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Kultur Dokumente
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L. DEPUYDT
ment receives emphasis of the isolating kind by being presented as distinct from and at the exclusion of other elements.
A singular characteristic of Egyptian is that it typically uses different
constructions depending on whether the emphasized element is adverbial,
that is, refers to a circumstance (see to the specialist cited above), or
nominal, that is, refers to an entity (see the externals only of the volume
cited above). This difference is foreign to English and other European languages as well as to Semitic. It is ultimately just one aspect of a larger
phenomenon that is perhaps the most typical characteristic of Egyptian,
namely that someones being somewhere is expressed by a different
sentence pattern, namely the adverbial sentence, than someones being
someone or something, which is denoted by the nominal sentence.
The reduction in functional scope from Middle to Late Egyptian mentioned above may be illustrated by two lists presented below.3 In List 1,
pertaining to Old and Middle Egyptian, thirteen different positions in
which the verb forms in question can occur are illustrated by examples.
All thirteen positions are substantival in the sense that substantives or
substantival phrases can elsewhere be found in them. It seems therefore
legitimate to call the Old and Middle Egyptian verb forms substantival,
as they now often are.
But by Late Egyptian, as illustrated by List 2, the descendants of the
Old and Middle Egyptian substantival verb forms have disappeared from
all but two of these positions, namely Nos. 5 and 12.4
3
Additional members have been proposed for both lists, some controversial, but the
members listed here, which include all those established with certainty, should suffice to
portray the conspicuous shift from Middle Egyptian to Late Egyptian.
4
This creates a problem of terminology. At the transition from Middle to Late Egyptian, substantival verb forms lost the versatility of assuming just about any position in
which a substantive can also be found. It would therefore be confusing to call the Late
Egyptian, Demotic, and Coptic descendants of substantival verb forms also substantival,
as this obscures an essential difference in scope of function. It has even been doubted
whether the Late Egyptian, Demotic, and Coptic forms are at all still substantival, but this
problem cannot be dealt with in this brief note.
Which alternative terms are there? For Late Egyptian, there is only one: emphatic.
No other has ever been proposed, or might be, it seems, any time soon. This term suffers
from the disadvantage of having been created as part of an earlier, erroneous, view
regarding the function of the verb forms in question. It was meant to describe that the
action or event expressed by the verb forms in question is uttered with emphasis, that is,
with insistence and intensity. But when this theory became obsolete, the term emphatic
was retained and its spurious origin is usually commemorated by placing it between quotation marks. Now, Late Egyptian emphatic verb forms do, quite by coincidence,
involve emphasis, but emphasis of a different kind than that for which the term was created. This circumstance may help explain the durability of the term emphatic. In fact,
it is tempting, and even seems opportune, simply to redefine emphatic as shorthand for
functioning in sentences in which a certain element is emphasized, that is, presented as
distinct from and at the exclusion of other elements, and simply delete the quotation
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OF
NON-VERBAL SENTENCES
A. Substantival Sentence
Bimembral with pw
1. mhh jb.f pw It means that his heart is forgetful.
Trimembral with pw
2. jsst pw h.k r .t What does it mean that you fall on the field?
Wechselsatz
3. dd.k dd.tw n.k s-t When you sail northward, respect is paid to
you. Literally: That you sail north is (means) that respect is paid
to you.
B. Adjectival Sentence
4. qsn mss.s Her bearing was painful. Literally: That she bears
(was) difficult.
marks. The term is used without quotation marks, for example, in J. WINAND, tudes de
no-gyptien, 1: La morphologie verbale, Aegyptiaca Leodiensia, Lige, 1992, p. 259-87.
Coptic grammar too is affected by the problem that no term has ever been proposed to
replace the traditional designation Second Tenses, which these verb forms have borne
since before their meaning was identified. Even the term emphatic verb forms, especially as redefined above, would be preferable to Second Tenses. As for Demotic, the
choice is between emphatic, as in Late Egyptian, and Second Tenses, as in Coptic.
Second Tenses is used, for example, in J.H. JOHNSON, The Demotic Verbal System,
Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 38, Chicago, 1976, p. 99-126.
In conclusion, whatever the term that will find favor may be, it would be opportune to
give the related verb forms in Late Egyptian, Demotic, and Coptic the same name.
5
The sources of the thirteen examples are as follows: 1. pEbers, 102,15; 2. A.
ERMAN, Reden, Rufe und Lieder auf Grberbildern des Alten Reiches, APAW 1918,
Berlin, 1919, p. 58 (cited by POLOTSKY, Orientalia, 38 [1969], p. 470); 3. . NAVILLE,
The Temple of Deir el Bahri, 6 vols., London, [1895]-1908, Plate 114; 4. pWestcar, 9,22;
5. Eloquent Peasant, B1,267; 6. Kmjjt, VIII; 7. Hammamat, 113,10; 8. pWestcar, 7,21;
9. pEbers, 97,13; 10. Sinuhe, B263; 11. CT, IV 42e; 12. PT, 822b; 13. pEbers, 65,5.
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L. DEPUYDT
C. Adverbial Sentence
5. sqdd t ft w.k It is according to your command that the land sails.
Literally: That the land sails is according to your command.
II. SATELLITE
OF A
VERB
A. Subject
6. jw mr rmm.s w She bitterly weeps for you. Literally: (The fact)
that she weeps for you is bitter.
B. Direct Object
7. jw grt w.n m.f prr(.j) r st tn His Majesty ordered that I go to
this desert.
III. SUBORDINATED
IN THE
GENITIVE PHRASE
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L. DEPUYDT
(1) In the early part of this century, the evolution of the verbal system
from Late Egyptian through Demotic to Coptic was still imperfectly
known. One problematic area was the historical relationships between
Coptic conjugation bases consisting of a single vowel such as av- and
ev- and conjugation bases in Late Egyptian and Demotic such as jw.f and
.jr.f (also written r.jr.f and jw.jr.f). The matter is of some complexity
and cannot be reviewed in detail here. But, for example, anyone searching
for the etymology of the so common Coptic past verb form avswtM he
heard, he has heard would be intrigued that Late Egyptian jw.f r sm
and .jr.f sm are both past in meaning, though the latter form not exclusively so. The study of the behavior of these two past verb forms, whatever its outcome, must have seemed a worthwhile endeavor. It is now
known that jw.f r sm, which cannot head a sentence, disappeared after
Late Egyptian, and that past .jr.f sm only survives with certainty in
the Faiyumic dialect of Coptic as aavswtM, also written avswtM,
whereas Coptic past avswtM derives from neither of these Late Egyptian verb forms, but rather from the periphrastic verb form jr.f sm,
which became common in late Demotic, gradually replacing past sm.f.
(2) In order to show that contrasts, alternations, in short, all kinds of
syntactic relationships, are real and not invented by grammarians, they
should be documented by examples in which the related features occur
alongside one another in actual context.9 The pivotal passages from the
Story of Horus and Seth are in all probability not found in the celebrated
tudes de syntaxe copte (1944), but rather in an article that appeared
four years earlier in the Annales du Service des Antiquits de lgypte.10
The following five examples are quoted there. The first three feature the
verb forms jw.f r sm and .jr.f sm mentioned above. The fact that all
five resemble one another in containing the interrogative pronoun j
must have encouraged the search for the specific difference.
ADVERBIAL r j
(a) .jr.k djt jj.st r j Why did you let her cross? (7,12-13).
(b) .jr.k qndt r j Why are you angry? (8,5).
EMPHATIC VERB FORM
j AS DIRECT OBJECT
(c) jw.k d n.s j What did you tell her? (7,8). Past jw.f (r) sm.
(d) twtn dj ms.tj r jrt j m-rC What are you doing, sitting here
like this? (8,3). Present sw r sm.
OTHER VERB FORM
9
POLOTSKY, A Note on the Sequential Verb-form in Ramesside Egyptian and in Biblical
Hebrew, Pharaonic Egypt, the Bible, and Christianity, Jerusalem, 1985, p. 157-61, at p. 158.
10
Une rgle concernant lemploi des formes verbales dans la phrase interrogative en
no-gyptien, ASAE 40 (1944), p. 241-45 (Collected Papers, p. 33-37).
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(e) jw . (r) djt n.j j What will you give me? (5,12). Future jw.f
(r) sm.
It is the comparison of examples such as (a) .jr.k djt jj.st r j and
(c) jw.k d n.s j, perhaps even these very ones, occurring in close
vicinity, that must have inspired the conclusion that the emphatic verb
form is used when the interrogative pronoun is part of an adverbial
phrase. This is confirmed by the other three examples. Thus the link
between the adverbial sentence pattern, on the one hand, and the
emphatic verb forms, on the other hand, was established as well as the
mechanism by which the two concepts interlock.11 Most everything else
important, including the substantival nature of the Old and Middle
Egyptian verb forms, follows logically from this.12
(3) The contrast between absence and presence of an emphatic verb
form illustrated by the two examples .jr.k djt jj.st r j Why have
you let her cross? and jw.k d n.s j What have you told her? in
Late Egyptian is no longer fully observed in all Coptic dialects. In
Sahidic, for example, Second Tenses are used also when the interrogative pronoun is not part of an adverbial phrase. Examples in which it
functions as direct object are as follows.
11
As Polotsky notes (ASAE, 40 [1940], p. 241 n. 1 [Collected Papers, p. 33 n. 1];
tudes, p. 54-56 [Collected Papers, p. 158-60]), F. Praetorius and to some extent L. Stern
were the first to identify the Coptic past Second Perfect as a relative verb form of the
abstract kind used in a cleft sentence construction. But this insight had very limited
potential as long as the crucial link between the Second Tenses and the so quintessentially
Egyptian structure of the adverbial sentence was not made. Praetorius, for example, postulated an omitted copula pe, thus linking the construction in which Second Tenses appear
with the nominal sentence.
12
It may be noted that the crucial observation was syntactic in nature. As regards the
meaning or signified of the construction, the omnipresent Aristotelian categories of subject and predicate were employed to conclude that emphasis involves a shift from status
as subject to status as predicate or vedette. I believe, however, as I have stated elsewhere, that the matter can be described satisfactorily without having recourse to concepts
such as subject and predicate. Instead, the construction in which emphatic verb forms and
substantival verb forms appear has, it seems to me, a form and meaning just as the word
with the form horse has the meaning large, solid-hoofed, herbivorous mammal
As to the form of the construction, the adverbial sentence pattern makes it possible to
single out an adverbial element syntactically as a distinct component of a sentence. As
regards meaning, this setting apart is produced with the aim of presenting that adverbial
element as distinct from and at the exclusion of other elements. This peculiar kind of
isolating contrast S. Groll has referred to it as the polemic mood is the signified
or meaning of the emphatic construction.
Anything beyond this simple attaching of a meaning to an empirical signal seems to
me speculation about the nature of thought, a topic whose ultimate question is: Why do
we say what we say and not rather something else? This question seems fundamental and
worthwhile, but it is difficult and may unnecessarily burden the description of emphatic
and substantival verb forms.
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L. DEPUYDT
pdikaios NtavR ou What has the just man done? (Psalms 10,3).
ekouej ou nMman What do you want from us? (Matthew 8,29).
This fact makes it possible to understand why the key observation
regarding the link between the Second Tenses or emphatic verb forms,
on the one hand, and the adverbial sentence, on the other hand, was
made in a Late Egyptian text rather than in a Coptic one, even though
Coptic was better known at the time. Indeed, the very link had been
loosened to some degree by the time of Coptic.
It also follows that Polotskys observation on the obligatory use of the
Second Tenses with interrogative pronouns in the Gttinger Gelehrte
Anzeigen of 1934,13 reporting an observation by L. Stern,14 was isolated
and did not involve understanding of the function of the Second Tenses,
as confirmed by Polotsky himself (see n. 8).
In this respect, it is significant that, in none of the Coptic examples
explicitly cited in GGA 1934, the interrogative pronoun is part of an
adverbial phrase. Such examples would not enable one to make the
essential link between the use of the Second Tenses and the adverbial
sentence pattern, because they illustrate how this link had loosened to a
certain degree by the time of Coptic.15
Even if the observation in GGA 1934 set the stage for focusing on
sentences with interrogative pronouns, it only shows that such a frequent
phenomenon as the Second Tenses would not escape the attention and
the reflection of the perceptive grammarian.
As distinct from GGA 1934, the communications in Comptes rendus
du Groupe linguistique dtudes chamito-smitiques, 3 (1937), p. 1-3
(Collected Papers, p. 99-101) and in ASAE, 40 (1940), p. 241-45 (Collected Papers, p. 33-37) do anticipate the tudes of 1944.16
(II) By itself, relating the presence of r to the presence of .jr in
.jr.k djt jj.st r j and relating the absence of the former to the
absence of the latter in jw.k d n.s j seems a rather small scale observation, but it involved no less than relating in an utterly novel way two
main structural features of the language to one another, verb forms and
13
GGA, 196 (1934), p. 58-67 (review of W. TILL, Koptische Dialektgrammatik,
Munich, 1931), at p. 63-64 (Collected Papers, p. 363-72, at p. 368-69).
14
Koptische Grammatik, Leipzig, 1880, p. 213, 216, 220.
15
Likewise, Psalms 10,3 and Matthew 8,29, cited above, in which the emphasized
element is also not adverbial, are taken from paragraphs in Sterns Koptische Grammatik
(see n. 14) that are given as references in GGA 1934.
16
See also SHISHA-HALEVY, Coptic Grammatical Categories, Analecta Orientalia 53,
Rome, 1986, p. 62; W. SCHENKEL, Einfhrung in die altgyptische Sprachwissenschaft,
Darmstadt, 1990, p. 146.
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Leo DEPUYDT