The Origins and Development of the Definite Article in Egyptian-Coptic

The first appearance of the emphatic demonstratives pA/tA/nA in northern Egyptian letters of the 6th Dynasty and their absence from southern Egyptian sources indicates the growing difference between the language variants spoken in these broadly defined regions. Originating from the Old Egyptian pro...

Descripción completa

Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Maxim Kupreyev
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
FR
Publicado: Ksiegarnia Akademicka Publishing 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/2d7d263a124842c0aa12b9155ed5a1c4
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
Descripción
Sumario:The first appearance of the emphatic demonstratives pA/tA/nA in northern Egyptian letters of the 6th Dynasty and their absence from southern Egyptian sources indicates the growing difference between the language variants spoken in these broadly defined regions. Originating from the Old Egyptian pronominal stems p-/t-/n-, the use of these new demonstratives expands rapidly during the Middle Kingdom. In their weak form as definite articles, they indicate that a noun is knownin discourse and thus signal a hitherto hidden grammatical category – definiteness. Once the definite article is grammaticalised and starts to be used with a priori definite nouns such as pA nTr wa ‘the sole god’ or pA HqA ‘the ruler’ (18th Dynasty), the indefinite article appears. The further development in Demotic and Coptic shows that the article was on the way to becoming a noun marker. When attached to a relative phrase, it created a new noun, which could be further determined (xenpetnanouf ‘some good deeds’, ppetouaab ‘the saint’). The following article traces the regional origins of the definite article as well as the main principles governing their development.