SUMMARY:
According to Greek and Latin literary and epigraphic sources, the present research analyses evidences of the language of the North African populations that ancient authors called Libyes, Mauri, Numidae, Gaetuli and Mazices. Eight chapters analyse and classify through old regions (I. Egypt, II. Cyrenaica, III. Tripolitania, IV. Phazania and Central Sahara, V. Zeugitana and Bizacena, VI. Numidia, VII. Mauretania Caesariensis, VIII. Mauretania Tingitana and Western Sahara) philological (gathered as appendix in a corpus established on chronological grounds) and epigraphic data useful for the description of the sociolinguistic situation and geographic distribution of the language of the Mauri in relation with languages in contact. Chapter IX describes the phonology and morphology of Paleo-Amazigh according to the philological and epigraphic data analysed in the precedent chapters and brings forward a lexical corpus of 107 items of Paleo-Amazigh common names. These phonological, morphological and lexical analyses are the basis to state that, as a matter of fact, the evidences of the language of the Mauri collected from Greek and Latin sources reflect Old Amazigh. Some anthroponymic recurrences through the ages and through distant North African regions have also been brought forward according to a rich corpus of more than a thousand items. The complicated question of the correlate between Amazigh spread and Proto-Amazigh chronology is also dealt with in chapter IX. A major contribution of the present research is the well attested role of Paleo-Amazigh speaking populations as mediators between Mediterranean populations (speakers of such languages as Egyptian, Punic, Greek and specially Latin) and Saharan and Sahelian populations (speakers of Nilo-Saharan, Chadic, Mande and Atlantic languages). The conclusions are set forth in chapter X. An annex of 17 plates of linguistic cartography illustrate the geographical distribution of the languages spoken in North Africa in antiquity. The work contains detailed indexes as well.
Liens (en bas de page) : http://www.tdx.cat/handle/10803/1724
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