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Newman (1977) classified the languages into the four groups which have been accepted in all subsequent literature. Further subbranching, however, has not been as robust; Blench (2006), for example, only accepts the A/B bifurcation of East Chadic.[1]Kujargé has been added from Blench (2008), who suggests Kujargé may have split off before the breakup of Proto-Chadic and then subsequently became influenced by East Chadic.[2] Subsequent work by Lovestrand argues strongly that Kujarge is a valid member of East Chadic. The placing of Luri as a primary split of West Chadic is erroneous. Caron (2004) shows that this language is South Bauchi and part of the Polci cluster.
A chart of the Chadic branch of the Afroasiatic languages.
Origin
Main Chadic-speaking peoples in Nigeria.
Hausa-speaking areas in Nigeria and Niger.
Several modern genetic studies of Chadic speaking groups in the northern Cameroon region have observed high frequencies of the Y-ChromosomeHaplogroup R1b in these populations (exclusively, of R1b's R1b-V88-Y7771[3] variant). This paternal marker is common in parts of West Eurasia, but otherwise rare in Africa. Cruciani et al. (2010) thus propose that the Proto-Chadic speakers during the mid-Holocene (~7,000 years ago) migrated from the Levant to the Central Sahara, and from there settled in the Lake Chad Basin.[4] However, a 2018 study by Daniel Shriner agrues that the haplogroup R1 is associated with (Baggarization) and found no evidence of ancient Eurasian gene flow. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30259956/)
Loanwords
Chadic languages contain many Nilo-Saharan loanwords from either the Songhay or Maban branches, pointing to early contact between Chadic and Nilo-Saharan speakers as Chadic was migrating west.[5]
Although Adamawa languages are spoken adjacently to Chadic languages, interaction between Chadic and Adamawa is limited.[6]
Pronouns
Pronouns in Proto-Chadic, as compared to pronouns in Proto-Afroasiatic (Vossen & Dimmendaal 2020:351):[7]
Sample basic vocabulary in different Chadic branches listed in order from west to east, with reconstructions of other Afroasiatic branches also given for comparison:
Caron, Bernard 2004. Le Luri: quelques notes sur une langue tchadique du Nigeria. In: Pascal Boyeldieu & Pierre Nougayrol (eds.), Langues et Cultures: Terrains d'Afrique. Hommages à France Cloarec-Heiss (Afrique et Langage 7). 193-201. Louvain-Paris: Peeters.
Lukas, Johannes (1936) 'The linguistic situation in the Lake Chad area in Central Africa.' Africa, 9, 332–349.
Newman, Paul and Ma, Roxana (1966) 'Comparative Chadic: phonology and lexicon.' Journal of African Languages, 5, 218–251.
Newman, Paul (1977) 'Chadic classification and reconstructions.' Afroasiatic Linguistics 5, 1, 1–42.
Newman, Paul (1978) 'Chado-Hamitic 'adieu': new thoughts on Chadic language classification', in Fronzaroli, Pelio (ed.), Atti del Secondo Congresso Internazionale di Linguistica Camito-Semitica. Florence: Instituto de Linguistica e di Lingue Orientali, Università di Firenze, 389–397.
Newman, Paul (1980) The Classification of Chadic within Afroasiatic. Leiden: Universitaire Pers Leiden.
Schuh, Russell (2003) 'Chadic overview', in M. Lionel Bender, Gabor Takacs, and David L. Appleyard (eds.), Selected Comparative-Historical Afrasian Linguistic Studies in Memory of Igor M. Diakonoff, LINCOM Europa, 55–60.
^Ehret, Christopher. 2006. The Nilo-Saharan background of ChadicArchived 2019-08-01 at the Wayback Machine. In P. Newman and L. M. Hyman (eds), West African linguistics: studies in honor of Russell G. Schuh, pp. 56-66. Studies in African Linguistics Suppl. 11. Columbus: Ohio University Press.
^Blench, Roger. 2012. Linguistic evidence for the chronological stratification of populations South of Lake Chad. Presentation for Mega-Tchad Colloquium in Naples, September 13-15, 2012.
^Vossen, Rainer and Gerrit J. Dimmendaal (eds.). 2020. The Oxford Handbook of African Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
^Jungraithmayr, Herrmann; Ibriszimow, Dymitr (1994). Chadic Lexical Roots: Tentative reconstruction, grading, distribution and comments. (Sprache und Oralität in Afrika; 20), volume I, Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag.
^Cosper, Ronald. 2015. Hausa dictionary. In: Key, Mary Ritchie & Comrie, Bernard (eds.) The Intercontinental Dictionary Series. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at http://ids.clld.org/contributions/220, Accessed on 2019-12-31.)
^Cosper, Ronald. 2015. Polci dictionary. In: Key, Mary Ritchie & Comrie, Bernard (eds.) The Intercontinental Dictionary Series. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at http://ids.clld.org/contributions/221, Accessed on 2019-12-31.)
^Shryock, Aaron. 1997. The classification of the Masa group of languages. Studies in African Linguistics 26(1): 29-62.
^Doornbos, Paul. 1981. Field notes on Kujarge, language metadata, 200-word list plus numerals and pronouns.
^Ehret, Christopher. 1987. Proto-Cushitic reconstruction. In Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika 8: 7-180. University of Cologne.
^Aklilu, Yilma. 2003. Comparative phonology of the Maji languages. Journal of Ethiopian studies 36: 59-88.
^Kossmann, Maarten. 2009. Tarifiyt Berber vocabulary. In: Haspelmath, Martin & Tadmor, Uri (eds.) World Loanword Database. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
^Kogan, Leonid (2012). "Proto-Semitic Lexicon". In Weninger, Stefan (ed.). The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 179-258. ISBN978-3-11-025158-6.
^Ehret, Christopher (1995). Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic (Proto-Afrasian): vowels, tone, consonants, and vocabulary. University of California Press. ISBN0-520-09799-8.