I keep meaning to post about a recent essay of Lameen’s at Jabal al-Lughat, “In search of the missing radical: a piece of Berber historical morphology.” He starts out:
Berber normally has no glottal stops (ء = ʔ) – in fact, Chafik suggested that this was why North Africa favours the Warsh reading of the Qur’an, in which most glottal stops are omitted. However, it turns out* proto-Berber did have glottal stops – and you can still see their footprints on the verbal system.
His explanation of the footprints is fascinating, and as he says, “an interesting small-scale parallel to the story of Saussure’s laryngeals.”
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