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A Proposed Theory on Absolute, Construct, and Pronomial
Anaksunamun:
While doing some research, I noticed an interesting observation:
It appears that when combining two or more words together a sound shift occurs thus we have the various types of word types (namely absolute, Construct and Pronomial).
What I never understood was how this was not focused on in a majority of the grammars!?
It appears most, if not all words had more than one pronunciation, but in actuality you're dealing with "one basic form" and two or more abridged versions when used in compound form.
I read here:
http://www.mega.nu/protolanguage/essay-sDm.f.htm
That originally Egyptian had only the vowel "a" and other vowels came into being based upon the consonants surrounding them.
So taking thisinto cconsideration, could it be that the original "absolute" form of all words had only an "a" and other vowels are secondary, for example, take the Egyptian term:
nfr mn - stable beauty..
nafar man (absolute forms when used "individually")
When in contact with one another we have: nafarman
Now we have to take into consideration stressed and unstressed position where vowels changed:
náfirmin = náfir pronounced colloquially was núf(i)r (masc) or núfe
Adding 'núfe' and 'min' would cause a stress change, which could give different spellings:
núfmin, nafémin, ect... But all while the original spelling is always 'nafar" and "man".
As confusing as it sounds, in actuality it isn't.
Take for example Standard Arabic which has a "universal spelling" and a "dialect/colloquial" version.
I think if there was a way of attempting some sort of template in Coptic, an understanding of the Egyptian language as a whole right down to the hieroglyphics might be more comprehensive.
Any thoughts? Or maybe I'm not understanding something.
Admin:
I've read the article you linked to.
The writer is giving his opinion as facts without providing any proves.
--- Quote ---There is ABSOLUTELY no credible evidence for reconstructing U-I-A as components of Egyptian verbal forms; it is rather a speculative (Platonic) attempt to connect Egyptian morphology with the Semitic nominal pattern: nominative -u; genitive -i; accusative -a [which "must" be there somewhere!!!]. In addition, he postulates a doubling of the medial consonant for an emphatic form, patterned on the Semitic kat-taba, for which not a shred of evidence exists in Egyptian either.
--- End quote ---
Yes he is right, but neither there is any evidence for his theory
--- Quote ---Unfortunately, Egyptian did not indicate tense but only whether an action was concomitant, i.e. occurring at the same time, or non-concomitant, occurring in either the future or the past. The earliest mark of non-concomitance was prefixing i-, which I interpret as an adverbial element meaning "*then", either past or future (analogous with IE e-).
--- End quote ---
I don't have enough knowledge of Middle Kingdom Egyptian to judge this quote but I can say Late Egyptian (Coptic) has so many tenses
Anaksunamun:
--- Quote from: Admin on 22 January , 2015, 06:42:40 AM ---I've read the article you linked to.
The writer is giving his opinion as facts without providing any proves.
--- Quote ---There is ABSOLUTELY no credible evidence for reconstructing U-I-A as components of Egyptian verbal forms; it is rather a speculative (Platonic) attempt to connect Egyptian morphology with the Semitic nominal pattern: nominative -u; genitive -i; accusative -a [which "must" be there somewhere!!!]. In addition, he postulates a doubling of the medial consonant for an emphatic form, patterned on the Semitic kat-taba, for which not a shred of evidence exists in Egyptian either.
--- End quote ---
Yes he is right, but neither there is any evidence for his theory
--- Quote ---Unfortunately, Egyptian did not indicate tense but only whether an action was concomitant, i.e. occurring at the same time, or non-concomitant, occurring in either the future or the past. The earliest mark of non-concomitance was prefixing i-, which I interpret as an adverbial element meaning "*then", either past or future (analogous with IE e-).
--- End quote ---
I don't have enough knowledge of Middle Kingdom Egyptian to judge this quote but I can say Late Egyptian (Coptic) has so many tenses
--- End quote ---
You are (unfortunately) completely correct! He failed to show how he came up with his conclusion. I thank you for your input, as it helps me to get different perspectives. Even though I wish you were wrong hahaha :P
I can say, he has a few other research where he shows working backwards from Coptic vowels without using the Semitic-biased vowels, it seems to be legit except I personally can't figure out, using his theory, why there would be Coptic 'H' (ee, ay or ah sound), if you remember that was our first 'debate' hahaha and I never got over how frustrating of a letter this Coptic 'H' is because it's history is obscure no matter what perspective is used.
In relation to middle Egyptian grammar, there were no tenses of past, present or future... They simply had perfective vs imperfective aspects and passive vs active (though this is still refuted in a few grammatical nuances). There were only 4 main participles (of which the suffix conjugation utilizes), the infinitive, and the imperative which may have all had synthetic/inflected forms. The relative forms, the infinitival compliment, the stative, and some others used one of the previous forms.
Coptic composes verbs using the original infinitive and the original stative (which became Coptic qualitative). And the tenses in Coptic are analytical and uses auxiliary verbs.
It appears, to me, as time progressed they needed a way of expressing tense (present, past and future) by other methods which resulted in a completely different verb paradigm from Arabic, Hebrew and other Afroasiatic languages. The Egyptologists believe middle Egyptian was synthetic (the way Arabic works with internal vowel switching) and Coptic is not. I don't know if I truly believe this as it doesn't make sense. But that's a whole other subject.
Admin:
Coptic is just a writing system and not a different language in itself but, you already know that.
If at some point there are so few tenses in the language and in another there are so many, then there must've been a point in the middle when the new tenses started to appear and evolve.
Most people Study Middle Kingdom Egyptian which is couple of thousand years older than Coptic.
Wonder how did the language evolved in late kingdom or in the eras that followed.
Anaksunamun:
You're totally correct. It's the same language just different names based upon a difference in writing and spelling. There seems to be a huge instability in the vowels in Coptic, this makes it very difficult to work backwards in an attempt to recreate what the vowels may have been in the earlier stages. It's only unique to Egyptian because all other languages I've studied do not come close to the instability. The closest language which you might consider this phenomenon is English, if you compare earlier English to Modern English there is a huge difference in words, spellings and usage which you do not find in languages like Arabic, Chinese, Latin, Russian, ect. where the instability is slightly different.
Take for instance the cuneiform translations of Egyptian names and compare them to Coptic:
Napkororia/Napkururia - nfr kpr ra - Coptic nufr and Re [notice u or o and a = u before nasal consonants]
Nimmuaria/Nibmuaria - nb maat ra - Coptic nib/nim [notice the b = m]
Riamesesa - Ra ms(y) - Coptic Re mise
The Akkadian transcriptions represent Late Kingdom spellings at around the time of Nefertiti and Ramses.
There are vowel inconsistencies even before recorded Coptic. It's frustrating. And if you notice these names consist of words placed together as one word. Which is why I believe that maybe individually they had a stable pronunciation but when used together the vowels changed according to the Coptic absolute vs construct vs Pronomial. The stress changed and caused vowels to change into a different vowel.
So it is my belief that the Akkadian spellings represent the exact "idea" of Coptic colloquial construct and Pronomial forms because the scribes used Greek letters to render the spellings of Egyptian words the same way Akkadians used cuneiform to render Egyptian names. Individually used there probably was a simpler form based on Coptic absolute forms which most likely also existed in earlier stages of the language.
Why the scribes continued to write without vowels for so long remains such a mystery to me when around that time all the other civilizations had better forms of representing spellings. Even Arabic and Hebrew came up with vowel inventories early on.
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