--- title: "Hans G. MUKAROVSKY (ed.), Proceedings of the Fifth" description: "This is a short review by Stanisław Piłaszewicz of the two-volume proceedings of the Fifth International Hamito-Semitic Congress." authors: ["Stanisław Piłaszewicz"] year: 1992 venue: "Studies in African Languages and Cultures" source: "https://salc.uw.edu.pl/index.php/SALC/article/view/445" licence: "CC BY-NC-SA (journal licence per DOAJ; Studies in African Languages and Cultures)" licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/" summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License" canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/pilaszewicz-1992-hans-g-mukarovsky-ed-proceedings/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/pilaszewicz-1992-hans-g-mukarovsky-ed-proceedings/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [1992](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/1992/) / Hans G. MUKAROVSKY (ed.), Proceedings of the Fifth International Hamito-Semitic Congress. (Veröffentlichungen der Institute für Afrikanistik und Egiptologie der Universität Wien, 56-57) Wien: Afro-Pub 1991,Volumes I (274 pp.) and II (344 pp.), AS 850. # Hans G. MUKAROVSKY (ed.), Proceedings of the Fifth International Hamito-Semitic Congress. (Veröffentlichungen der Institute für Afrikanistik und Egiptologie der Universität Wien, 56-57) Wien: Afro-Pub 1991,Volumes I (274 pp.) and II (344 pp.), AS 850. **Authors:** Stanisław Piłaszewicz · **Year:** 1992 · **Venue:** [Studies in African Languages and Cultures](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/studies-of-the-department-of-african-languages-and-cultures-studies-in-african/) ([Studies in African Languages and Cultures 1992](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/studies-of-the-department-of-african-languages-and-cultures-studies-in-african/1992/)) · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC-SA (journal licence per DOAJ; Studies in African Languages and Cultures)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) **Links:** [Publisher's page](https://salc.uw.edu.pl/index.php/SALC/article/view/445) · [PDF](https://salc.uw.edu.pl/index.php/SALC/article/download/445/218) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W7047701681) **Citations:** 0 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14) ## Summary This is a short review by Stanisław Piłaszewicz of the two-volume proceedings of the Fifth International Hamito-Semitic Congress. The congress was held in Vienna in 1987, and Hans G. Mukarovsky edited the volumes. The review does not solve a research problem. It walks through the contents and sums up each contribution in a sentence or two. The convenor gave the meeting an institutional aim: to help comparative Hamito-Semitic (Afroasiatic) linguistics become an established discipline, since no university then had a dedicated chair for it. The papers are grouped by branch: - **Volume I:** general Hamito-Semitic, Berber, Chadic. - **Volume II:** Cushitic, Egyptian, Omotic, Semitic. The topics include: - reconstruction of Proto-Afrasian consonants, vowels, numerals and cultural vocabulary; - case, gender and aspect systems; - loanwords and language contact, such as Songhay–Tuareg and Arabic in Hausa; - classification disputes, such as the position of Masa and the status of Omotic; - descriptive studies of individual languages and inscriptions. The review matters as a map of where Afroasiatic comparative work stood in the late 1980s. It shows which hypotheses were active and who was arguing for them. ## Key points - The congress met in Vienna from 27 September to 2 October 1987. The proceedings appeared in 1991 from Afro-Pub (Veröffentlichungen … 56–57) in two volumes of 274 and 344 pages, priced at AS 850. - The volumes commemorate Karl Petráček, who died in 1987. The opening and closing material also recalls that Friedrich Müller of Vienna coined the "Hamito-Semitic" notion about a century earlier, and that Johannes Lukas worked in the same city. - The Chadic phonological inventories vary enormously: - vowels range from two (Wandala, Gude) to eight (Mafa, Daba); - consonants range from 26 (Masa) to 119 (Higi). - Tourneux argues that Masa is not a separate Chadic branch but is close to Musgu in Central (Biu-Mandara) Chadic. Zaborski argues that Omotic is really West Cushitic. - Semitic is the largest section, with fourteen papers. The only Omotic paper (Böhm) links noun end-vowels in Nubian with Omotic. ## Interesting ideas - Loprieno describes Middle Egyptian clauses as having a default, unmarked subject–predicate order, with specific semantic or pragmatic conditions explaining each departure from it. This gives a principled account of word-order variation. - Hodge re-tests an older etymological collection (Calice, 1936) against a newer, larger body of field data, keeping what holds up and crediting the original insight. - Comparisons are anchored on small, closed, stable vocabulary sets, such as basic numerals 1–10 and body-part names, before broader claims are made. - Muhammad Ali treats antonymy in Oromo largely as morphological negation, deriving opposites from a base word by affixation. - Satzinger analyses the independent personal pronoun as one of three distinct Egyptian pronoun paradigms (suffixal, dependent, independent) and studies the structure of each set separately. ## For Mova How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests: - **I1** (tree): the parser could record a canonical order per construction and attach an explicit trigger label (topic, focus, question) to every deviation, which keeps fronting and inversion explainable. - **I2** (learn): legacy lexicons and old silver annotations could be re-audited periodically against fresh multi-parser agreement, keeping only entries that the new witnesses confirm. - **I3** (learn): a fixed mini-probe of closed-class items could serve as a cheap regression and negative-control set when comparing parser or tagger versions. - **I4** (world): un-/in-/non- adjectives could be stored as negated states of a base predicate, with a flag for lexicalized cases whose meaning has drifted, so that state reasoning stays consistent. - **I5** (frames): coreference could use the paradigm of a pronoun (subject, object, possessive, reflexive) as an explicit structural cue when linking mentions, rather than treating all pronouns alike. *Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.* 📚 Shelves (3): [🎭 Arts and Humanities](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/) · 17,450 works · [🗣️ Language and Linguistics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/language-and-linguistics/) · 17,296 works · [🎭 Archeology](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/archeology/) · 64 works 🧭 Topics (1): [Semitic languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/semitic-languages/) · 3,066 works ## Cite Cite as: Stanisław Piłaszewicz. 1992. Hans G. MUKAROVSKY (ed.), Proceedings of the Fifth International Hamito-Semitic Congress. (Veröffentlichungen der Institute für Afrikanistik und Egiptologie der Universität Wien, 56-57) Wien: Afro-Pub 1991,Volumes I (274 pp.) and II (344 pp.), AS 850. Studies in African Languages and Cultures. The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. ```bibtex @article{pilaszewicz1992hans, title = {{Hans G. MUKAROVSKY (ed.), Proceedings of the Fifth International Hamito-Semitic Congress. (Veröffentlichungen der Institute für Afrikanistik und Egiptologie der Universität Wien, 56-57) Wien: Afro-Pub 1991,Volumes I (274 pp.) and II (344 pp.), AS 850.}}, author = {Stanisław Piłaszewicz}, journal = {Studies in African Languages and Cultures}, year = {1992}, url = {https://salc.uw.edu.pl/index.php/SALC/article/view/445} } ``` - [← previous Book Reviews: English Word Grammar](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/cahill-1992-book-reviews-english-word-grammar/) - [next → Rewriting Anglo-Saxon: Notes on the Presence of Old English in Contemporary Literature](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/galvan-2019-rewriting-anglo-saxon-notes-presence/) - [↑ back to papers of 1992](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/1992/) *Updated 29 October 2026*