The ancient egyptian language an historical study pdf

This relationship also appears, to a lesser extent, in the Pyramid Texts: e. The geminated passive often seems to have future reference: e. It is unlikely, however, that this is a temporally marked form, since no other form of the suffix conjugation has that feature.

Instead, as in the active, the distinction between the two forms is probably one of aspect. As counterpart of the stp. The marked form therefore most likely expresses incomplete or ongoing action, like its active counterpart.

Thus, in Ex. As in the active, therefore, the base and geminated forms of the passive stp. Tense does not seem to be an inherent feature of any verb form per se; the regular temporal connotations of some forms and constructions can be analyzed as deriving from their basic meaning. Despite the fact that it can have an expressed subject Ex. Although a prior action producing the state is usually implied Ex.

The stative is unmarked for mood and can therefore be used in both indicative and subjunctive statements: e. The stative is atemporal in nature and can therefore be used in a variety of temporal contexts: [9.

It is also neutral with respect to voice, although translations of it require an active or passive construction depending on whether the verb itself is respectively intransitive or transitive, e. As such, it could be used transitively, with a direct object. Survivals of this function exist primarily in Old Egyptian, exclusively with first person singular subject, e.

I, , 8 buryst. This verb, however, denotes the acquisition of knowledge rather than its pos- session, e. Forms that are marked for voice include the passive stp. Instances have been cited above for the stp. The passive stp. In the Pyramid Texts, for example, the passive stp. It also occurs in these texts with both nominal and pronominal subjects, whereas in Middle Egyptian it is largely restricted to nominal subjects except in the negation nj stp.

The contrast can be seen in the following three pairs of examples: [9. Forms marked for mood include the imperative jussive , the stp. These are atemporal forms. The form its analogue or construction that expresses necessity is normally gnomic or present, but it can also be used with past or future reference: [9.

The consequence expressed by the stp. R 7, 6—7 fetch. This can be seen from instances in which k introduces other atemporal forms, such as subject—stative and the stp. Verbs: Egyptian I The stp. In Middle Egyptian, the occasional negation nn stp. The temporal fluidity of the stp. In this respect, the stpt. The latter, in fact, can be analyzed as a nisbe formation of the stpt.

This would explain the unusual formal feature of the stptj. Both verb forms are neutral with respect to voice and can be used as either active or passive.

Since the nisbe formation is a feature of nouns as well as prepositions , the stpt. If so, neither form has inherent tense or aspect, and the sense of prospective action derives solely from their use.

The meaning of a construction such as r sprt. These include jwt and jwtj, counterparts of nj in noun and relative clauses, respectively, the former attested with the stp. Although jwt stp. The negations nj zp stp.

Both are used in independent statements with jussive or optative sense: [9. The negation jm. The imperative counterpart of jm. Verbs: Egyptian I The verb tm forms a negative counterpart of all verb forms that can be negated except the imperative.

B 74—75 neg fail. IV, , 2 neg fail. The same sense probably underlies its other uses, e. These uses have suggested that tm. In such cases, however, the basic meaning of tm also applies, e. The same is true of tm. These factors indicate that the use of tm. The active stp. Verbs: Egyptian I Passive nj stp.

It was not done at the behest of any person. In Middle Egyptian, nj stp. Its introduction, however, is yet another instance of semantic specification in the negative that has no formal counterpart in the affirmative stp. It expresses features such as aspect, mood, and dynamism action versus state rather than tense. Of course, the system does use its forms in ways that correspond to tenses, but these are ancillary to the basic meaning of the forms: for instance, the regular past or perfect sense of the stp.

The fact that no one verb form of Egyptian I has specific temporal reference is evident in the paradigm of forms that usually express the past and perfect in Old Egyptian: Tense Subject Transitive Intransitive Past nominal stp. These can be illustrated as follows: [9. Verbs: Egyptian I cutst. I cut a barge for it. Examples 9. His Incarnation [. His Incarnation had it tied on my neck. Nonetheless, the stp. Your sister Isis has taken hold of you after finding you.

Middle Egyptian has a simpler system, in which the stp. As in Old Egyptian, an intransitive stp. Verbs: Egyptian I ref go-forward. I have advanced to the fore, I have gone to the state of honor. Replacement of the Old Egyptian past stp. Old Egyptian thus seems to distinguish between actions expressed as com- pleted perfect and those set in the past, although with consistency perhaps only in the use of the stp. Middle Egyptian has lost the formal distinction between past and perfect.

It regularly uses the used the stp. Both follow the pattern of sentences in which the subject is followed by an adverbial predicate, which place the subject in a situation see Chapter 7, Section 7. The compound verbal constructions thus situate the subject in an action or state.

B go-upst. B Look. The difference can be seen in the following pair of examples: [9. This N goes with the Sun, this N comes back with the Sun. Look, N is coming. After the Old Kingdom, the subject—stative construction becomes standard, with the simple stative used mostly in dependent clauses i. The subject—stp. Both appear first in secular texts of the mid-Dynasty V, allowing for a dis- tinction between two forms of Old Egyptian, earlier secular texts prior to the mid-Dynasty V and the Pyramid Texts, which have no examples of either construction and later.

By early Middle Egyptian, the two constructions have largely identical uses and meanings, as illustrated by parallel copies of a passage from the story of Sinuhe Ex. The choice between the two was again perhaps dialectal, with the older subject—stp. During the course of Dynasty XII, subject—stp. B2, 98 with-respect-to walk lieinf ref. The same evolution is visible for the subject—h. In the second half of Dynasty XII, it was used for gnomic statements with transitive verbs as a counterpart of subject—stp.

Does Thoth thus show lenience? XII stp. XII subject—stp. XII—NK subject—stp. The subject—r-stp construction replaces the stp.

The import of jw in such uses is not always clear, but presumably it is comparable to that with non-verbal predicates Chapter 7, Section 7. The relative validity signaled by jw for non-verbal predicates is also vis- ible with verb forms.

The particle jw, however, designates that action as completed with respect to its context moment of speaking or another action , similar to the English perfect: e.

This connotation is presumably also the reason for the nearly invariable use of jw with the pseudo-verbal subject—r-stp construction. In this case, the prospective relationship between the subject and predicate is specified with respect to the speech act, which accounts for the regular future meaning of the construction.

The particle jw is also used with the subject—stp. Similarly, the three jw stp. B 87—92 makepass for. The use of jw with verbal predicates has been analyzed as a purely syntac- tic stratagem, to allow forms or constructions that are marked for adverbial use to serve as the predicate in an independent statement.

For a number of reasons, this cannot be considered realistic: the particle is used in the same manner with adjectival predicates, which are not inherently adverbial Chap- ter 7, Section 7. Moreover, independent statements often occur without jw: [9.

If jw has a syntactic function in Old or Middle Egyptian, it is one of subordina- tion rather than independence; when used with a pronominal subject, it often introduces a dependent clause: e. In such cases as well, however, the use of jw can be best understood as governed by semantic or pragmatic considerations rather than syntactic ones. This is discussed further in Chapter 12, Section It is largely analytic, where Egyptian I is mostly synthetic, e.

The verbal system of Egyptian II does have synthetic forms as well as ana- lytic constructions. Analytic constructions use these forms in periphrastic combinations. These are visible primarily in Coptic, where the construct form is used with a nominal object direct geni- tive , the pronominal form with a pronominal object suffix pronoun , and the absolute form elsewhere, e. The infinitive of most verbs is also used as an imperative in Coptic, and this seems to have been the case in Late Egyptian and Demotic as well.

Some verbs in Late Egyptian and Demotic have a prefixed imperative, which survives in Coptic in eight lexicalized forms, e. The Late Egyptian nominal forms display a prefixed j or r sometimes omitted or are expressed analytically by j. The participle and relative stp. Ptah the matter f sayn. This is the thing I told you before. This is the descendant of the Late Egyptian and Demotic attributive j. Late Egyptian has four forms: stp.

Demotic preserves three of these — stp. Coptic has only a single stative also called the qualitative ; it is mostly derived from the Demotic stp. Evidence for other survivals is less certain. In Late Egyptian, the stp. This was less common than a paraphrase with the 3pl pronominal suffix, which is the form used for the passive in Demotic: e.

No morphological distinction is visible between active and passive uses of the form. These are discussed in Sections The bipartite system con- sists of a subject preceding the infinitive, stative, or a prepositional phrase or adverb as predicate: e.

In tripartite constructions, the infinitive serves as com- plement to a preceding verbal auxiliary or another morpheme plus subject: e. Compound forms involve the stp. The subject precedes the verb and is either a noun or a pronoun. For the latter, the subject form of the proclitic pronouns Chapter 6, Section 6. The predicate is either an infinitive sometimes still preceded by the preposition h. Present and gnomic are distinguished in negations, with bn plus First Present often followed by jwn with non-verbal predicates for the former and bw stp.

Toward the end of its existence, Demotic developed a new affirmative First Aorist, hr stp. The construction hr stp. The distinction between present and gnomic meanings is thus not consistently morphologized in the affirmative in either Demotic or Coptic. The First Present can be used for both because it is unmarked for tense, whereas the new First Aorist is marked for gnomic meaning. Egyptian II has three means of expressing the future: with the First and Third Future and with the stp.

The tense expresses the immediate anticipatory future in Late Egyptian and Demotic: [ Its descendant, how- ever, is the regular means of expressing the future in Coptic: [ In Demotic the Third Future also has jussive sense Ex. The Late Egyptian stp. Verbs: Egyptian II [ Optative and jussive use survive in Demotic, gradually replaced by my stp. Negative counterparts in Late Egyptian are jm.

This is a feature of transitive verbs only: for intransitive verbs, Late Egyptian expresses the past or perfect by means of the First Present with stative predicate, as in Middle Egyptian: [ BM , 2, 8 1sg gost.

The construction bwpw. The constructions bw stpt. In Demotic, past tense is expressed by stp. For the perfect, Demotic uses a new construction, w h.. Demotic jr. The Demotic perfect, however, survives as the Third Perfect xafswtp in some early Coptic manuscripts and in the Oxyrhynchite dialect, where it is used instead of the First Perfect: e.

In addition to its primary tenses, Egyptian II also employs the stp. It is found with a number of verb forms and constructions in Late Egyptian and Demotic, such as the stp. The construction is also used with non-verbal statements in Late Egyptian, Demotic, and Coptic: [ All of these constructions derive from the use of the stp.

This change eventually replaces all the synthetic verb forms with analytic ones except for the infinitive and stative, e. Grammaticalization of analytic constructions into bound verb forms, e.

In the bound forms, temporal and modal morphemes can precede the subject e. This affects constructions in Demotic and Coptic, when the initial verb form is reanalyzed as a temporal or modal morpheme, e. Increasing specification of verb forms and constructions for temporal and modal reference, e. The two basic components of the Late Egyptian system, the bipartite con- structions and the stp.

Specification of the stp. As a consequence of the replacement of synthetic forms by analytic ones, the subject was moved from the lexical verb to an analytic prefix. The latter also specifies grammatical features, leaving only the lexical element at the end: for example, in the past use of the stp.

The bipartite system remains essentially the same from Late Egyptian to Coptic. The Third Future changed from an indicative future in Late Egyptian to an indicative future and jussive in Demotic and a jussive in Coptic, where the indicative future is expressed by the new First Future. In addition to the constructions discussed here, the creation of analytical forms and the process of grammaticalization also affected the production of dedicated verb forms marked for subordinate function.

Late Egyptian has the original construction r stpt. Probably because the preposition at this point was simply a vowel, the analytic construction was reanalyzed as j.

Reduction of periphrastic j. This and other dedicated subordinate forms are discussed in Chapter A number of these changes are fairly straightforward and transparent, others less so. In the infinitival system, the forms associated with the negatival complement and complementary infinitive are replaced by the paradigm of the infinitive. The latter also replaces the imperative of all but a few common verbs.

In the nominal system, the six forms of Egyptian I are largely reduced to one or two in Late Egyptian. The characteristic though variable prefix of this form, also found in Old Egyptian but only rarely in Middle Egyptian, is one indication that Middle Egyptian represents a dialect different from that or those of its predecessor and successor.

Egyptian II has also lost the stptj. The attributive inventory decreases further in Coptic, with loss of the participles and relative stp. The stative exists from Old Egyptian to Coptic but shows a gradual restriction both in inflection see Chapter 6, Section 6.

With the exception of the verb rh, transitive use with a direct object as in Ex. Late Egyp- tian retains the stative in some dependent clauses, but this too is replaced by the subject—stative construction in Demotic, as illustrated by the following pair of examples: [ Of the seven forms of the Egyptian I suffix conjugation, only the stp.

This sense also pertains to hr stp. Prospective jwt and jnt are replaced by forms without —t in Late Egyptian and do not survive in Demotic or Coptic. It has been argued that the Late Egyptian preterite stp. The disappearance of the stp. Although the stp. Initially, the language seems to have distinguished between the stp.

B 66 love 3msg town. This circumstantial use of the stp. With the introduction of subject—h. In Late Egyptian, subject—h. This history, described in detail in Chapter 9, Section 9. What changes over time are primarily the means by which some of those categories are expressed and the features of some categories. The imperative and active participle have only active use, and the passive stp. The stative and infinitival forms including the stpt.

Although it survives into Late Egyptian, it is even more limited there, restricted to a few verbs and mostly to administrative texts. The passive formed with tw also survives in Late Egyptian, although for the stp. Verbs: Egyptian I—II The passive in this stage is commonly expressed by an active form with third person plural suffix, which is the construction that survives in Demotic and Coptic.

The passive participle has a similar historical trajectory. The use of the stative, however, becomes increasingly restricted from Old Egyptian to Coptic, as discussed in Section Of these, only the imperative of some verbs survives into Late Egyptian. Constructions marked for mood in Egyptian I are stp.

Affirmative constructions with specific modal value first appear in Demotic, where the stp. As noted above, jw. The language thus loses the modal categories of necessity and consequence after Middle Egyptian but retains that of the subjunctive throughout its history.

A full division between jussive and optative uses of the latter does not occur until Coptic. Gemination remains a feature of 2ae-gem. On the phrasal level, aspectual forms and constructions in Egyptian I are the stative and stp. In Middle Egyptian, the stative has become largely an expression of state rather than completed action, and subject—h.

By Late Egyptian, the language has lost the stp. At that point, aspect is a feature only of the negation bw stpt. Progressive action does not reappear as a primary feature of any verb form or construction,4 but Demotic and Coptic both create analytic constructions specifically marked for completed action: Demotic, with its w h.. A few express relative future action stp. Tem- poral specification begins with negative constructions: nj zp stp. In Late Egyptian the latter two become, respectively, past bwpw.

Demotic has the first affirmative construction with specifically gnomic mean- ing, hr stp. It also creates a new relative future tense, e.

Overall, the history of the language shows a development from an atemporal and aspectual system to a temporal one. The temporal categories that can be expressed, however, remain the same from Old Egyptian to Coptic: past, gnomic, and future. Forms that express these are primarily marked for relative rather than absolute tense. As noted in Chapter 7, Section 7. This function is ancestral to the introductory particle of the Third Future in Egyptian II but has become grammaticalized in that construction, as shown by the retention of the particle in subordinate clauses — e.

As exemplified in the last example, and noted in Chapter 10 p. Its use may reflect instead the process of grammaticalization: while jw. The negative construction, however, was evidently distinct enough to obviate the second part of the future morpheme, as in the affirmative with jr. Thus: jw. Akhmimic has perhaps generalized jr to all subjects. Evidence of this process may exist in the Demotic variation between e and jr with pronominal subject, if this is not merely phonological.

The use of these methods is partly conditioned by syntactic and pragmatic considerations,1 but the history of the language also shows an overall develop- ment from parataxis to hypotaxis.

Grammatical studies of Egyptian have traditionally distinguished between three kinds of subordinate clause on the basis of syntactic function: noun clause, used as nominal predicate, as subject of another predicate, as object of a verb or preposition, and as the second element of a genitival construction; adverb clause, primarily describing a circumstance accompanying the govern- ing clause; and relative clause, which functions like an adjective.

To a certain extent, these functional labels are valid, in that some kinds of hypotaxis are syntactically restricted: sk, for instance, marking clauses of circumstance, and wnt, introducing those that function as the complement of a verb or object of a preposition. Other kinds of hypotaxis, however, are less limited.

The enclitic particle js, for example, is used in Egyptian I not only in noun clauses Ex. In Egyptian I, ntt marks both noun clauses and relative clauses with a femi- nine singular referent. Also in Egyptian I, examples of parataxis are attested for all three kinds of clauses: [ These data indicate that the form of a subordinate clause in Egyptian is not determined by whatever syntactic function the clause might have. Parataxis is attested for clauses with non-verbal and pseudo-verbal predi- cates, the stp.

These occur in nominal, adverbial, and attribu- tive use. Hypotaxis involves the use of dedicated verb forms and constructions or of morphemes that serve to subordinate forms and constructions capable of independent use. These are attested in clauses that have nominal, adverbial, and attributive use. Hypotaxis occurs throughout the history of the language but is more common in Egyptian II than in Old and Middle Egyptian.

Examples of a non-verbal predicate and subject—stative have been cited above Exx. It is usually impossible, how- ever, to determine whether a particular instance involves the suffix-conjugation forms or their nominal counterparts discussed in Section At least some uses of the stp.

This is likely for the passive stp. It survives in Coptic in two stem already forms, the t—causative and a causative prefix. The former is descended from the infinitive of rdj plus the stp. Subordination Nominal parataxis is less common in Egyptian II. The same construction exists in Demotic, where the conjunction has the form n-drt, ntj-e, n-t , or mtw, e. Late Egyptian also uses both subject—stative and the stp.

These always follow the governing clause: [ The nj stpt. Adverbial parataxis in Egyptian II is largely limited to use of the stp.

Subordination Occasional instances of parataxis with other constructions are also attested in Late Egyptian, e. In Coptic this becomes a dedicated verb form, the Finalis als tarefswtp, f talefswtp, mp ntarefswtp , used for the same purpose: [ Such clauses can also be used after proper names or vocatives, e. Paratactic use of non-verbal clauses is attested occasionally in Late Egyptian as well: [ All four are used in relative clauses, and the nominal forms are used non-attributively in noun clauses as well.

The attributives survive to varying degrees into Coptic Chapter 11, Section Attributive use is thus incidental to the forms themselves, and this is reflected in the eventual loss of coreferential gender and number. In nominal function, the nominal form serves as predicate of a clause that typically corresponds to a noun — for example, the object of a verb or preposi- tion, the subject of another predicate, or both elements of a balanced sentence cf.

This use of the nominal forms is common in Old and Middle Egyptian. Such cases are normally explained as elliptical, i. In emphatic use, the nominal form is a non-rhematic predicate. Use of a nominal form identifies the predicate as thematic given information, normally associated with the subject and shifts the primary interest of the sentence its rheme, or new information, normally expressed by the predicate to some other element of the sentence: typically, a prepositional phrase, adverb, or dependent clause.

From Old Egyptian to Coptic, such constructions are especially common in questions with interrogative adverbs or prepositional phrases, which are always the rheme: [ In Egyptian I, nominal forms are most easily identified morphologically in the geminated stp. Since the nominal stp.

Examples such as the following indicate that this was in fact the case compare Exx. Since the stative or subject-stative is the usual intransitive counterpart of the transitive stp. Presumably, the choice of the geminated or ungeminated stp.

Similar alternation, with all three nominal forms, is visible in balanced sentences, e. It also occurs in emphatic sentences, where the ungeminated stp. B don.

Late Egyptian has a single nominal form, which usually consists of the prefix j. Besides the analytic nominal form, Late Egyptian also uses the prefixed stp. Because the usual second-tense construction can also have these meanings, this probably represents an alternative morphology of the nominal form for these verbs, as in attributive use Chapter 10, Section In this case, the use of wnn signals that the initial clause is of less interest than the clause that follows.

Subordination [ Setne I, 5, 3 don. Demotic also uses the prefix j. In place of the single second-tense marker j. An example of the Second Future has been cited in Ex. Examples of the other forms are: [ Although it derives from the nominal form, the second-tense marker j. This is shown both by its extension to hr stp. This relationship is most apparent in Late Egyptian, where the prefixed stp.

It is less clear in Demotic, where the second tense is j. These discrepancies are the result both of diverse historical reflexes of the original Late Egyptian forms and of the reinterpretation of j. This illustrates further the relationship between the nominal forms and the attributives as well as the perseverance of that relationship throughout Egyptian II. Because the attributives are syntactically nominal, their nominal use is hypotactic.

This is most evident in clauses where such forms function as nouns, as detailed in Section In emphatic use, the nominal forms have been analyzed as the subject of an adverbial predicate, and the emphatic sentence therefore as a special kind of non-verbal sentence, i. Subordination In examples such as the following, however, this analysis would place the adverbial predicate inside its nominal subject: [ Similarly, in the following instance of the construction exemplified in Ex.

Analysis of the nominal forms as subject is also implausible in view of the cases illustrated in Exx. In this case, the predicate phrase jn. The use of the nominal forms in emphatic sentences is a syntactic strategy analogous to a cleft-sentence construction,11 in which the predicate is thema- tized by means of a noun clause, e.

Rhematization by means of stress alone is also suggested in cases such as the following: [ We found them intact. The rheme is therefore the prepositional phrase r h. The latter, however, is not a nominal form but the same construction used as rhematic predicate in non-emphatic sentences: [ For Old and Middle Egyptian, the existence of such sentences, as well as the nominal parataxis noted in Section This applies to nominal as well as emphatic uses, and indicates that the stp. The only certain exception is the rdj stp.

The Coptic Temporal Section Conditional LE jw. Coptic also has a subordinate form known as the Conjunctive, descended from the preposition h. The Late Egyptian—Demotic subordinating morpheme probably represents an unstressed descendant of the Middle Egyptian independent pronoun, with the preposition omitted, i.

Although the primary function of these morphemes was semantic rather than syntactic, at least origi- nally, most are regularly associated with clauses that have nominal, adverbial, or relative attributive function. In negated clauses, js after the predicate serves to indicate that the nexus between subject and predicate is negated rather than the predicate itself: [ Compare the following, without js, in which the predicate itself is negated: [ Such clauses usually have non-verbal predicates: [ But the particle can apparently be used to subordinate any kind of statement: [ The common thread among these various uses of js is apparently that of subor- dination.

The particle does not mark words or clauses specifically for nominal or adverbial function, since it is used in both kinds of clauses. A noun or noun phrase with js serves as a subordinate statement of identity: Ex. Finally, in the negation illustrated in Exx. With a verbal predicate Ex. The particle here indicates that not just the predicate pr. With the exception of the negative constructions, subordination by js is primarily a feature of Old Egyptian. The particle is rare in Middle Egyptian adverb clauses, and for noun clauses Middle Egyptian prefers either parataxis Ex.

Parataxis is also used for subordinated emphatic sentences: [ B2, —18 be. Already in early Middle Egyptian, wnt is usually replaced by ntt, as illustrated by Ex. The particle jwt can be regarded as a noun-clause counterpart of the negative particle nj, which is not used in noun clauses subordinated by parataxis.

The particles wnt and ntt are used for the nominal subordination of constructions that are also not normally subject to parataxis, such as subject—stative, subject—stp. These various means of subordinating noun clauses are therefore syntactically complementary to some extent. The distinction between wnt and ntt themselves, if any, is not clear;23 the particles seem to be variants in most environments, though some prepositions apparently require ntt rather than wnt.

In some instances, a noun clause with nominal predicate is subordinated by both ntt and js, as opposed to js alone, e. Middle Egyptian texts, however, also seem to show the use of ntt as suppletive to subordination by js: [ Subordination Such examples may illustrate a stage between the obsolescence of js as a subordinating morpheme and its replacement by ntt.

It is not clear, however, how this function is related to the use of r dd in adverb clauses of purpose Ex. But it also governs jw clauses discussed below as well as those introduced by r dd. The choice of these complements is pragmatically determined. The range of use is extended, however, to noun clauses in other functions and to adverb clauses of causality: [ IX, 4, 7 don. Subordination In Middle Egyptian, sk is regularly supplanted by jst, also spelled jst as well as jstw and jstj, to denote preservation of the final t.

R 24—25 call. In initial position, jst is also used with the referential prepositional phrase r. These uses, and jst itself, do not survive in Late Egyptian and its descendants. The particle tj exists only in Middle Egyptian, and mostly in texts of the New Kingdom.

IV, , 11—12 ref. Use of the particle is therefore governed by pragmatic rather than syntactic considerations. Middle and Late Egyptian represent intermediate stages in this development.

In Old and Middle Egyptian, jw appears in both independent statements and in paratactic subordinate clauses. The latter can have nominal function Ex. A primary distinction between Old and Middle Egyptian is that the latter often uses a jw clause in place of the sk clause of Old Egyptian to express a clause of restricted circumstance, as illustrated by Ex. B 67—68 pass malepl femalepl on rejoiceinf in. Such clauses do not invariably use jw cf. In most cases, the particle has a pronominal suffix and could therefore be regarded as merely a syntactic means of allowing a pronoun to serve as clause-initial subject in a dependent clause.

Similar uses of jw, however, are also found in main clauses and non-restrictive dependent clauses: [ As in Old Egyptian, therefore, the subordinate use of jw clauses in Middle Egyptian must be regarded as paratactic, and pragmatically conditioned. Apart from the Third Future, jw usually introduces clauses that express consecutive action or adverbial circumstance: e. As in Middle Egyptian, such clauses can express restrictive as well as incidental circumstance: [ While subordinate, however, jw clauses in Late Egyptian are not necessarily adverbial.

The function of jw in Late Egyptian therefore cannot be analyzed as solely syntactic, as a means of marking subordination. As in Middle Egyptian, it still signals the relationship of its clause to the context in which it occurs, whether its clause is syntactically subordinate or not. In contrast to Egyptian I, however, Late Egyptian jw no longer seems to mark a statement as valid with respect to the moment of speaking except in the Third Future, where it is grammaticalized , and therefore not as being temporally restricted.

These include noun clauses, adverb clauses of incidental and restricted circumstance, and relative clauses after an undefined antecedent: [ In the Coptic Conditional discussed in Section The particle jw thus retains its essential relational function throughout the history of the language, but this changes in character from Old Egyptian to Coptic. In Egyptian I, jw relates the statement of its clause to the moment of speaking or a preceding statement.

The semantic value of jw is still paramount in Late Egyptian, but apparently no longer with reference to the speech event. Finally, in Demotic and Coptic, the descendants of jw have become markers of syntactic subordination. In origin, both are nis- bes, ntj evidently from the feminine singular nisbe nt of the genitival adjec- tive nj, and jwtj from the particle jwt used in noun clauses Section Like other attributives, ntj and jwtj originally agreed in gender and num- ber with their antecedent expressed or not but by Middle Egyptian had been reduced to three forms msg, mpl, f and in Egyptian II appear only in the first of these.

For jwtj, only the three basic forms msg, mpl, f appear in Old and Middle Egyptian. Originally, ntj clauses were used with adverbial and pseudo-verbal predicates and for the subject—stp. In that respect, they can be viewed as syntactic alternants of the attributive forms of the verb and for undefined antecedents of paratactic relative clauses.

In Late Egyptian, ntj is an alternant of attributive verb forms participle and relative and of paratactic attributive clauses, used not only with constructions such as the First Present and Third Future Ex. In Demotic, ntj relativizes all primary tenses except the stp. Replacement of the participle and relative stp. The attributive jwtj is originally the relative counterpart of the nega- tive particle nj, and is used with the same constructions attested for nj: e.

I, , 6—7 cargo. B1, 93—95 2msg. B2, 80 not-doimp reachinf subrel neg reach. These show that marked subordination for adverbial or attributive function is not originally an inherent feature of the language. All other means of subordination are therefore governed by semantic or pragmatic considerations. The particles sk etc. Some uses of sk and ntj could be considered syntactic, e. But this analysis does not explain all uses of the par- ticles.

Clauses with sk more often follow the governing clause Exx. These data indicate that the function of sk and ntj is more than just syntactic. For sk, the difference between its clause and a paratactic one is that sk signals a restrictive circumstance whereas parataxis expresses one that is merely incidental. The particle is thus an adverbial counterpart of jw, identifying the action of its clause as restricted to that of another clause rather than simply accompanying it.

This has the effect of specifying that the action of the main clause takes place under the circumstances of the sk clause. For the same reason, a clause with the stp. The exceptional use of ntj rdj. These are two versions of the same passage from the Pyramid Texts, variant redactions of a first person original. I, 35, 3. In this case, ntj may carry the connotation of restricted temporality as opposed to the unmarked construction with the participle, i.

Since the noun-clause morpheme ntt is apparently nothing more than the feminine singular form of ntj,45 the same connotation of restricted validity may then apply to the clauses that it introduces. Although sk and ntt can thus be regarded as syntactic alternants of jw, they do differ from jw in one respect: both sk and ntt can subordinate nominal-predicate constructions in conjunction with enclitic js, which is apparently not the case for jw Chapter 7, Section 7.

An example with ntt has been cited above Ex. The specifically subordinate nature of these clauses may explain why the inher- ently intrinsic identification expressed by nominal-predicate constructions can be marked as limited in validity by sk and ntt.

Both Ex. Such connotations may not have governed every instance of the subordi- nating morphemes in Middle Egyptian. This is particularly true in the case of the replacement of jwt and jwtj by ntt and ntj, respectively, plus a negated predicate Exx. Such constructions evidently represent a transitional stage from the original semantic value of the morphemes, as subordinating counterparts of jw, to the purely syntactic role that ntj plays in Egyptian II.

The grammatical expression of limited validity expressed by jw and its counterparts in Egyptian I is apparently not a feature of Late Egyptian or its successors to the same extent. Along with the reduction in parataxis, the loss of this feature reflects the change from the primarily semantic and pragmatic grammar of subordination in Egyptian I to the largely syntactically motivated grammar of Egyptian II.

The Bohairic dialect of Coptic is still used in the liturgy of the Coptic church. Documents before bc reveal only a few features of grammar, and developments in Coptic after the Arab conquest of Egypt in the seventh century ad have not been studied systematically Richter The stative is cognate with the Akkadian form known variously as the stative or verbal adjective, and with the perfect of other Hamito-Semitic languages.

For verb roots in the Pyramid Texts, see Allen , —; Satzinger For vocalization patterns, see especially Osing a and Schenkel Hieroglyphic spelling regularly shows only one of two identical radicals in contact. But it is also possible that Egyptian used a single root for both meanings, as in English the door closed versus he closed the door. For the Coptic alphabet, see Chapter 2. The classic synthesis is Edgerton For summaries of the debate, see H.

Jansen-Winkeln ; Peust b; Engsheden ; Kurth Translations are for illustration only: the verb forms are not specific as to tense. For the location of Oxyrhynchite, see Kahle , — In earlier Coptic studies, Lycopolitan was abbreviated a2 for Subakhmimic. Shisha-Halevy for bringing this study to my attention. A seminal attempt to deal with Common Coptic phonology is that of Hintze , based on Akhmimic, Bohairic, and Saidic. Stress is determined by vowels: see Section 2. For syllabic consonants, see Worrell , 11— The existence of syllabic consonants is debated: see Peust , 61— The Bohairic and Oxyrhynchite use of the superliteral dot for vowels as well as conso- nants, however, indicates that the latter are syllabic.

The superliteral stroke of other dialects probably derives from op —, representing a syllabic n. Small capitals indicate open vowels. See Ternes The descriptive system is based on Gussenhoven and Jacobs , 68— Vowels can be —h—l i. Stressed o, however, which is traditionally understood as short, occurs in open syllables in the Oxyrhynchite dialect.

This argues for a qualitative distinction. Allen , 69— Greek h began to develop its modern pronunciation [i] in the second century ad: W. Allen , 74— The symbol [e:] denotes a lengthened [e]. Peust , See also Peust , —81; Schenkel An infinitive written msdty. The fourth radical is occasionally reflected as j in earlier inflected forms. Schenkel , — For the name and vocalization reflected in NK cuneiform , see Vycichl , The word h.

For unstressed e, see Ranke , 15—16, The root is 3ae-gem. B1, infinitive. Multiple correspondents are given in order of decreasing attestation, based on Hoch , — Egyptian h and z are not used to render Semitic consonants.

See Rainey , and I, ; Hoch , , See also A. Faber ; Dolgopolsky , 32—35; Militarev and Kogan , xcviii—cv; Streck Cuneiform renditions of d are ambiguous n. Kienast , 26; Militarev and Kogan —, I, lxvii. For other proposed proto-phonemes, see Militarev and Kogan —, I, xcvii—cxxiv. The chart is intended only as a summary of what seems to be recent common opinion in Proto-Semitic studies.

Bennett , s. Dolgopolsky, Militarev and Kogan. It has been questioned but not convincingly refuted; the argument of Quack , and , is circular. An analogous use to mark an initial vowel probably exists in the prefixed forms of Old Egyptian, such as imperative j. III, 34 h. Vycichl , notes a West Dakhla dialect of Arabic in which l was pronounced as [n].

Note also Pyr. The two sounds are non-phonemic in English: leap [li:p] vs. They are phonemic in Albanian: e. I, , 5; Pyr. For a possible Coptic reflex of b, see Osing , ; Satzinger , ; Peust , n. XVII, in spellings without t jrw : Wb. I, Peust , 82—83 argues against dialec- tal variation but without considering the LE evidence of coexistence.

The single instance of for d in the OK, noted above n. This change is also attested in Old Egyptian in Pyr. Notes to pages 43—47 31 Lesko and Lesko —, I, 96 wb , b , b b , b q , hb , all native Egyptian words. The two words apparently have the same meaning, and they appear as textual variants in Pyr. The verb hsb is rare other instances are Pyr. Verhoeven , 85—89; Vernus , See also Peust , For Middle Kingdom texts, see Allen , Pace Hoch , , there is no good evidence that t was an affricate in Egyptian.

See Peust , LES 13, 1 dd. The same convention exists in modern Greek, where nt is used for [d] in loan words and foreign names, e. Recent linguistic theory has suggested that absolute categories are largely illusory e. See Loprieno , This is unlikely for Egyptian in the absence of firm evidence for case. The stressed vowel of the dual is identified by b vaxou. Loprieno , 70—71 but are classed more properly as adjectives. The masculine forms probably reflect the convention of writing two identical consonants in contact only once, i.

The feminine plurals jptnt and jptwt apparently represent secondary gender marking of the original forms jptn and jptw. Gragg, in Kienast , Whether the normal OE— ME spellings pn and tn conceal the same vocalization is unknown. The same syntax applies in the generation of the relative forms of the verb, discussed in Chapter 9.

A few adjectives had variant vocalizations, e. Egyptian phonology Part II. Grammar: 6. Nouns, pronouns, and adjectives 7. Non-verbal predicates 8. Verbs 9. Verbs: Egyptian I Verbs: Egyptian II Verbs: Egyptian I-II Save to Library Save. Create Alert Alert. Share This Paper. Background Citations. Citation Type.

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