtedly makes a significant contribution to the general typology of the world's languages. At the same time, a wide range of topics could not always provide a sufficient audience for a comprehensive discussion of important theoretical problems.

The Congress was a strong incentive for further development of Afro-Asian linguistics, expanding the range of languages studied and international cooperation. At the same time, the experience of holding this congress shows that it is more appropriate to organize future meetings on a specific topic, which was noted at the final meeting.

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