CHETVERUKHIN ALEXANDERS. Some Theoretical Aspects of Old Egyptian Nominal Sentence. Structure and Semantics. 1990.17.12

Altorientalische Forschungen ALEXANDER

S.

17

I 1990

3-17

CHETVERUKHIN

Some Theoretical Aspects of Old Egyptian Nominal Sentence. Structure and Semantics

The interest for the nominal sentence (NS) theory within the modern general linguistic methods, mostly those of generative and semantic syntax, does not diminish at all now; just the opposite, it does show a steady increase in modern egyptology. One can see it, even not aiming to tackle the problem, just from the abundant literature of recent years. First of all, we have in mind the following works: a number of articles in the "Studies Presented to Hans Jakob Polotsky", articles by Westendorf and Schlachter (the latter being an answer from a specialist in general linguistics to the problems set forth by the former) in the "Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen", Schenkel in "Festschrift Westendorf", then Callender "Studies in the Nominal Sentence in Egyptian and Coptic" and critics thereof byAnneBiedenkopf-Ziehner andW. Schenkel, furthermore Roeder in "Göttinger Miszellen", the contents of "Crossroad. Chaos or the Beginning of a New Paradigm", and Depuidt in "Orientalia".! This interest is by no means a kind of fashion epidemic : the very fact that the Egyptian verbal finite forms are possessive by their structure (but the so-called Old Perfective, or the Quality and State Form after N. S. Petrovsky) inevitably witnesses to the common orientation of the Egyptian syntactic patterns towards the nominal one. This is evident from the well-known monograph by ' D . W . Y o u n g (ed.), Studies Presented to H a n s Jakob Polotsky, Beacon Hill 1981; W. Westendorf and W. Schlachter, in: Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen 1981, Nr. 3, 7 7 - 7 9 , and Nr. 4, 1 0 3 - 1 1 9 ; W. Schenkel, Fokussierung. Über die Reihenfolge von Subjekt und Prädikat im klassisch-ägyptischen Nominalsatz, in: Studien zu Sprache und Religion Ägyptens (Festschrift W. WTestendorf), Göttingen 1984; J'. B. Callender, Studies in the Nominal Sentence in Egyptian and Coptic, Berkeley 1984 (University of California Publications, Near Eastern Studies 24); Anne Biedenkopf-Ziehner in: Enchoria 13 [1985], 2 1 7 - 2 3 2 ; W. Schenkel, „Spezifität" — der Schlüssel zum ägyptisch-koptischen Nominalsatz?, in: BiOr 52 [1985], 256—265; H. Roeder, Die Prädikation im Nominalen Nominalsatz. Ein logisch-semantischer Ansatz, in: GM 91 [1986], 1 - 7 7 ; G.'Englund - P. J. Frandsen (ed.), Crossroad. Chaos or the Beginning of a New Paradigm. Papers from the Conference on Egyptian Grammar. Helsingor 2 8 - 3 0 May 1986, Copenhagen 1986 (The Carsten Niebuhr Institute of Ancient Near Eeast Studies Publications 1); L. Depuidt, The Emphatic Nominal Sentence in Egyptian and Coptic, in: Orientaba 56 [1987], 35—54. — See also our recent articles: ¿Jea noAXO^a κ L O Y I E H H I O eraneTCKoro npe^jioHíeHHH, IlcTopuH Η Φ Η Η Ο Η Ο Γ Η Η ApeBiiero H cpe^HeBeKOBoro BocTOKa, Moscow 1987, 64—83; CoBpeMeHHoe cocTOHHHe nayneHHH CTapoenineTCKoro ΜΜΘΗΗΟΓΟ npe«jio>KeHHH, ibid. 84—100; MHTepnpeTaiiHH Asyx OCHOBHHX ΤΙ1Π0Β Πρβ^ΛΟΚΘΗΗΗ Β ΘΓΜΠβΤΟΚΟΜ Η3ΗΚβ, ^ρβΒΗΙΐϋ Η Cpe/JHeBeKOBhltt ΒΟCT0K, Moscow 1987, 31—49. ι* Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated | 178.162.97.141 Download Date | 2/9/14 12:19 PM

Alexander S. Chetveriikliin

4

Junge "Syntax der mittelägyptischen Literatursprache".- The general reason of such a phenomenon seems to be a very archaic typological structure of Egyptian, presumably close to that of the active typology languages.3 Trivial as it is, the languages of active and ergative typology often have possessive predicative constructions.4 However, the profound understanding of various Egyptian language phenomena is expected to be deducible anyway from the NS on different levels of linguistic analysis. And vice versa, the NS analysis is essentially depending on the results gained in the process of all the other spheres in the Egyptian grammar study, up to the obligatory taking into consideration both comparative linguistic material and comprehensive data of general linguistic typology. The most complicated field of Egyptian still remains that of morphology, despite verily heroic efforts by such outstanding scholars as K . Sethe, W. F. Albright, J . Vergote, W. Vycichl, G. Fecht and J . Osing. Nevertheless the problem of "the common denominator" is left open. The problems above naturally call into existence the issue of parts of speech. Indeed, whatever method of syntactic analysis be applied, in any spoken language the morphological nature of the constituents is quite clear, or can easily be defined; they may be kept in the background and put forward if necessary. Nothing of the kind appears in Egyptian—the problem had already been foresaid by Gunn in a review on the well-known work of Faulkner. 5 So, when speaking of the Egyptian material, we would prefer to use mostly not the conventional terms (not really supported by our actual knowledge), such as "Adjective", "Participle" and "Substantive" (except for "Pronouns" (Pr), personal (pers) and demonstrative (dem)), the term " S t e m " (St) will be understood as "Quality", "Agentive" (i.e. having verbal semantics with an ex(or im)plicite agens), and "Substantival" (a form substantivized from any part of speech, even from syntagmata but Pr.). Thus, we would prefer "Substantival Stem" (St s) instead of "Substantive", "Quality Stem" (St q) for "Adjective", "Agentive Stem" (St ag) in place of "Participle". The totality of the actual forms termed as "Stems" differentiates as follows : 1) semantically, 2) by combinability, 3) functionally on different levels of syntactic analysis, 4) morphologically (partly explicit), and at last but not in the least by 5) spelling—always bearing in mind that the Egyptian language exists for us only as a written one with a complicated but always very significant sys2

F . Junge, Syntax der mittelägyptischen Literatursprache. Grundlagen einer Strukturtheorie, Mainz a. Rh. 1978.

3

A . C . H e T B e p y x H H , Κ o n p e n e J i e H H i o ΟΤΡΟΗ ΘΓΗΠΘΤΟΚΟΓΟ HATIKA C T a p o r o COCTOHHHH, ΠΗΟΒ-

4

MeHHbie nauHTHHKH H npoSjieMM HCTopHH KyjibTypu HapoßOB BocTOKa (=ΠΠΗΠΜΚΗΒ). X X rosHiHaH Haymaa ceccHH JIO HB AH CCCP («OKJiaflu H coo6meHHH), Moscow 1985, lacTb Π, 83—94; Πο3ΗςΗΗ ernneTCKoro nsuita Β KOHTCHCHBHOÍÍ ΤΗΠΟΛΟΓΗ« ( s e e p . 17 ). See G . A . Klimov's works: Ο^ΒΡΚ OÖMEÖ TeopHH apraTHBHOcnx, Moscow 1 9 7 3 ; THHOJIOΓΗΗ H3HK0B aKTHBHOrO CTpOH, MOSCOW 1 9 7 7 ;

5

IIpHHIJHnH KOHTenCHBHOfi THIIOJIOrHH,

Moscow 1983. B . Gunn: R . O. Faulkner, The Plural and Dual in Old Egyptian, Brussels 1929 (§ 53, 64), in: J E A 19 [1933], 106. Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated | 178.162.97.141 Download Date | 2/9/14 12:19 PM

Old Egyptian Nominal Sentence

5

tern of orthography. This peculiarity shows itself in different ways, one of which being the system of graphical determinatives. It can be evinced by concrete examples, interesting not only as such, but in that they also demonstrate the Egyptian native mode of estimating the lexical inventory marked above as " S t e m s " . Thus, the set named as St s tends to be written with the graphic determinative of the concrete object meant, which was originally a picture of the thing mentioned. It was a general tendency in tomb inscriptions for imitativeness of the signs—this was justified by the Egyptian idea of the Beyond, where all that is depicted and mentioned in the inscriptions come to life again and act for the tomb's owner, as if it were in reality, 6 let alone that the pictures and images of the tomb in their turn played a role of determinatives for the inscription. Outside the tomb inscriptions the concrete object picture as a determinative grew more abstract, mainly due to rapid forms of writing (the hieratic and demotic), finally transformating into a current symbol of a class of related objects. In principle, the determinative was now aimed at linking the word-form to a concrete semantic totality of objects, if the connexion between them seemed to be apparent. As a result, St q was either deprived of any graphic determinative, or equipped with a sign classifying the stem in accordance with the emotional reaction of a person being in the condition implicated by the meaning of the given S t q : " j o y " , "distress", "prostration" etc.—as a determinative, a human figure or a part thereof is depicted in its proper posture. The verbal stems had determinatives depicting human or animal organs producing the fiction, or the instrument where with the action used to be produced, in the case of a verb of action, not of state; the latter was also determined by the corresponding St q (i.e., derived from the same root). St ag could contain, along with the verbal determinative, that of agens, pointing to a human being or a deity. Prepositions, particles and pronouns as a rule had no determinatives at all, because the first person suffixal pronoun was expressed by an ideogram, not a determinative. The fundamental principle in elaborating the graphic determinative system was that of mental association, whatever forms it could take. According to the principle in question, not only quality stems, but even some substantival (not of the same roots) and verbal ones might be grouped together—the latter if the action or state designated was associated with a certain human emotional reaction. For example : under the determinative " b a d " (sign "sparrow"—G 37 of Gardiner's Sign-list) the following root morphemes are grouped: nds "small", hns "narrow", bjn " b a d " , sw "empty", mr "ill, diseased"—all these being St q, wherefrom some St s could also be derived: nds "commoner", bjn.t "evil" etc., this is naturally so, but also Bq "perish" is classed here—a "pure" verbal St, quite independent. For the first glance it is not clear why it was the sign of sparrow that acquired such meaning. One may reproduce, however, the following semantic implication: "sparrow" — "crops damager" — "bad, harmful" (and simultaneously " a n empty field", "small, insufficient harvest") —abstract notion of graphic determinative as defining "something bad, harmful, unhappy, insufficient, perishing". In any case, the highly developed determination system is a secondary one, of 6

A new explanation of the tomb images and pictures see in: A. O. BojibuiaKOB, IIpeflCTaB-

.leHiie o ABOitHHKe Β Εηιπτβ Craporo uapcTBa, in: "VDl 181 [1987], 3—36.

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Alexander S. Chetvonikhin

6

higher rank of the overworked ideography. In Old Egyptian it was still in the process of formation, taking its proper shape only in the Middle Egyptian (Classical) written language. The Egyptian system of graphic determinatives enables us to state that the Egyptians distinguished the root morpheme from the auxiliary morpheme, and full-semantic word-forms from their substitutes—pronouns. The Egyptian thought did not imply abstracting basic categories, namely the substantive and the verb, both notions being not so far abstracted as to lead to elaborating two opposing general determinatives. The reason of the phenomenon is probably concealed in the Egyptian mode of thinking, though it might be also maintained by the morphological phenomena themselves : the principles of verb and noun morphological differentiation being utterly unlike the Indoeuropean languages, where it seems to be more obvious than in Egyptian. It goes without saying in any case, that in the long run, along with other graphical methods, the Egyptian system of graphical determination somehow also compensated for a phonological underdevelopment of the writing system's means which were based primarily on the consonantal (and sonantic) skeleton of the root morpheme.7 Indeed, there are various ways to investigate the Egyptian writing system, but the semantic one appears to be the most fruitful, if we want not only to understand the system as a whole, but find the right way into the Egyptian mode of mentality. It is this approach that was recognized as most fruitful by our late great master of Egyptology, Yu. Y a . Perepiolkin. Through lack of special graphemes for vowel representation, the Egyptian writing system conceals many features of morphology, which are partially reconstruçtable from a pool of various data. In written Egyptian we have but hints to the real morphological structure, and first of all, markers of gender and number. All stems constituing N S differentiated them. But while St s is quite independent of its position and function, St q,ag differentiates gender and number when occupying the second or third position in the NS, and that only in Old Egyptian (OE). In the first position there is no grammatical congruence •with the second constituent St s, and St q,ag look as if they were sg.m. It is indeed not excluded, that we have here a peculiar use of (proto-)masculine sg., which is to be taken into account when analysing Egyptian gender and number markers.8 The quality-verb-stems being present, the N S with St q is hard to distinguish from the verbal sentence9—this peculiarity might show the activeergative typology of OE and ME. 10 The other N S features pertaining to the old stage of the Egyptian language development (i.e. OSE, comprising OE and M E ) are: basic patterns X pw ( = Y ) and X pw Y , the pattern Y X pw being 7

8

9

H. C. rteTpoBCKHii, 3 B y K 0 B u e 3naKH e r m i e T C K o r o i w c b M a K a n CHCTeina, Moscow 1978. See also P. Vernus, L'écriture hiéroglyphique: une écriture duplice?, and the literature cited there, in: Confrontations, Cahiers 16, Autumne 1986 — an offprint kindly presented by its author. See also: F. Aspesi, La distinzione dei generi nel nome anticoegiziano e semitico, Florence 1977. A. C. H e T B e p y x i i H , Teopna β τβκοτοΛοπικ e r u n e T C K O r o ημθηηογο n p e a n o J K e m i H . I V . CiicTeMaTH3aijHH

10

Mcueaeîi

eruneTCKOro

ημθηηογο

n p e j . i o w e H H H (in p r i n t ) .

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Old Egyptian Nominal Sentence

7

the rarest one;' 1 using of Pr pers and dem as constituents of NS paradigm combining with each other (see below) ; a plenty of patterns with actualizing particles1'-, etc., the X and Y being constituents (principal members) of NS. The common logic-grammatical analysis of some of these patterns has been made previously.13 The absence of any explicit system of grammatical determination (not to be confused with the graphical determination above!) in the written OSE should also be taken into consideration.1/1 Speaking of the NS constituents, it should be remembered that St q,ag as the second constituent originally agreed in gender (perhaps both in gender and number) with the first constituent—St s. This phenomenon was no longer productive towards the end of OE. 15 Thus a formal dissociation appeared between NS and the attributive non-predicative syntagmata. This correlates with the formation of NS with an invariable logic-grammatical subject pw: the pronominal form is, in fact, fossilized in m.sg. (sf. above on the congruence of first constituent of the NS), though somewhat earlier the demonstrative of "the -wseries" was yet variable, originally agreeing in gender and number with the X. Traces thereof can be found in the Pyramid Texts ( = PT). 16 All the facts exhibit not only the formal dissociation between the NS constituents, but also the exceptional importance of the suprasegment means meeting the requirements for the sentence, the intonation in particular, a conclusion which seems inevitable. And the second, not obvious, conclusion: a levelling of grammatical (not logic-grammatical!) predicate forms of St q,ag in accordance with that of sg.m. irrespective of its position in the NS structure. The impulse to such a generalization was given by the masculine form of the first NS constituent in patterns I St q,ag + 2 St s. It is known that the attributive syntagm preserved the concord up to the later period of the Egyptian written language development. But an impression may arise, that ME shows a more consecutive agreement here than even OE. If we treat the problem in a purely linguistical way, leaving aside the written system, this statement seems wrong, being utterly against the trends of histoII

12

Id., JIorHKO-rpaMMaTHiecKHÄ aHajiHS flByx C J I O W H M X KOHCTpyKUHft (PT 133 f H 586b), Π Π Η Π Η Κ Η Β X V I I / I L , 1983, 86-93. The patterns X Y are represented only in two cases: 1) both X and Y are attributive syntagmata, co-ordinated or not, or 2) X is Pr pers ind or interrogative pronoun. Id., A K T Y A J I N 3 A T O P B I Β ΘΓΜΠΘΤΟΚΟΜ ΗΜΘΗΗΟΜ πρβ«πο>ΚΒΗΗΗ. To be published in "IlaJieCTHHCKHK CÔOpHHK" 3 1 .

ΗΜΘΗΗΟΓΟ npeaiiOJKeHHH ΜΟΗΘΛΗ " M M H + yKa3aTeJii>X I I I . , 1977, 175—179; O rjiaBHHx i n e H a x CTapoerHNETCKORO ΗΜΘΗΗΟΓΟ N P E A J I O H I E H H H , Π Π Η Π Η Κ Η Β XIV/II., 1979, 259—265; C N H T A K C H H E C K A N ( F L Y M A N « Y K A E A T E J I B H O R O ΜΘΟΤΟΗΜΘΗΗΗ pw Β C T A P O E M N E T C K O M ΗΜΘΗΗΟΜ npe«JioweHHH, in: V D Í 158 [1981], 97-111; see also our fn. 1, 3, 9, 14, 19, 23, 25. 14 Id., JIorHKO-rpaMMaTHHecKHft npe«nnaT Β CTapoerwneTCKOM ΗΜΘΗΗΟΜ npeaJioHteHHH M

13

Id., IIponcxo>K;ieHHe ermieTCKoro Hoe MecTOMMeHHe",

KaTeropmi

naflewa

Π Π Η Π Η Κ Η Β

h aeTepMHHai(HH Β poacTBeHHux H3tiKax,

flpeBHHñ

η cpeflHeeeKO-

HcTopnH, Φ Η Π Ο Ι Ι Ο Γ Η Η , Moscow 1 9 8 3 , 1 0 6 — 1 2 0 . E . Edel, Altägyptische Grammatik, B d . I - I I , R o m e 1955, 1964, § 362-363, 632-633 ( =EAG). PT—The Old E g y p t i a n Pyramid Texts, the main edition : K . Sethe. Die altägyptischen Pyramiden texte, 4 vols., Leipzig 1908—1922, also posthumously his: Übersetzung und K o m m e n t a r zu den altägyptisehen Pyramidentexten, 6 vols. Glückstadt— Hamburg 1935-1962.

BUIT B O C T O K . 15

16

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8

Alexander S. Chetverukhin

rical development of the Egyptian language. Actually we have here an apparent extra-linguistic phenomenon: the economy in labour put into hewing, trimming and grinding of the stone surface, transportation of stone itself, and making hieroglyphs on it, especially in the Old Kingdom : each extra sign means a "superfluous" cubic capacity of wrought stone. As for the Egyptian writing system in its entirety, the principle of economy applied not only to the monumental kinds of writing—economy in signs, in order to save not so much the material, as time, shows itself also in the cursive kinds of writing where brief and defective spellings are often encountered. They may be divided into two main categories, the occasional, and the usual—the latter could be termed "universally recognized abbreviations", e.g. rt instead of the current rmt (OE "man", ME "people", later again "man").17 It is the considerations of economy that lie at the base of such graphical methods as haplography and writing in split columns ; it is also the same reason that often enabled the scribe to write jsjh.t nb in place of j§lh.t nb.t, because in the abbreviation the marker of gender (.t) was graphically generalized—as early as in OE—both for the St s (js/h.t), and for the St q (rib.t), the original grammatical agreement being hidden by the spelling in question. The actual loss of fem. .t is to be postulated for a much later period than the OE. In later times a curiuos coincidence however took place: the misleading ("non-grammatical") spelling acquired the true content due to the actual fall of external morphological markers: first in St q,ag in attributive function, then also in St s, rudimentally kept only in steady word-combinations which then transformed into compound-forms. The rudimentary external morphological system, ever so much contracted as compared with that of Late Egyptian, survived in Coptic, the general tendency showing a re-building of the Egyptian morphological markers system from the suffixional towards the prefixional one. Nothing of the kind mentioned for more later periods took place in OSE considering morphological treatment of the NS principal members. First of all, the absence of concord of 2 St q,ag with 1 St s is an evident fact of language 18 , not of orthography, because it is very difficult to suppose that a grammatical marker was generalized in spelling according to St q,ag, while the same did not happen in the attributive syntagm. Second, this could not be a result of the loss of outer morphological markers, since it occurred much later. It is a tendency to formal disconnection of predicative and non-predicative (attributive) syntagmata that played the leading role, not the auslaut morphemic reduction above. For the purposes of the following analysis let us separate the NS paradigm into two main groups, or generalized schemes : The first scheme (I), where the second constituent is always pw (rarely tw and nw), and the first position can be substituted for any St or Pr. 19 17

18

19

T h e principles of e c o n o m y observed in P T are traced t o in vol. III—TV of Sethe's P T edition, see our fn. 16. A. H . Gardiner, E g y p t i a n Grammar, 2nd ed. London 1950, § 1 3 5 - 1 3 7 , 3 7 3 - 3 7 4 ( = G E G ) ; G. Lefebvre, Grammaire de l'égvptien classique. Cairo 1940, § 625, 632 ( = LGEC). T h e peculiar usage of dependent pronouns as the first constituent is here eliminated and up t o t h e question it is to consult in: W. B a i t a , D a s Personalpronomen der wjBrought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated | 178.162.97.141 Download Date | 2/9/14 12:19 PM

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Old E g y p t i a n Nominal Sentence

The second scheme (II) where both constituents are any St or Pr, that is the scheme with equally (or nearly so) substitutive constituents. Note that our "1" and "2" show the ordinal number of the constituent. It can be put down as follows : I. 1 St s, q, ag (Pr pers ind/Pr dem) + ?m·; II. 1 St s, q, ag (Pr pers ind/Pr dem) + + ) 2 St, s, q, ag (Prpers ind, dep/ Pr dem). The scheme II manifests itself in three ways (a special case with Pr dem, see below) : A. 1 St s, q, ag + 2 Pr pers dep/ind Β. 1 Pr pers ind (+pw) + 2 St s, q, ag C. 1 Pr pers ind (+pw) + 2 Pr pers ind/dep, wherein "( +pw)" denotes a quasi-optional character of Pr dem pw, acting in "I" as a real logic-grammatical subject and thus being the second constituent. In "II" (B.C.) pw became formal, so it is not (no more) a constituent here, but an auxiliary component. The dual of pronouns is rare and in any case irrelevant for the analysis. The scheme I. 1 Pr pers ind+ 2 pw may be represented as: 1. c. 2. m. 2. f. 3. m. 3. f.

Sgjnk pw tw.tjnt.k tm.tlnt.t sw.tjnt.f st.tint.s

PI.

pw pw pw pw

1. c.

inn/jnn pw

2. c.

nt.tn pw

3. c.

nt.sn pw

Here the following should be noted: In OE the "earlier" pronominal forms are mostly used, namely tw.t—st.t. The "pl.c." forms except I.e. are only imaginary as can be deduced from Afrasian comparative data. For OE an internal "u" for the masculine and "i" for the feminine in the suffixal and dependent Pr pers should probably be reconstructed, keeping in mind that the paradigm of Pr pers ind pi. (2. and 3. pers) consists of a morpheme nt 4- suffixal Pr pers, as the corresponding forms of sg. A similar vocalization may with caution be proposed for the ME forms, where their drawing together may be expected. Their full convergence might have taken place somewhat later, the reason being a weakened position of the differentiating vowel. Note, that here, as above in the case of jsjh.t nb.t, there took place a graphical coincidence which can bring one to an utterly wrong conclusion concerning the OSE grammatical structure. Actually, both cases are a result of graphical "generalization". The "early" Pr pers ind variant tw.t—st.t is of the same origin as the Akkadian independent direct-object and genitive Pr pers.20 The morph nt of the Pr pers ind is perhaps related,

20

R e i h e als Pi'oklitikon im adverbiellen Nominalsatz, in: ZÄS 112 [1985], 94—104, bes. 103: „Zusammenfassend kann danach festgestellt werden, daß die besprochene Satzkonstruktion sw sdm.f etc. — ob als Nebensatz, als Charakterisierung, als direkte R e d e oder als Kontinuativ gebraucht — stets nur in abhängiger Weise verwendet wird . . . Obwohl also das als Erstnomen fungierende Personalpronomen der icj-Reihe satzeinleitend verwendet wird und als proklitisch zu bezeichnen ist, kann es dennoch nicht wie das Personalpronomen der jnA-Reihe am Anfang eines unabhängigen Satzes stehen". I. M. Diakonoff, Semito-Hamitic Languages, Moscow 1965, 72; I. J. Gelb, Sequential Reconstruction of Proto-Akkadian, Chicago 1969, Chap. 9. Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated | 178.162.97.141 Download Date | 2/9/14 12:19 PM

Alexander S. Chetverukhiii

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on the one hand, to a hypothetic lexeme with the meaning of "existence" and, on the other hand, to a deictic base, both being presumably of the same origin, cf. E A G § 174.21 In addition, it is very likely that in Pr pers ind the morpheme nt formerly had a relative pronoun function, so that the Egyptian paradigm might be comparable with that of Ge'ez independent personal possessive pronouns formed after pattern "relative pronoun + personal suffix". The morph nt lies at the base of the relative pronouns nt.j (m.) and nt(.j).t (f.), being also represented as "independent" demonstrative nt in ME N S nt piv . . . - G E G § 190,2 ( " i t is the fact that . . .") ; LGEC § 616 ("c'est le fait que . . .").22 The main difference between the " I " and " I I . A " is in the character of the second constituent, both being absolutely comparable with the English "This/It ( = Y ) is X " and " H e ( = Y ) is X"—it is worth remembering, that the Egyptian wordorder is, as a rule, the inverse of that in the Indo-European languages: Eg. X Y = I.—E. Y X . The 2 Pr pers is usually represented by Pr pers dep, though the Pr pers ind is also possible as early as in OE: P T 703 b Ν 701 : Ν pwtw.t "You are N " . The scheme I I . Β is realized in the P T , although the jm'-variant is less frequent as in the ME texts : PI.

2. m. 2. f. 3. m. 3. f.

tw.t/nt.k +St s, q, ag tm.tjnt.t + St s, q, ag sw.tjnt.f+ St s, q, ag st.tjnt.s + St s, q, ag

1. c.

jnn( + pw) = St s, q, ag

2. c.

nt.tn+ St s, q. ag

3. c.

ni.sn + St s, q, ag

St s can also be represented by word-combinations (groups), sometimes very expanded, where a nuclear component (St s proper) is extended by different kinds of attributes.23 The Pr pers ind often substitutes for 1 St s + pw. This is evident from parallel texts in the P T and the texts-corrections : P T 1094 a, b ; 1097 a - c ; 1098a; 1161c etc. With pw: P T 703b Ν 701: tw.t pw Pjpj "You are P y o p e " ; P T 10&6a: sw.t pw Hr(w) ntr.w " T h e Horus of (the) gods is he", cf. the old versions of P T 1066a and 1035b—c, containing the patterns "jnk + nw + St ag". The nw-function here seems to be a double one: 1) as the formal logicgrammatical subject, and 2) as a substantivizer before St ag. I t is hard to say, what function is the predominant one. In any case they seem to be less current than those with pw. The II.C is represented by still more seldom occurrences noted by M. Gilula2'1, and can be demonstrated in the following way : See also: Α . Π. IOjiaKHH, Pa3BHTHe CTpyKTypw npeaJiOHieHHH β cbíi3h c pa3BWTneM CTpynTypH MMCJiH, Moscow 1984, 116 and chap. 5; A . C. MeTBepyxHH, Pea:iH3amiH h cmhcji KBaHTopa an3HCTeHUnajibH0CTH b CTpyKType ernneTCKoro npe«Jio>KeHHH (in print). 22 See also the following Α . H . Gardiner's articles: The Relative A d j e c t i v e ntj, in: Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology ( = P S B A ) 22 [1900], 37-42; Notes: (1) jwtj and ntj. (2) The Demonstrative η and its Derivatives, in : P S B A 22 [1900], 321-325. 23 Examples see in Callender's work and in K . Sethe, Der Noniinalsatz im Ägyptischen und Koptischen, Leipzig 1916 ( = S N Ä K ) , § 59, 63, 68. -'· S. I . Groll, Non-Verbal Sentence Patterns in L a t e Egyptian, London 1967, e.g. p. 30— 33 ( " T h e "ink B " pattern"). 21

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11

Old E g y p t i a n Nominal Sentence

1. c. 2. m. 2. f. 3. m. 3. f.

Sg.

Pl.

jnk(+pw) 4- any of the Pr pers tw.tlnt.k + a,nv of the Pr pers }m.tl«t.t + any of the Pr pers sw.t¡nLf + any of the Pr pers st.t¡nt.s + any of the Pr pers

1. c. „ 2 C " "

jnn( + t h e same) ,, . , »KarHpcKOMy H 3 t i K y , Leningrad 1982, 175ff.

Addendum to fn. 3 In: H B U K Β ΑφρπκΘ: JIHHTBHCTH^ecKne npoßjieMii coepeueHHott ΑφρκκΗ, Moscow 1988, qacn. II, 35—41.

2

Altorient. Forsch. 17 (1990) 1

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