The present volume unifies various studies issuing from the author's etymological research over the past decade and concentrating on the elaboration of regular consonantal correspondences between Semitic, Egyptian, Berber, South Cushitic, and West Chadic languages. The historical comparative analysis of the South Cushitic and West Chadic sibilants, pharyngeals, and laryngeals is complemented by chapters on new etymological evidence for the affricate origin of certain Proto-Semitic sibilants, a critical appraisal of Rössler's theory on Egypto-Semitic comparative phonology, the external correspondences of Ahaggar h and Ghadames b, the Berber reflexes of Afro-Asiatic glottalized sibilants, and the background of compensatory vowel lengthening in Proto-East Cushitic.

Gábor Takács; Habil. in linguistics (2003), research fellow in Budapest since 2003 at the Dept. of Egyptology, Eötvös Loránd University and at the Institute of Linguistics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences