Depuydt 2017 Fuzzy

5
on fuzzy boundaries and razor sharp boundaries, and something on bari6
hoofdartikelen essential, in order to understand the work’s conceptualiza-

tion, to get to the bottom of this concept before addressing
the contents of the 61 articles contained in the book at hand.
ON FUZZY BOUNDARIES The matter is discussed in section 1.
AND RAZOR SHARP BOUNDARIES, When it comes to discussing the 61 articles, fewer than
AND SOMETHING ON BARI* half of them pertain to topics that I have engaged in my own
research. I will therefore focus for the most part on those
Leo Depuydt articles. I hope that other reviewers will give the other arti-
cles their just due. In attempting to engage critically the arti-
Abstract cles that are within my purview, I do not intend to confront
This is a review article of Fs. Loprieno. Antonio Loprieno’s their lines of arguments head-on. Instead, I intend to present
career spans many nations and languages; considering alternative lines of argument in order to put theirs in perspec-
1) all this internationality, 2) my own native tongue, and tive. Indeed, in reading those articles, it readily occurred to
3) BiOr’s base in Holland, it seemed almost tempting to me that I had — over the course of almost four decades —
entitle this article in Dutch as “Over ruige grenzen en developed lines of argument that are different from many if
haarscherpe grenzen, en iets over Bari.” Fewer than half not most of theirs. And I feel very comfortable with my line
of the 61(!) articles in this volume pertain to topics that I of arguments after much reflection.
have engaged in my own research. The focus of the article A line of argument consists of a string of steps. It is like
is therefore almost exclusively on them; I hope that some- a chain. This circumstance made it difficult for me to engage
one else will pay proper tribute to the many others. Instead other arguments consisting of different concatenations of
of confronting the articles head-on, I present alternative steps. It is not possible to subject individual steps to a cri-
lines of argument to put the articles’ in perspective. I have tique without contemplating the whole chain. Therefore,
developed independent lines— elsewhere in print—regard- the best that I felt that I could do as a reviewer is to put the
ing the topics that they address. And I feel comfortable with articles in perspective by offering my own approach to
my own lines of arguments in every case after much reflec- the problems that they study. In counterpoint, as it were,
tion. Let others make the comparison and judge what to to use a musical metaphor. I am not sure, though, about
make of it all. the extent of the harmony between the point and the
counterpoint.
A professional review of a book is supposed to be critical.
Introduction “Critical” derives from the Greek verb meaning “to distin-
guish.” The critical approach requires one to be open to dis-
The two handsomely crafted volumes under review con- tinctions, to be discerning. The best that I can do to invoke
stitute a close-to-1000-page Festschrift celebrating Antonio the sense of distinction in readers is the presentation of alter-
Loprieno’s career, so far, at the occasion of his sixtieth native and distinct lines of argument in order to offer them
birthday. Loprieno is not only a prominent Egyptologist. He opportunities for discernment.
has also been for many years, until 2015, Rector or president
of the University of Basel, one of Europe’s preeminent insti-
tutions of higher learning. And for some time, he officiated 1. Fuzzy Boundaries
as chairman of the council of the presidents of Swiss
universities. Two questions arise. First, to what do the “fuzzy bounda-
But first of all, why the title “Fuzzy Boundaries”? It ries” of Loprieno’s article make reference? Second, how did
appears that the title is an expression taken from an article the expression end up in the title of his Festschrift?
entitled “On Fuzzy Boundaries in Egyptian Syntax” that In origin, the so-called fuzzy boundaries have everything
Loprieno himself contributed to another Festschrift, pub- to do with the particle jw in Egyptian. I have myself written
lished in 2006, in honor of Friedrich Junge, emeritus Profes- an article specifically about jw entitled “The Meaning of Old
sor of Egyptology at the University of Göttingen1). A cri- and Middle Egyptian jw in light of the Distinction between
tique of Loprieno’s analysis, by Wolfgang Schenkel, Narration and Discussion” in a volume entitled Jerusalem
appeared in the journal Lingua Aegyptia2). Many of the con- Studies in Egyptology, which appeared in 19983). I have also
tributors to the Festschrift made an attempt to make the discussed jw at length in an earlier article published in 1995
contents of their paper in minor or major ways reflect in the Chronique d’Égypte entitled “On the Empirical Dis-
the topic of boundaries, and even of fuzzy boundaries. tinctness of Certain Adverbial Clauses in Old and Middle
The concept of fuzzy boundaries appears to stand at the Egyptian”4). Evidently, when it appeared that fuzzy bounda-
very center of the Festschrift at hand. It seemed therefore ries were in origin all about jw, my attention was piqued as
to what is going on here.
There is no one who doubts that, in the last three stages of
* Review article of AMSTUTZ, H., A. DORN, M. MÜLLER, Egyptian — Late Egyptian, Demotic, and Coptic — jw as a
M. RONSDORF und S. ULJAS (Hrsg.) – Fuzzy Boundaries: Festschrift
für Antonio Loprieno (2 Teilen). Widmaier Verlag, Hamburg, 2015.
(24,5 cm, XIII, X, 979, 8 Tafeln). ISBN 978-3-943955-60-6. € 159,-. 3
) Leo Depuydt, “The Meaning of 𓇋𓅱 Jw in Old and Middle Egyptian
1
) Antonio Loprieno, “On Fuzzy Boundaries in Egyptian Syntax,” in: in light of the Distinction between Narration and Discussion,” in: Irene
Gerald Moers et al. (eds.) jn.t ḏrw: Festschrift für Friedrich Junge II, Göt- Shirun-Grumach (ed.), Jerusalem Studies in Egyptology, Ägypten und
tingen 2006, 429-441. Altes Testament 40, Wiesbaden, 1998, 19-36.
2
) Wolfgang Schenkel, “Die Partikel ỉw und die Intuition des Interpre- 4
) Leo Depuydt, “On the Empirical Distinctness of Certain Adverbial
ten: Randbemerkungen zu Antonio Loprieno, “On Fuzzy Boundaries in Clauses in Old and Middle Egyptian,” Chronique d’Égypte 80, 1995,
Egyptian Syntax,” Lingua Aegyptia 15, 2007, 161-201. 18-33.
7 bibliotheca orientalis lxxIV n° 1-2, januari-april 2017 8
rule marks subordinate circumstantial clauses and can be and dependence is not sharp. In other words, it is not the case
translated as “while” or the like. The particle jw is itself very that dependence begins where independence ends, or vice
generally, and vaguely, circumstantial and subordinate. In versa. The boundary could therefore be described as fuzzy,
translation, it can be rendered in many different ways, for a metaphorical term chosen by Loprieno. Hence the designa-
example as “because,” “since,” “although,” and so on. But tion “fuzzy boundaries.”
these renditions all involve refinements introduced by trans- I should make clear right at the outset that I am personally
lators to make a translation more nuanced. These refinements not inclined to believe that the phenomenon of fuzzy bounda-
are in no way part of the meaning of jw itself. ries exists when it comes to the evolution of jw in Egyptian,
Before Late Egyptian, in the first two stages of Egyptian, nor in fact when it comes to the evolution of any other gram-
Old and Middle Egyptian, the behavior of jw is strikingly matical element. I am not sure what exactly my view implies
different. Everyone agrees and has always agreed that Old for the many contributions in the volumes at hand that were
and Middle Egyptian jw can introduce independent sen- inspired by the notion that fuzzy boundaries exist in Egyptian
tences. But not always: everyone also agrees and has always to seek boundaries, fuzzy or not, also elsewhere.
agreed that Old and Middle Egyptian jw can also introduce In my view, when Egyptians heard an instance of jw, they
subordinate clauses. Moreover, everyone agrees and has typically knew — on the basis of clear and undeniable
always agreed that Old and Middle Egyptian jw more often empirical signals — that jw was either independent or
marks subordinate clauses when a suffix pronoun is attached dependent. How so?
to it than when it is followed by a noun or noun phrase. To give proper perspective to the problem of jw, it is
The result is two acute problems involving what Aristotle important to note that jw is definitely not the only prominent
repeatedly identified as the most fundamental law of rational case in which modern interpreters of Old and Middle Egyp-
thought, namely that it is not possible for anything to be tian texts struggle mightily, and have always struggled
something and not something — that is, its opposite — at the mightily, with assessing whether a certain string of words is
same time. Something cannot be a cow and not a cow at the an independent sentence or a dependent clause. So very
same time. A correlate of Aristotle’s fundamental law of often, it is not clear — and will never be certain — whether
thought is as follows: Something is either a cow or not a a given string of words introduced by a sḏm.f form or a
cow. This is the so-called Law of the Excluded Middle. sḏm.n.f form is independent or dependent. An interesting
What are the two problems? twist to the story is that the problem with jw and the problem
The first problem is synchronic: jw apparently can at the with certain sḏm.f and sḏm.n.f forms are connected. They are
same time signify both something and its opposite, that is, part of a single story line. Not only do the two problems both
independence and dependence. When it is dependent, it is a involve difficulty assessing the presence of either independ-
marker of so-called circumstantial or adverbial clauses. How ence or dependence. In addition, dependent clauses intro-
is that possible? duced by a sḏm.f form or by a sḏm.n.f form in Middle Egyp-
The second problem is diachronic. It involves the assump- tian are succeeded in Late Egyptian by clauses introduced by
tion that jw was in origin mainly, if not exclusively, a marker jw.
of independence. The question arises: How can a linguistic What is happening here?
element evolve from signifying something to signifying For the sake of clarity, it will be best to summarize what
exactly the opposite of that something? James Allen has I believe happened, as described at length in the afore-men-
aptly described the problem as follows: “How a syntactic tioned article entitled “On the Empirical Distinctness of Cer-
marker of independence came to have exactly the opposite tain Adverbial Clauses…”.
value in Late Egyptian is a challenge to explain on purely Presumably, at the outset, when they came into existence,
syntactic grounds”5). the non-relative and non-substantival sḏm.f forms and sḏm.n.f
It so happens that I have proposed, more than two decades forms were always independent. But then, a process was set
ago, in the afore-mentioned article entitled “On the Empiri- into motion by which they became increasingly more often
cal Distinctness of Certain Adverbial Clauses in Old and dependent. The process involves an empirical mechanism by
Middle Egyptian,” what I believe to be a complete explana- which what are independent sentences can often function as
tion of, 1), how jw can simultaneously denote either inde- dependent sentences in many if not all languages of the
pendence or dependence in Old and Middle Egyptian in world. The empirical mechanism occurs very frequently in
strictly empirical terms and, 2), how jw can evolve from English.
originally denoting mostly if not always independence to For example, it is possible to pronounce the two sentences
denoting always dependence in strictly empirical terms. “He arrived late at night” and “It was raining” as two dis-
Loprieno’s solution is different from mine. He postulates tinct sentences separated by a pause or a falling tone or the
a “grey area” between independence and dependence, some- like. The pause or falling tone or the like can be denoted by
thing that is not quite independence and not quite depend- a period in writing, as in “He arrived late at night. It was
ence. As jw evolved from an Old and Middle Egyptian par- raining.” However, it is equally possible to pronounce the
ticle that could mark independence into a Late Egyptian two sentences without a pause or a falling tone or the like at
particle that always marks dependence, it is assumed in the end of the first sentence separating the two, as in “He
Loprieno’s view to denote — in the transition from inde- arrived late at night it was raining.” The effect is that the
pendence to dependence — something that is not quite either. second sentence becomes dependent on the first sentence and
According to this view, the boundary between independence functions as circumstantial or adverbial clauses do in Egyp-
tian. The great frequency of the phenomenon is obscured by
5
) James P. Allen, “Tense in Classical Egyptian,” in: William Kelly a standard convention of most modern written prose that one
Simpson (ed.), Essays on Egyptian Grammar, Yale Egyptological Studies should typically not run on two independent sentences with-
1, New Haven, Connecticut, 1986, 1-21. out punctuation separating them.
9 on fuzzy boundaries and razor sharp boundaries, and something on bari10
The result of omitting a pause or a falling tone or whatever 1) the verb forms in question are subordinated to a relative
empirically marked the end of one independent sentence and verb form;
the beginning of another is that a following sentence becomes 2) the verb forms in question are emphasized;
subordinate to a preceding sentence and not the other way 3) the verb forms in question are circumstantial to what pre-
around. And indeed, I believe that, when (non-relative or cedes in terms of tense.
non-substantival) sḏm.f and sḏm.n.f are subordinate and part Three examples are as follows: 1) ḥꜥꜥw nṯrw mꜢꜢ.sn sw “he
of an adverbial clause, they are always subordinate to a sen- at the sight of whom the gods rejoice” (Coffin Texts ed.
tence that precedes and never to a sentence that follows. A. de Buck IV 61o L2Li); 2) ḏd.n.f nn rḫ.n.f ḳd.j “It is
That view is not universally shared. There are those that because he knew my character that he said this” (Sin. B32);
believe that a sḏm.n.f or a sḏm.f can be part of an adverbial 3) jr.jn sḫty pn ꜥḥꜥw r hrw 10 ḥr spr n Nmty-nḫt pn n rd.n.f
clause that is subordinated to what follows. Perhaps most n.f mꜢꜥ.f r.s “This peasant spent ten days days supplicating
prominent among them in more recent times is Pascal Vernus this N. without him inclining his ear to it” (Eloquent Peasant
in articles from the 1980s in the Revue d’Égyptologie and B1,31-32 = R80-81).
also elsewhere. I believe that all examples that have been Another instance of 1) is as follows: ḥꜥꜥt Rꜥ mꜢꜢ.f s(y) “the
adduced in favor of this view can be explained differently. one at the sight of whom the gods rejoice” (literally, “the
What is more, in all of Late Egyptian and in all of Demotic, one [fem.] while seeing whom [her] the gods rejoice”) (CT
circumstantial or adverbial clauses — which are introduced III 294c G1T).
by jw — are always subordinate to a sentence that precedes. As H.J. Polotsky — who contributed more to the deep
Then why would adverbial clauses containing a sḏm.f or a understanding of Egyptian and Coptic than anyone since
sḏm.n.f be different? Champollion, the decipherer of hieroglyphic writing —
What is more, it is generally assumed — as far as I can already noted, examples like the following only confirm the
see — that, when Old and Middle Egyptian jw heads an adverbial or circumstantial character of mꜢꜢ.f: ḥꜥꜥw nṯrw m
adverbial clause, it is always subordinate to a sentence that mꜢ.f “the one at the sight of whom the gods rejoice” (liter-
precedes. The explanation proposed above also accounts for ally, “in seeing whom [him] the gods rejoice”) (CT VI 270h
the fact that jw is more often perceived as being subordinate G1T); ḥꜥꜥt dwꜢtyw m mꜢ.s “the one at the sight of whom the
when it is followed by a suffix pronoun, as opposed to by a netherworld dwellers rejoice” (literally, “in seeing whom
noun or noun phrase. Third person suffix pronouns refer to [him] the netherworld dwellers rejoice”) (CT III 302g T3C).
something mentioned in a preceding sentence and therefore It is more than evident that m mꜢ.f and m mꜢ.s are adverbial.
typically exhibit a closer connection with what precedes than Then why would mꜢꜢ.sn not be?
a noun or noun phrase. What matters by far the most in the present context is that,
It is not possible to observe pauses or any equivalent while there is no self-evident signal whatsoever of the bound-
marking the end of a sentence in speech in dead languages ary that makes mꜢꜢ.f subordinate, the boundary is not fuzzy
that are attested in writing only. But it seems safe to assume at all, even if there is every temptation to consider it fuzzy
that it was possible for speakers of Egyptian to hear when because nothing seems to overtly mark the subordination in
one independent sentence ends and another begins, whether writing. Everyone agrees that there is no empirically verifi-
by means of a pause or by any other empirical signal. It is able sentence boundary at mꜢꜢ.sn sw, rḫ.n.f, n rd.n.f, and
impossible to establish what that empirical signal may have mꜢꜢ.f s(y).
been exactly. But it seems safe to assume that there must My own explanation is that the audible marker signifying
have been one. Moreover, it seems safe to assume that it was independence is missing. In writing, the empirical distinction
possible to omit or cancel the signal. between the presence of that audible marker and the absence
In my afore-mentioned article for the Chronique d’Égypte of it is lost. This loss makes the boundary artificially fuzzy
of 1995, I described the empirical signal audibly marking the in writing. But the fuzziness never existed in speech. It was
end of a sentence mainly as a pause. I should perhaps expand presumably always clear whether a string of words was
that definition to any audible empirical signal that marks the either independent or subordinate.
end of an independent sentence, whatever that empirical sig- One more interesting instance of case 2) above is as fol-
nal is, probably a pause, or at least something including a lows: jj.n.j ḫr.k nb.j jnt.k wj mꜢn.j nfrw.k “It is so that you
pause, or perhaps even something else, whatever it may be. might take me along and I might see your beauty that I have
In the end, it cannot be known what that signal exactly was come, O lord” (literally, “That I have come to you, O lord,
in the case of a dead language. And it does not really matter. is while (so that) you might bring me and while (so that) I
It remains safe to assume that there must have existed such might see your beauty”) (Book of the Dead, Chapter 125,
a signal because Egyptians generally must have been able to introduction. ed. Budge [blackbound edition], 249, 7-8).
hear when sentences end. What is more, I have proposed that A particularly piquant example of case 2) is the following,
it was possible to omit the signal, effectively turning an inde- first pointed out by H.J. Polotsky in his unpublished note-
pendent sentence into a dependent one. books6). It is the answer to the following question: jn ḏd.k
It is impossible to directly or indirectly observe the pres- ḏꜢ.k jr gs jꜢbtj n pt “Do (Did?) you say that you would cross
ence of an audible empirical signal signifying the end of a (a substantival future sḏm.f, I am convinced) to the eastern
sentence in a dead language. Then again, it does appear to be side of heaven?” The answer is as follows: ḏꜢ.k ỉ.jr.k jšst
possible to indirectly observe the absence of such a signal. “(In order) to do what is it that you will cross?” (literally,
There are unambiguous cases in which a sḏm.f or a sḏm.n.f, “That you will cross is while (so that) you will do what?”)
or the negation thereof, cannot be independent, as I noted in
the CdÉ article, at pp. 32-33. And yet, there is nothing in 6
) H.J. Polotsky, Scripta Posteriora on Egyptian and Coptic, Verena M.
writing that marks the forms in question as dependent. Lepper and Leo Depuydt (eds.), Lingua Aegyptia Studia Monographica 7,
Three constructions are involved: Göttingen, 2007, 5, 204.
(CT V 103e,f T1C). The significance of “prothetic” ἰ is not This intention is not diminished in any way if it is garbled
fully clear. by acoustic circumstances.
Grammatically even more spicy — a veritable delicacy — In sum, the fuzziness in question affects, I believe, the mod-
is the following example, also unearthed by H.J. Polotsky, as ern interpretation of the Egyptian language. It is not a problem
documented in his unpublished notebooks7): mrr ṯw jt.k jr.k of the Egyptian language itself — at most a problem relating
n.f jšst (CT V 122b,d G1T). It is difficult to establish whether to the fact that the language only survives in writing.
jr.k is 1) present and circumstantial or 2) future and circum-
stantial. Both forms are written alike, though the latter exhib-
its occasionally a double reed leaf. There seems otherwise to 2. Internationality, and Nationality,
be no doubt that mrr is substantival (“emphatic”) and as in Antonio Loprieno’s Career –
such emphasizes adverbial jr.k. and Something on Bari
If 1) applies, then the translation is more or less as fol-
lows: “What is that you do that your father loves you (so But we should not let fuzzy boundaries get in the way of
much)?” (literally, “That your father loves you is while you joining the celebration of Antonio Loprieno’s career. In
do what for him?”). If 2) applies, then the translation is as regard to his life’s history, I could not fail to notice a gaping
follows: “Your father loves you. But for you to do what for void in these festive volumes. A dominant theme of the Fest-
him (in exchange)?” (literally, “That your father loves you schrift is the international character of Professor Loprieno’s
is so that you might do what for him?”). career, which spans several countries. Quite a few contribu-
In sum, it is a fact that — in written Old and Middle Egyp- tors note, and praise, the internationality of his career. And
tian — there are many instances in which no empirical mark- yet, no one seems to pay any attention as to where Antonio
ers signify that a string of words is either independent or Loprieno came from. He was born and raised in Bari, the
dependent. But it is possible to prove in some of those cases capital of the Italian region of Puglia, so I learned from the
that, even in the absence of a written marker, there must have introduction to this Festschrift. Why is Puglia completely left
been some marker in speech signifying that a string of words out of the picture?
is dependent. True, Italy’s Mezzogiorno (“midday,” but really “south,”
These cases would otherwise have been instances in which because due south is where the sun stands at noon) has been
it is very tempting to presume, on the basis of just the writ- for a couple of centuries, and still is, going through some
ing, the presence of a fuzzy boundary: a string of words is tough times. Then again, Puglia — more specifically, the
after all not marked in writing as either independent or township of San Vito dei Normanni “San Vito of the Nor-
dependent. However, there is in fact definitely no such mans” (earlier, … degli Schiavoni “… of the Slavs”) near
boundary in such instances. The strings of words in question Brindisi — is the birthplace of him whom I believe to be the
are dependent in spite of the absence of a marker. It is there- second greatest composer of music of all time, Leonardo Leo
fore possible to extrapolate from such instances the eminent (1694-1744).
possibility that there are no fuzzy boundaries anywhere in Leo had his career at Naples (at that time the second larg-
Egyptian. If they definitely do not exist in instances in which est city of Europe after Paris). Naples is also where the great-
there is every temptation to assume that they do, then why est composer of music of all time (at least, I believe so),
would they exist anywhere else? There is no reason to Leo’s younger contemporary and friend, was active. Leo is
assume that speakers of Middle Egyptian could not discern stellar. But his friend is transcendental. In this age of worship
whether a sentence had come to an end or whether it had not. of Mozart and Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms (and I have to
The evolution of (non-substantival and non-relative) admit, they are really good, geniuses even), such a statement
sḏm.n.f and sḏm.f from independent verb forms to dependent may seem anathema. And yet, Leo was the first to truly mas-
verb form was presumably gradual. For a long time, depend- ter counterpoint. Sir Isaac Newton had no clue of quantum
ence was marked by absence of a pause. But presumably, at theory. Still, he is considered the greatest scientist of all time.
some point, the verb forms in question were always depend- The world seems to have completely forgotten about Lion-
ent. As such, the need arose to use particles such as jw(.f) ardo (sic) Oronzo Salvatore de Leo.
and ꜥḥꜥ.n to explicitly mark sḏm.f and sḏm.n.f as as independ- Therefore, where everyone else seems to think of Turin,
ent. As a consequence, at some point, the mere absence of Göttingen, Perugia, Los Angeles, or Basel in relation to
such particles would mark the verb forms as dependent, as Antonio Loprieno, to me he will forever proudly be the fel-
Polotsky has already surmised. low Pugliese of the inimitable Leonardo Leo. Someday, the
It cannot be excluded that, because the contrast between world will truly recognize what the stellar Leo and his tran-
presence and absence of a pause is fairly subtle in speech, scendental friend did.
Egyptians might on occasion have misheard whether speak- And finally, I cannot resist noting that Leo’s first serious
ers intended to leave a pause or not. As sounds travel from biographer, the Pugliese Giuseppe Pastore who in recent
the mouth of a speaker to the ear of a hearer, the signal might years passed away at a very high age, notes — without pro-
not have been loud enough or there may have been interfer- viding the source — that Leo’s most prominent student
ence from other sounds so that a hearer might not be certain (alongside Niccolò Jommelli, if indeed he too was Leo’s stu-
whether independence or dependence was intended. To such dent), the brilliant Niccolò Piccinni, whose La Cecchina may
a hearer, the signal might indeed be fuzzy. Is this what in the well have been the most popular opera buffa of all of the
end proves the existence of the fuzziness that is so eagerly eighteenth century, called his teacher “the greatest composer
sought? It is not. What matters is the intention of the speaker. of all time (il più grande Maestro di tutti i tempi)”8). Clearly,
7
) Ibid., 205. The analysis of the example offered there is not quite cor- 8
) Giuseppe Pastore, Leonardo Leo, s.l. (Editore Pajano – Galatino),
rect. The present analysis makes up for this error. 1957, 133.
Piccinni thought: “I am really good” (and he was). But he Emil Angehrn is a philosopher. The business of philoso-
could not figure out how Leo did what he did. Piccinni had phers is typically not to answer questions but to improve on
no difficulty recognizing Leo as his superior in the art of their formulation. Still, Angehrn proposes an answer to the
music. question at hand and it is expressed in the title of the paper.
Piccinni’s honesty should serve as a model. Anyone lead- Although I am not a philosopher, it so happens that I have
ing a life of the mind can only benefit from feverishly search- myself been preoccupied with the same question in what
ing for minds (dead or alive, mostly dead) that one has no might be called my extracurricular activities9). Much to my
difficulty in recognizing in all objectivity as being superior surprise, I found many points of overlap between Angehrn’s
to one’s own. Nothing is more inspiring than to seek to emu- thinking and my own. Just one example. There are several
late them. It does not really matter whether one succeeds or references to Aristotles’ fundamental axiom of thought in
not. Trying is everything. Angehrn’s article. I happen to be working on a long paper on
Piccinni ain’t Leo. But he is phenomenally good and one the mathematical formulation of the three fundamental axi-
can discern the teachings of Leo, and in general the unique oms of thought that developed out of thinking about Aristo-
conventions of the Neapolitan school of the settecento, in his tle’s thinking in the Middle Ages. Simply put, they are the
music. And Piccinni was born in — you guessed it — Bari. so-called Law of Identity (“A cow is a cow”), the Law of
Surely, Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven were geniuses. But (Non-)Contradiction (“Something cannot be a cow and not a
as far as I am concerned, the history of Western music exhib- cow at the same time”), and the Law of the Excluded Middle
its huge gaps (Italian: buchi), I permit myself to quote the (“Something is either a cow or not a cow”). I believe that
celebrated Benedetto Croce, a mezziogiorno intellectual like the ultimate formulation of these three laws of thought must
Loprieno. In the dedication to Alessandro Ademollo placed be mathematical, and not — as is commonly thought — phil-
at the outset of his I teatri di Napoli (1891), Croce expressed osophical or logical or psychological or the like. And I intend
the sentiment that it would be easy to fill the gaps in the his- to prove it.
tory of Italian literature What is more, the notion of boundaries has preoccupied me
se … non ci fosse ancora una certa tendenza a insistere just as much as it has Emil Angehrn and many contributors
su vechi e sfruttati argomenti, e su quistioni (sic) oziose. to the present Festschrift. Angehrn’s approach is philosophi-
Basta contare, per esempio, le centinaia e centinaia di pub- cal. Mine is strictly physical and mathematical. Part of my
blicazioni, che si fanno ogni anno su Dante, per convincersi own interest in boundaries takes its point of departure from
di questo spreco di forse. — Ma studiare Dante è un dovere! the following fundamental observation: Everyone will readily
— Dovere è leggere e rileggere Dante; non già scrivere libri agree that there are boundaries to what the brain can do. Who
inutili intorno a lui. could deny that there are certain things that the brain can do
Well said. Why write even more about Bach, Mozart, and and certain things that the brain cannot do? The need is there-
Beethoven? Is it not time to write a little more about GBP fore for finding and defining the boundary between what the
and Leo? In fact, is it not time to rewrite the entire history brain can do and what it cannot do. Like a car engine, the
of Western music? brain is a mechanical (or rather, a biochemical) tool of limited
extent that can do certain things and not other things. The
need is for finding the boundary that separates what the brain
3. Prologue of the Festschrift: can do from what it cannot do. That is a fundamental way in
On Setting Boundaries which I understand Angehrn’s expression “setting bounda-
and Transcending Boundaries ries.” And even though there is no way of locating this
boundary exactly at this time, I believe that there will in the
At this point, it would seem to be incumbent upon me as end turn out to be nothing fuzzy at all about it.
a reviewer of the volumes at hand to portray and, if neces- This much for “setting boundaries.” But what about
sary, to critique their contents. It so happens that Antonio Angehrn’s “transcending boundaries”? In my own physical
Loprieno has admirers in many academic fields. As a result, and mathematical approach to the problem, there are bounda-
about half of the contributions to his Festschrift concern ries that can simply not be transcended. The brain is subject
fields in which I can claim no competence. In regard to these to absolute physical and mathematical limitations. There are
contributions, general observations will need to suffice. places where it cannot go. By contrast, the universal impres-
Moreover, a detailed review of the other thirty articles to sion seems to be that there are no limits to what the brain can
which I can relate more directly or so would take up too do. It is true that the imagination seems to know no limits.
much space. I will just parade the honor list of author names One is free to speculate about just about anything. Then
at the end. But I would like to stand still a little longer at the again, rational human intelligence is a kind of operating sys-
“prologue” that heads the two volumes and a couple of other tem of the brain. It is a machinery that operates strictly
articles. within its own limits. And that operating system can be
The prologue (volume I, pp. 21-36) is entitled “Of the described in its entirety, I believe. Then again, there is noth-
Bifurcation (Zwiespalt) of Boundaries: On the Need to Both ing against letting the imagination free range. But in doing
Set and Transcend Boundaries (Vom Zwiespalt der Grenze: so, one will tend to think about what one cannot really know.
Über die Notwendigkeit, Grenzen zu setzen und Grenzen zu
überschreiten).” The author is the eminent Emil Angehrn,
professor of philosophy at Basel and earlier elsewhere.
Angehrn begins by asking whether either what is bounded or 9
) Leo Depuydt, Prolegomena to the Complete Physical and Mathemat-
ical Theory of Rational Human Intelligence in Boolean, Lagrangian, and
what is unbounded constitute the ultimate truth. And he notes Maxwellian Mode, s.l., Scientific Research Publishing, 2015 (accessible
that there has never been any consensus among philosophers Open Access at the website of Scientific Research Publishing, www.scirp.
as to which is the case. org).
Infinity epitomizes what transcends boundaries. Its exist- Third, the negation n… js has been studied intently by the
ence cannot possibly be denied and yet its true nature cannot honoree of these festal volumes himself 11). Allen calls
be comprehended. Just consider infinite series. Leonhard Loprieno’s article “groundbreaking” (p. 39). Perhaps, the
Euler, the most prolific mathematician of all time, considered following newly proposed observations and explanations will
them to be one of the greatest mathematical discoveries. And not fail to attract his interest. Consider it a small tribute of
it is indeed stunning how infinite series involve all kinds of my own to the honoree.
the wildest mathematical developments. It seems appropriate And fourth, there is an article later in the Festschrift on an
to observe in the present context that Euler is a son of Basel. intimately related topic, the negation n-js, by Pascal Vernus.
No one doubts the following equation: 1 + 1∕2 + 1∕4 + 1∕8 + Vernus’s article is discussed below.
1
∕16 + … = 2. But to truly comprehend the infinite sum, it
would be necessary to follow the sum into all eternity. That 5.2. The Function of the Negation n sḏm.f/sḏm.n.f js …
is something that rational human intelligence cannot do. In
the afore-mentioned book, I make this view into the basis of The true function or meaning of the negation n sḏm.f/
a radically new interpretation of the prime sequence (2, 3, 5, sḏm.n.f js … was discovered by H.J. Polotsky and his school
7, 11, 13, 17, 19, and so on). Understanding the prime around the 1960s and the 1970s. Mordechai Gilula played a
sequence seems to be a kind of holy grail of mathematics. In critical role in this process. Helmut Satzinger also made criti-
my opinion, there are absolute boundaries involved in a final cal contributions in those days. The function of the negation
understanding of the prime sequence. And these boundaries in question is to emphasize an adverbial element.
are by no means fuzzy. In that regard, I assume that n jr.n.j js jr.f in PT 477.8
(p. 40) somehow means “It is not against him that I did that”
or “I did not do that against him,” as distinct from Allen’s
4. The Four Major Components emphasisless “I did not do that to him.” If the negation could
of the Festschrift mean what Allen says it does in this case, then its meaning
would indeed be fuzzy — as he says it is. I otherwise do not
Beyond the Foreword (vol. I, pp. 11-13), brief descriptions fully understand the context of the example. But such a pre-
of the authors (vol. I, pp. 1-17), and Angehrn’s Prologue, the dicament is hardly unusual in the case of the Pyramid Texts.
Festschrift consists of four components. The first component Before H.J. Polotsky, no one knew what to do with the
(vol. I, pp. 39-331) is entitled “Language and Writing negation n sḏm.f/sḏm.n.f js …, especially with how it differs
(Sprache und Schrift)” and contains 16 articles. Of the four from negations such as n and nn. It was H.J. Polotsky and
components, this one is by far the closest to my own his school who established its specific meaning. It is not
interests. clear to me whether there is much more to add. But there
The second component (vol. I, pp. 335-459) is entitled have been attempts to say more.
“Literature and Image (Literatur und Bild)” and contains
10 articles. Ten figures on four plates, two in the first plate 5.3. The Syntax of n sḏm.f/sḏm.n.f js…
pertaining to Ghislaine Widmer’s article and eight in three
plates pertaining to Rolf Stucky’s article, conclude volume I. One issue that deserves further reflection is the syntax of
The third component (vol. II, pp. 463-843) is entitled n sḏm.f/sḏm.n.f js…, independent of its meaning or function.
“History/ies (Geschichte(n))” and contains 24 articles. I am not aware of H.J. Polotsky writing anything about the
Finally, the fourth component is entitled “Academic Cul- matter. But then, Polotsky did not like to speculate. I agree
ture (Akademische Kultur) (vol. II, pp. 847-979) and consists with Allen that, as part of n… js, js “functions… as a subor-
of 10 articles. Four figures on four plates, one each pertain- dinating element in exactly the same manner that it does in
ing to the articles by Martin Bommas, Maria Luiselli, Stuart other constructions” (p. 43). The exact purport of “subordi-
Tyson Smith, and Alex Eberle conclude volume II. nation” is not entirely clear to me. I am not even sure that
“subordination” is the desired term. But I leave that matter
aside at present.
5. The Negation n sḏm.f/sḏm.n.f js… In any event, the other side of the coin of Allen’s and my
own view is that all of sḏm.f/sḏm.n.f js… exhibits a syntactic
5.1. A Topic of Shared Interest relation of a certain kind, yet to be determined (though I have
my own views on the matter), with the negation n. In other
The very first article after the Prologue is James Allen’s words, sḏm.f/sḏm.n.f js… form a syntactic unit as distinct
“Fuzzy Negations” (vol. I, pp. 39-45). It consists of a set of from n itself.
miscellaneous remarks about negations, with special atten- The question arises: How can the analysis that Allen and
tion to n sḏm.f/sḏm.n.f js …. I comment on it at much greater myself favor be proven? In what follows, I will adduce four
length for four reasons. arguments that provide critical support to the analysis.
First, there are many other articles in these volumes about The four arguments pertain to certain undeniable and strik-
which I cannot possibly say anything that attempts to advance ing facts characterizing the syntagm n sḏm.n.f js…. The first
the cause of higher learning. argument pertains to js. The other three arguments pertain to
Second, I have written about js before10) and a much more n sḏm.n.f; of these three, two pertain to n and one pertains
extensive study of js has not (yet) come to fruition. to sḏm.n.f.
11
) Antonio Loprieno, “Focus, Mood and Negative Forms: Middle
10
) Leo Depuydt, “Zur Bedeutung der Partikeln jsk und js,” Göttinger Egyptian Syntactic Paradigms and Diachrony,” Lingua Aegyptia 1, 1991,
Miszellen 136, 1993, 11-25. 201-226.
The first argument concerns the position of enclitic js in In fact, in later Egyptian, n is attached prosodically to
the sentence. Its very position indicates that a new unit sḏm.n.f, for example in Late Egyptian and Demotic bw.jr.f
begins with sḏm.f/sḏm.n.f in n sḏm.f/n sḏm.n.f js…. How so? sḏm “He does not hear.” In Middle Egyptian, it is not
It is an undeniable fact that js, when it does not accom- (always). In Gunn’s Syntax, I find n grt sḏm.n… (Kahun
pany the negation n, is an enclitic particle. An enclitic parti- 30)13). In any event, this evolutionary trend points to a close
cle typically occupies second position in a sentence. If it fol- association between n and sḏm.n.f in n sḏm.n.f without js.
lows two or more words, then this means that these words Consequently, if — per Fact 1’ — there is continuity in n
form a unit with a single accent and therefore behave for all sḏm.n.f without js, then — per Fact 1 — the opposite is pre-
practical purposes as a single word does. sumably the case in n sḏm.n.f with js: discontinuity. Discon-
Why would js not also be an enclitic particle when it is tinuity points to a kind of new beginning at sḏm.n.f. QED.
used in conjunction with the negation n? Now, it is a fact On to the third argument, involving Fact 3. I treat Fact 3
that the enclitic particle gr(t) can intervene between n and before Fact 2 because Fact 3 needs to be interpreted in light
sḏm.n.f/sḏm.f js in n sḏm.n.f/sḏm.f js…, though Gilula was of Fact 1. I do not consider this argument as strong as the
able to find only two examples, Heqanakhte II recto 38 and previous two. But it complements the other two. It is a fact
Urkunden I 264,1312). Are there more? The second position that sḏm.n.f is past in n sḏm.n.f js but general present in n
is therefore the position immediately following n. But js does sḏm.n.f without js. Yet, the sḏm.n.f form must be the same.
not appear there. And yet, it must appear in second position. It is the (non-relative) sḏm.n.f that allows verbs of motion,
It can be concluded that the syntactic unit in whose second exemplified by a form such as jj.n.f. The question arises:
position js appears begins with sḏm.f/sḏm.n.f. In other words, How could ancient Egyptians dỉstỉnguỉsh n sḏm.n.f as general
if a new syntactic unit begins with sḏm.f/sḏm.n.f, the position present and n sḏm.n.f as past before the sentence reaches the
of js is exactly as expected. QED. next word? The form is not the differentiating feature. So
The three other arguments do not pertain to js but to n what is? There must be something. If not form, then I pro-
sḏm.n.f in n sḏm.n.f js. The second and third arguments per- pose syntax. How exactly? Difficult to know. At least, this
tain to undeniable facts characterizing the behavior of the argument suggests that there may some kind of syntactic dif-
negation n, as follows: ferentiation. Continuity versus discontinuity at sḏm.n.f is of
Fact 1) n does not negate sḏm.n.f; a syntactic nature. Partial QED.
Fact 2) n negates an adverb or adverbial phrase following The same third argument may be applied to the negation.
sḏm.n.f. How could someone only hearing n sḏm.n.f know which way
The two facts are more than two sides of the same coin. the negation was going to go?
The fact that n does not negate sḏm.n.f does not explain how The fourth argument involves the fact that n does not
it negates an adverbial phrase and not the verb form that it negate the sḏm.n.f of n sḏm.n.f js but rather an adverbial
accompanies. The latter fact is deserving of an explanation phrase that follows. How so? On the one hand, Allen and I
in its own right. postulate that sḏm.n.f js and what follows it is subordinated
The third argument involves an undeniable fact pertaining to the negation n. On the other hand, it is a fact that an adverb
to the sḏm.n.ƒ: or an adverbial phrase is emphasized. How can both be the
Fact 3) The tense of sḏm.n.f is past. case at the same time? A possible answer is: on condition
These facts are particularly striking if one compares the that sḏm.n.f js… is an adverbial sentence. The negation of
behavior of n sḏm.n.f js contrastively with the behavior of n the adverbial sentence mk mwt.k ḥnꜥ.k “Your mother is with
sḏm.n.f without js: you” is nn mwt.k ḥnꜥ.k “Your mother is not with you.” Both
Fact 1’) n does negate sḏm.n.f ; the adverbial sentence as a whole and the adverbial phrase
Fact 2’) n does not narrowly negate an adverb or adverbial are negated. But is sḏm.n.f js… an adverbial sentence? In
phrase following sḏm.n.f; fact, that is exactly how H.J. Polotsky analyzed a substanti-
Fact 3’) the tense of (n) sḏm.n.f is general present or aorist. val sḏm.n.f emphasizing an adverb or adverbial phrase. I do
Fact 3’ was discovered by Battiscombe Gunn and pub- not think that Polotsky ever applied his analysis to n sḏm.n.f
lished in 1924 and is hence called Gunn’s Rule. Fact 3, a js…. One does not find his analysis mentioned that often
kind of exception to Gunn’s Rule, was discovered a little anymore. But I cannot see what is wrong with it. In Late
later by the Danish Egyptologist Constantin Emil Sander- Egyptian and Demotic, emphatic verb forms always empha-
Hansen (1905-1963). Sander-Hansen edited the celebrated size adverbs or adverbial phrases. By the time of Coptic, they
commentaries to the Pyramid Texts by his teacher Kurt Sethe not always do but still mostly do. The association of emphatic
— who was also Polotsky’s teacher — after Sethe’s death in verb forms or second tenses with the adverbial sentence is
1934. In the commentary to PT 134a, Sethe credits Sander- therefore weakened in Coptic. In sum, Polotsky’s analysis
Hansen for the discovery. So one assumes that Sander- perfectly complements, 1), the fact that an adverbial phrase
Hansen made the discovery sometime in the decade from is emphasized and, 2), the assumption that sḏm.n.f is the
1924 to 1934, apparently in his twenties. beginning of that sentence.
How do these three facts imply that a new syntactic unit
begins with sḏm.n.f in n sḏm.n.f js? 5.4. Grouping in n sḏm.f/sḏm.n.f js …
First the second argument, involving Fact 1.
As per Fact 1’, when n negates sḏm.n.f in n sḏm.n.f with- It is customary to think of sḏm.f/sḏm.n.f as standing
out js, there is a kind of semantic continuity because n affects between n and js in n sḏm.f/sḏm.n.f js… , sḏm.f/sḏm.n.f
sḏm.n.f in the sense of negating it. being flanked by n and js as it were. However, if the above
12
) Mordechai Gilula, Enclitic Particles in Middle Egyptian (in Hebrew),
diss. Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1968, 89 and 94. 13
) Battiscombe Gunn, Studies in Egyptian Syntax, Paris, 1924, 112.
analysis applies, then this spatial conceptualization is not I comment at greater length on this topic for the same
appropriate. reasons as I did on n… js above. First, there are many other
Rather, what is the case is that sḏm.f /sḏm.n.f is initial (that articles in these volumes about which I cannot competently
is, in first place) and precedes the enclitic particle js, just as say much. Second, I have written about n-js before15). Third,
js follows sḏm.f/sḏm.n.f, assuming second place, as enclitic the negation n-js has been studied by the honoree himself in
particles are wont to do. What is more, sḏm.f/sḏm.n.f and js the same articles in which he examines n… js. And fourth,
together follow n. In that sense, it cannot be said that sḏm.f/ there is the related article by Allen on n… js discussed above.
sḏm.n.f follows n. Rather, sḏm.f/sḏm.n.f and js together do.
The difference can perhaps be clarified as follows. Con- 6.2. Ellipsis and the Relation between n-js and n… js
sider three people, Jill, Jack, and Jane, standing in a line with
Jill in first place. In a sense, Jack stands between Jill and Much has been written about n-js. But what is the differ-
Jane. However, what if Jack and Jane are a married couple? ence between n-js, in which nothing intervenes between n
Then they follow Jill together as a couple and Jack does not and js, and n… js, in which something does? Mordechai
quite stand between Jill and Jane. The latter serves as a meta- Gilula was the first to formulate clearly that both n-js and
phor for what happens in n sḏm.f/sḏm.n.f js … . n… js involve contrastive emphasis affecting an adverb or
adverbial phrase. There is no doubt in my mind that they do.
5.5. The Locus of What is Negated by n… js In a way, both have the same function.
Now, Vernus (I, p. 289) cites Gilula’s opinion that n-js is
It is a fact that the negation n… js commonly negates just “another way [in addition to n… js] to negate the adver-
nominal sentences, as in n jnk js pw “It is not me” (CT VI bial predicate of an Emphatic sentence”16). But if both n…
338l). In all those many instances, n… js negates the element js and n-js express the same, then what is the difference?
that stands between n and js, in this case jnk. By contrast, in Many years ago, it must have been in the 1980s, Polotsky
n sḏm.f/sḏm.n.f js…, n and js do not flank the element that — who was both Gilula’s and my own teacher — orally
they negate. The negated element comes after js. How can conveyed to me a certain concern that his student Gilula had
this be? not appreciated to the fullest extent his own view that n-js
The adverbial sentence structure, described above, already can simply be obtained by eliding something between n and
accounts for this. But if it had not, another phenomenon js.
would have instead. I have observed for the first time — and Consider a well-known example of n… js such as
tried to explain — that emphasis draws negation on to itself šm.n.k ꜥnḫ.t(j) n šm.n.k js mt.t(j) (CT I 187d-e B10Cb)
even if it is not accompanied by the negation14). Consider the “You have gone (that is, died) alive. You have not gone
sentence “Paris is not the capital of Germany.” The sentence dead.” (That is, you will live after death.)
communicates one of the things that Paris is not. The nega- Nothing may have seemed more natural to ancient Egyp-
tion clearly does not apply to Paris. However, if one applies tians, as it is to modern English speakers, than to omit the
contrastive emphasis to “Paris,” as in “Paris is not the capi- second occurrence of the same verb form:
tal of Germany,” then the negation now somehow applies to *šm.n.k ꜥnḫ.t(j) n-js mt.t(j)
Paris. The sentence now communicates one of the things that “You have gone away alive. Not dead.”
the capital of Germany is not and is more or less equivalent There is something eminently simple and evident about
to “The capital of Germany is not Paris.” ellipsis as the phenomenon that differentiates n-js from n…
js.
It is true that, as Vernus points out in his article, it is not
6. The Negation n-js always possible to reconstruct grammatically what is being
elided. And this concern leads him to discard this analysis
6.1. Another Topic of Shared Interest (see below). But I assume that, in such cases, the use of n-js
has been generalized and the negation involves the non-rep-
While James Allen discussed the negation n… js earlier in etition of a preceding thought. The elided thought may not
the volume, Pascal Vernus turns his attention to the related fit grammatically into n… js. Still, n-js can still mark the
negation n-js in an article entitled “The Fundamental Seman- non-repetition of the thought by the mere empirical absence
tics of the Negation n-js (Le sémantisme fondamental de la of the thought. After all, there is no need for formulating the
négation n-js)” (I, pp. 289-300). Vernus’s articles on gram- thought grammatically if it is not even uttered.
mar are known for their rich documentation, the evident In this connection, my principal criticism of all that has
result of years — indeed, decades — of scouring the entire been written about n-js is the absence of the following cru-
corpus of ancient Egyptian texts for evidence of all kinds of cial concept. N-js marks, at least in origin, the beginning of
grammatical phenomena. I have been reading Vernus’s work a new sentence. It does not belong to the preceding sentence,
on Egyptian grammar for decades now. I cannot help but as many descriptions of the negation seem to presuppose.
admire its vast empirical footprint. His arguments often Consider the sentence “When did he arrive? Yesterday.
enlighten. I occasionally find myself in disagreement with Not today.” The elliptical sentences “Yesterday” and “Not
them. But in the present case, I am struggling to merely fol-
low the line of argument.
15
) Leo Depuydt, “Zur Bedeutung der Partikeln jsk und js,” Göttinger
Miszellen 136, 1993, 11-25, at 23-24.
16
) Mordechai Gilula, Review of Helmut Satzinger, Die negativen Kon-
14
) Leo Depuydt, “Towards the Full Digitalization of Grammar: The struktionen im Alt- und Mittelägyptischen, Münchner Ägyptologische Stu-
Case of the Egyptian and Coptic Nominal Sentence,” Lingua Aegyptia 17, dien 12, Munich, 1968, in: Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 56, 1970,
2009, 27-50, at 41-42. 205-214, at 210.
today,” for non-elliptical “He arrived yesterday” and “He this dissertation and I read Hebrew (Ivrit). But I wonder how
did not arrive today,” are new sentences. And so is n-js, at often this evidence is accessed. And yet, it had never been
least in origin. gathered before and has never been since.
As to the above analysis involving elision, I presented it In any event, the evidence gathered by Gilula leaves no
in an article more than two decades ago17). I am not sure that doubt in my mind that speakers of Middle Egyptian would
I can take any credit for it as my teacher Polotsky conveyed have rendered Loprieno’s translation as follows:
its essence to me. *n jn js jt.j rd n.j n jn js mwt.j rd(t) n.j.
Jn introduces a so-called “participial statement,” which is
6.3. A “Brilliant Hypothesis,” but Whose? for all practical purposes a cleft sentence.
This type of cleft sentence can only emphasize the actor.
It came as a bit of a surprise to me that Vernus presents There is another way of constructing the cleft sentence,
the analysis described in § 6.2 as a “brilliant hypothesis involving the “copula” pw. It can emphasize any noun or
(brilliante hypothèse)” (I, p. 294). noun phrase performing any function in a sentence. The only
But three other pronouncements relating to this analysis collection of evidence for this type is Polotsky’s in his Trans-
by Vernus were equally surprising. positions21). Evidence had never been gathered systemati-
First, the “brilliant” thesis is attributed to Antonio cally before and has never been since.
Loprieno (I, pp. 289-290). Vernus refers to two articles by The affirmative equivalent of Loprieno’s translation is as
Loprieno of 1991. But I cannot readily find the thesis in follows:
question in either. Nor can I find the thesis in a more recent *jt.j pw rd n.j mwt.j pw rd(t) n.j.
definition of the function of n-js by Loprieno in his well- I have not been able to locate negated examples. One per-
known linguistic introduction to ancient Egyptian18). I am haps expects:
kind of curious where Vernus finds this thesis in Loprieno’s *n jt.j js pw rd n.j n mwt.j js pw rd(t) n.j.
work. The second pronouncement by Vernus about Loprieno’s
I refrain from trying to establish how exactly Loprieno “brilliant thesis” that took me by surprise is that he deems it
defines the function of n-js. But I have the impression that “seductive,” but only in “a generative approach” (I, p. 290).
my interpretation differs radically from his. In one of the two I have already expressed doubt as to whether the thesis is in
afore-mentioned articles, Loprieno translates an example of fact Loprieno’s. Evidently, how could he have formulated
n-js differently from how I would. The example is CT III the thesis in a generative approach if he did not formulate it
336f-g, as follows: in the first place? Anyhow, it is not clear to me what is par-
n-js jt.j rd n.j n-js mwt.j rd n.j. ticularly generative about postulating ellipsis. Ellipsis is a
Loprieno translates this passage as follows19): verifiable empirical phenomenon that exists independently of
“Not my father gave (it) to me, not my mother gave (it) any linguistic theory. Consider the elliptical sentence “Not
to me.” yesterday” in “He came today. Not yesterday.” I cannot dis-
I do not fully understand why the passage does not read cern anything generative about the omission of “He did (not)
n-js mwt.j rdt n.j, with feminine ending t. Coffin S1C is the come” in “Not yesterday.” It is not necessary to know any-
only witness and its version is on the whole quite good. thing about linguistic theory to recognize ellipsis for what it
I would translate as follows: is.
“And not while/because my father gave (it) to me or My third surprise was that Vernus completely rejects what
while/because my mother gave it to me.” he himself calls a “brilliant hypothesis,” just like that. The
I consider the sentences as a kind of afterthought or add- question arises: How can a hypothesis that is wrong be bril-
ons to what precedes. What precedes is elided. liant? So what does Vernus replace it with? Something more
My translation and Loprieno’s seem to be quite different. than brilliant? In all brevity, he proposes that n-js denotes
This is not the place to enter into a detailed discussion. Still, “restriction” (p. 298). It marks exceptions to something
one implication of my position is that Loprieno’s English stated before.
translation does not match the Egyptian original. An obvious In fact, I agree with Vernus’s proposal, but to a degree.
question arises: How would speakers of Middle Egyptian I believe that translating n-js into English as a marker of
express Loprieno’s English translation? exceptions is altogether suitable. The important question, to
It is not easy to find evidence in any of the standard works me, is: By what syntactic mechanism did n-js mark some-
of Egyptian grammar if anywhere. But in fact, sufficient evi- thing that can be styled in English translation as an excep-
dence has been gathered many years ago by Mordechai Gil- tion? The mechanism is most obviously that of an elliptic
ula in his Hebrew University doctoral dissertation of 196820). emphatic construction, so it seems to me. What Vernus calls
It should be noted that this dissertation is unpublished and the “fundamental semantics of the negation n-js” seems to
written in Hebrew. It so happens that I own a photocopy of me more a like feature of translation than a property of the
original Egyptian.
This is where Vernus’s article takes a most unusual turn.
17
) Leo Depuydt, “Zur Bedeutung der Partikeln jsk and js,” Göttinger One might consider this twist the main characteristic of his
Miszellen 136, 1993, 11-25, at 23-24.
18
) Antonio Loprieno, Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction, article. Vernus rejects the association of n-js with so-called
Cambridge, 1995, p. 170.
19
) Antonio Loprieno, “Topics in Egyptian Negations,” in: Daniela
Mendel and Ulrike Claudi (eds.), Ägypten im afro-orientalischen Kontext, 21
) Hans Jakob Polotsky, “Les transpositions du verbe en égyptien clas-
Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere, Sondernummer 1991, Köln, 1991, 213-235, sique,” Israel Oriental Studies 9, 1976, 1-50, at 16-17. Reprinted in Verena
at 219. M. Lepper and Leo Depuydt (eds.), H.J. Polotsky, Scripta Posteriora on
20
) Mordechai Gilula, Enclitic Particles in Middle Egyptian (in Hebrew), Egyptian and Coptic, Lingua Aegyptia Studia Monographica 7, Göttingen,
diss. Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1968, 60-64. 2007, 55-104, at 70-71.
emphatic constructions. He may be the only one to ever do as I can see. Manic behavior weighing down the field of
so. I have to confess: nothing seems more self-evident to me Egyptian grammar? God forbid.
than the close association of n-js with contrastive emphasis Then again, can we now perhaps document an acute aller-
and therefore with emphatic constructions. gic reaction to emphatic constructions? It looks like it to me.
The element that follows n… js is no doubt emphasized in Let us hope for a speedy recovery because, as far as I am
the exact same way as the element that follows n-js. This concerned, I am only getting started. I can’t wait to keep
identity seems lost in Vernus’s analysis. pushing my physical and mathematical and digital and
But Vernus takes matters a step further. Boolean explanation of emphasis. Stay tuned.
6.4. Obsessive Maniacs on the Loose in Egyptian Lin-

guistics? 7. The Rest of the Section
“Language and Writing” (pp. 39-331)
Vernus is more than happy to uncouple n-js from emphatic
constructions because they, “at a certain time, weighed on There are 14 articles in the section “Language and Writ-
Egyptian linguistics in the manner of an obsessive mania (à ing” in addition to the two articles authored by Allen and
une certaine époque, pesaient sur la linguistique égyptienne Vernus, for a total of 16. I discussed the latter two articles at
à la manière d’une manie obsessionnelle).” Is Vernus trying greater length in part because they concern topics that both
to save the field from obsessive mania? the honoree and myself had written about. It seemed like an
It is a fact that, in everyday conversation in all languages opportunity to engage the honoree’s intellectual legacy.
of the world, contrastive emphasis is used in almost every The 14 articles also deal with language and thought in one
other sentence, and almost always in questions for specifica- way or another, except the one by Ghislaine Widmer (I,
tion and their answers. Contrastive emphasis is everywhere. pp. 301-309), which concerns the remarkable phenomenon
Get used to it. But in most languages of the world, it is of Demotic texts inscribed on animal bones. Remarks on the
almost always expressed by pitch and not by morphology or other 13 articles follow below.
syntax and therefore does not show up in writing. In general,
the awareness of contrastive emphasis as a distinct facet of 7.1. The Beginning of, and Evolution of, Rational Human
the human condition is almost close to zero. There is prob- Intelligence
ably no phenomenon of human intelligence that is so omni-
present yet so little recognized. Giorgio Buccellati writes cogently about when and how
Egyptian is truly remarkable (and less so French, Vernus’s the human brain acquired reason in “The Transcendental
mother tongue) in that it expresses emphasis almost always Revolution” (I, pp. 47-54). He feels (p. 49) that it needs to
by means of morphology and syntax. Emphasis therefore be dated to about 60,000 years ago. Maybe.
shows up everywhere in speech. It would also in writing — He also prominently cites (p. 49, note 3) Noam Chom-
and in fact does so in Late Egyptian, Demotic, and Coptic. sky’s opinion that the event was “effectively instantaneous,
But the lack of vowels in hieroglyphic writing hides it to a in a single individual, who was instantly endowed with intel-
considerable extent from empirical observation in Old and lectual capacities far superior to those of others, transmitted
Middle Egyptian. to offspring and coming to predominate.” Maybe. But maybe
To the student of many ancient languages like Latin and not.
Greek, emphasis means very little. To the student of Egyp- What empirical evidence is there for the evolution of
tian, it means everything. The unconscious reaction may be: rational human intelligence before 3000 BCE? Effectively
If I can speak English or French or German and study Latin none, as far as I know.
or Greek or Hebrew without ever hearing a peep about To the Egyptologist and the Assyriologist, the earliest
emphasis, then why suddenly this onslaught of emphasis written records evidence human intelligence more or less as
when I turn to Egyptian? What on earth is wrong with Egyp- it still is today. Remarkable. Was there no change whatso-
tian grammar? Such a reaction would be altogether natural. ever? Did human beings get smarter in the last 5000 years?
In the history of Egyptian grammar, emphatic construc- It is difficult to put one’s finger on any positive evidence for
tions were completely unrecognized or misunderstood until change in the constitution of rational human intelligence.
the later 1930s and 1940s. Suddenly, something that had Then again, I pointed to one distinct phenomenon that may
been absolutely nowhere was suddenly everywhere. What is evidence such change — and I am not aware that anyone else
more, emphatic constructions are not the easiest of gram- ever did something similar22). The phenomenon in question
matical topics and are to this day to a great extent still either is the complete loss of the so-called balanced sentence
poorly understood or entirely misunderstood. They may well (Wechselsatz) after Middle Egyptian and its replacement by
constitute Egyptian and Coptic grammar’s most difficult clauses introduced by Old and Middle Egyptian jr “when”
topic. And it does not help that one cannot see half of them and it successors. There are those that claim to have spotted
in Old and Middle Egyptian. balanced sentences after Middle Egyptian. Strange. I have
The result was not a little bit of intellectual turmoil in the personally never seen any.
1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and beyond, especially since the author In addition, to me personally, one of the most important
of the most used grammar of Middle Egyptian, Alan H. Gar- changes of the last 5,000 years in human intelligence is how
diner, rejected much of the basic tenets of the theory that the brain thinks of itself more and more as an individual,
explains emphatic constructions. It seemed all quite over- culminating in (or descending into) the contemporary
whelming to many if not most. What was the result? Strug-
gle? Yes. Frustration? Definitely. Strife? Clearly some of 22
) Leo Depuydt, The Other Mathematics: Language and Logic in
that. Despair? Maybe on occasion. But obsession? Not as far Egyptian and in General, Pisacataway, NJ, 2008.
incessant navel-gazing and total self-absorption. One might ⲙⲫⲣⲏϯ ⲛⲟⲩⲟⲩϩⲱⲣ do in a position in which one expects
call it the rise of “Me, me, me!” One wonders whether, a nominal expression? And what is the difference with
when this historical process is complete, human intelligence expressing the same thought simply by means of a nominal
will forever have lost any awareness of The Other and be sentence, as follows: *ⲙⲏ ⲁⲛⲟⲕ ⲟⲩⲟⲩϩⲱⲣ “Am I a dog,
perpetually glued to a smart phone screen. me?”
Müller’s carefully considered analysis implies a loss of the
7.2. Scratch Marks in Early Dynastic Egypt sharp boundary between adverbs and adverbial phrases, on
the one hand, and nouns and adjectives, on the other hand.
Eva-Maria Engel’s “Writing or Marking (Schrift oder One assumes that the study was selected for inclusion in
Marke)” (I, pp. 55-70) presents an ambitious new approach Fs. Loprieno because its topic concerns boundaries, and
to a peculiar and very distinctive set of “scratch marks (Ritz- more specifically a fuzzy boundary.
marke)” inscribed on various surfaces in Egypt’s Early My explanation of the phenomenon differs from Müller’s.
Dynastic period. Engel counts about 8000 instances from I recognize that, when an adverb can all of a sudden start
about 20 sites involving about 150 signs. The question has appearing where an adjectival expression is normally found,
always been: How should one read these signs? They are some kind of boundary between adverb and adjective has
definitely not your regular hieroglyphic writing even as they become fuzzy. Then again, adverbs and adjectives exist in
seem intimately related to it. So how to read them? Readers order to denote two fundamental facets of the human condi-
may find Engel’s proposals innovative. tion. When it comes to these two fundamental facets, I have
the impression that the boundary between them is as sharp
7.3. Non-Canonical and Canonical Agreement in Indo- as ever. What are these two facets?
European My point of departure is the question: What is the differ-
ence between adjectives and adverbs or adverbial phrases? I
Silvia Luraghi’s “From Non-Canonical to Canonical will try to keep it simple, and — I hope — not simplistic.
Agreement” (I, pp. 71-88) is all about agreement, as between What is the difference between “The car is blue,” featur-
an adjective and the noun that it accompanies, across many ing an adjective, and “The car is in the street,” featuring an
many Indo-European languages. The scope is breathtaking. adverbial phrase? The difference is that an adjective denotes
I was looking for a reflection of my own impression, inspired what I call a property and the adverb denotes what I call a
by such Egyptologists as H.J. Polotsky and Battiscombe circumstance. The difference between property and circum-
Gunn, that a substantive denotes one thing where the adjec- stance occupies a central place in my textbook of Middle
tive denotes two things. But I could not readily find it. For Egyptian23). A property is a characteristic that remains typi-
example, Latin vir means “man, male”; it refers to an entity cally attached to an entity whereas an entity can easily
and only to an entity. But bonus can by itself mean “good change its circumstances. In short, the car typically remains
one” refers to two entities, both an entity (“one”) and a blue. But it can easily change its location — from the street
property (“good”). Therefore, in vir bonus “good man,” the to, say, in the garage.
agreement of bonus with vir in gender in number is a func- The difference can also be exemplified by means of the
tion of one of the two things that an adjective denotes. The English sentences “I am good” and “I am well.” The former
author follows G. Corbett’s definition of “canonicity” and expresses something that is typically perceived as permanent.
“non-canonicity.” I have not had the time to immerse myself The latter expresses something that may change. I should add
into how Corbett precisely understands this distinction. But that, in colloquial American, it is possible to use the expres-
it seems worth exploring. sion “I am good” in the sense of “I am well.” But I have the
impression that one has to pronounce “I am good” in a cer-
7.4. On the Sharp Boundary between Property and Cir- tain way to endow it with more or less the meaning of “I am
cumstance (in spite of a Certain Loss of Sharpness well.”
in Boundary between Adjective and Adverb in Cop- I therefore propose that, when an adverbial phrase is used
tic) in Coptic where one might find an adjective, the circum-
stance is presented as a property, as something that is viewed
Much of Matthias Müller’s contribution entitled “Empiry as more permanently associated with an entity. In that regard,
and Construing Categories: Fuzzy Boundaries and Fuzzy the boundary between property and circumstance has not
Categories in Egyptian-Coptic Syntax (Empirie vs. Katego- become fuzzier. It is as sharp as ever. But the boundary
rienbildung: Fuzzy boundaries and fuzzy categories in der between adjectives and nouns, on the one hand, and adverbs,
ägyptisch-koptischen Syntax)” concerns the detailed docu- on the other hand, as word types is less sharp. The reason is,
mentation of a phenomenon that has not received due atten- as Müller suggests, that adverbs or adverbial phrase can
tion in grammatical studies. It is the appearance of adverbs sometimes express something that is an enduring property.
or adverbial phrases where one expects a noun or noun So when an adverb is used where an adjectival expression
phrase that is often for all practical purposes the equivalent is normally expected in the example cited above, “Am I like
of an English adjective. It is important to have this record of a dog, me?”, then “being like a dog” is in my opinion pre-
a neglected phenomenon. sented as something more enduring and permanent. Once the
Müller’s first example (I, p. 92) is ⲙⲏ ⲁⲛⲟⲕ ⲙⲫⲣⲏϯ boundary between adjectives and adverbs becomes just a lit-
ⲛⲟⲩⲟⲩϩⲱⲣ ⲁⲛⲟⲕ “Am I like a dog, me?” (jinkim dots tle less sharp, the sharp boundary between property and cir-
belonging atop ⲁ, ⲙ, ⲛ, and ⲁ have been omitted) (1 Samuel cumstance is not lost.
17:43). The sentence exhibits the pattern of the nominal sen-
tence, in which the second component is as a rule a noun or 23
) Leo Depuydt, Fundamentals of Egyptian Grammar, Part 1: Ele-
noun phrase. Then what does an adverbial phrase like ments, Norton, Mass., 1999, reprint 2012.
But what differentiates properties from circumstances is in phenomenon is undeniable. Everything empirical would
such cases no longer word classes such as adjectives and seem to be worthy of scientific description.
adverbs but rather the syntactic constructions of the nominal Then again, the primary task of the Egyptologist — pro-
sentence and the adverbial sentence. fessional task, I might add — is to understand ancient Egypt
It is worthy of note that the phenomenon studied by Mül- on its own terms. There is no doubt that the study of the
ler is adverbs being used like adjectives and not adjectives peculiarities of Egyptologese — if considered independent
used like adverbs. It seems natural to assume that a tempo- from the study of how Egyptian was actually pronounced
rary circumstance more readily turns into a more enduring — involves the description of an authentic empirical phe-
property than an enduring property turning into something nomenon. However, there is also no doubt that the study of
that is more passing. Egyptologese contributes little or nothing to a better under-
standing of ancient Egypt itself. Indeed, to the extent that
7.5. Verbs and Prepositions in Chinese Egyptologese is distinctive from how Egyptian was actually
pronounced, it is a necessary distortion. What is more, the
Fabrizio Angelo Pennachietti, who counts Antonio mere fact that different Egyptologists pronounce ancient
Loprieno among his first students in the 1970s, is a Semitist Egyptian differently is itself a kind of distortion because one
who took up the study of Chinese and writes about it in an likes to think that Egyptian words were in any one place and
article entitled “The Fuzzy Boundary between Verb and at any one time presumably pronounced in one single way
Preposition” (I, pp. 119-129). The tiny amount of Chinese and not two or more different ways.
that I studied does not permit me to comment on this article Does Egyptologese then in any way matter at all to the
knowledgeably, even if I did commission a Chinese transla- greater cause of Egyptology as an academic field? Does it
tion, for publication, of parts of my recent book, Prolegom- really matter that one Egyptologist pronounces wbn “rise
ena to the Complete Physical and Mathematical Theory of (said of the sun)” as uben and another Egyptologist as
Rational Human Intelligence (2015). China is on the rise. weben? There is no doubt that the study of Egyptologese is
peripheral to the cause of Egyptology as an academic field.
7.6. Egyptologese But should it be completely dismissed as utterly irrelevant?
A different way of putting the question is as follows: Does
Carsten Peust’s article (I, pp. 131-148) deals with the the professional student of ancient Egyptian suffer any defi-
modern classroom pronunciation of ancient Egyptian. Peust cit in understanding the language by completely disregarding
calls it Egyptologese and this term also serves as the title of the analysis of Egyptologese? The answer would appear to
his article. be: No.
There is much about the pronunciation of ancient Egyp- In spite of all of this, dismissing the study of Egyptologese
tian that we do not know — especially, but not only, the as irrelevant seems like going too far. The history of Egypto-
vowels. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic writing typically logese exhibits all kinds of ties with the history of the study
does not represent vowels for the most part and the exact of the ancient Egyptian language and of ancient Egypt itself.
pronunciation of certain consonants is controversial. As a And as Goethe said (if he said it), the history of a science is
result, the modern classroom pronunciation of Egyptian is to the science itself. Egyptologese is too deeply embedded into
a large extent artificial. It is difficult to know to what extent what it means to be an Egyptologist to be totally undeserving
that pronunciation approximates the actual ancient of any attention in its own right.
pronunciation.
All this also means that ancient Egyptian is pronounced
differently in different countries and by different people in 7.7. Foundations of the Analysis of Hieroglyphic Writing
modern times. The differences seem so random and arbitrary The next contribution in volume I, Stéphane Polis’s and
and have nothing to do with any factual reality that one won- Serge Rosmorduc’s “The Hieroglyphic Sign Functions: Sug-
ders what the point is of presenting a scientific analysis of gestions for a Revised Taxonomy,” much excited my inter-
something that is an artificial construct. est. The article concerns the classification of the function of
Egyptologese is a topic in which I have myself taken a hieroglyphic signs and contains many insights on numerous
certain interest. Many, many grammars have been written of points. No one doubts that there are different types of hiero-
Middle Egyptian. But mine is the only one, so it seems to glyphs. Then again, as I emphasized in my own afore-men-
me, that provides an Egyptologese equivalent in the answer tioned grammar, at p. 51, there are strictly speaking only
key to the first reading exercises, at pp. 579-58424). I also different types of functions of hieroglyphs and not different
discuss Egyptologese at pp. 23-24. Peust’s article deals types of functions because a single hieroglyph can often have
mainly with the Egyptologese of France, Germany, and Great more than one function. In fact, it is not uncommon for a
Britain. It means that the artificial pronunciation of ancient single hieroglyph to have all possible functions.
Egyptian in the United States is beyond the purview of the I was also reminded by the article at hand that I had
article. written six times on the subject of hieroglyphic writing25). In
Peust insists very much on cataloguing Egyptologese as a
living and breathing entity that evolves almost like a natural
language. There is indeed much variation in Egyptologese 25
) Leo Depuydt, “On the Nature of the Hieroglyphic Script,” Zeitschrift
across nations and individuals. And it seems to evolve over für ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 121, 1994, 17-36; “Champol-
time in certain respects. The existence of the empirical lion’s Ideogram and Saussure’s signe linguistique,” Orientalia 64, 1995,
1-11; “Egyptian (language), Decipherment of,” in Kathryn A. Bard (ed.),
Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, London and New York,
1999, 271-74; Fundamentals of Egyptian Grammar, Part 1: Elements, Nor-
24
) Leo Depuydt, Fundamentals (see footnote 23). ton, Mass., 1999, reprint 2012, xl-xlii, 7-63; “Egypt, ancient: scripts,” in
these articles, and in my grammar, I proposed a theory of Helmut Satzinger, Pascal Vernus, and Jean Winand. The
how hieroglyphic writing should be analyzed and how hiero- contribution by Stéphane Polis and Serge Rosmorduc on
glyphs should be classified. No one was more influential in script is mostly philological though Polis by himself often
my thinking than Ferdinand de Saussure. Many histories of tends to be much more linguistic. The contribution by Uljas
linguistics characterize de Saussure as its founder. Yet, does not cite linguistics. But Uljas often succeeds in being
I have the impression that his legacy seems to have vanished quite theoretical in the linguistic vein without needing to cite
from linguistic practice. Who still attaches any importance to linguistics.
the “linguistic sign (signe linguistique)”? And yet, it is — Antonio Loprieno himself belongs more or less in the lin-
I believe — the cornerstone of the analysis of human lan- guistic camp. In that regard, there are two contributions that
guage. I also have the impression that, since my earlier arti- are linguistic in the strict sense: the one by Andreas Stauder
cles, I have been able to root the analysis of hieroglyphic and even more so the one by Reintges. Some of the work
writing and of the linguistic sign in a physical and mathemat- by Reintges and Stauder seems to me to be even
ical theory of rational human intelligence (see above). hyperlinguistic.
So how does my own analysis compare to that of Polis and Rigid philologists will always look in grammatical studies
Rosmorduc? The two exhibit differences. I distinguish the for new facts that deepen our understanding of what the
classical three types. Polis and Rosmorduc distinguish six ancient Egyptians are trying to tell us. They will typically not
types. I only address the most fundamental difference here. find linguistic studies all that helpful in this regard. Linguis-
My analysis is squarely based on Saussure’s linguistic sign, tic studies are more aimed at understanding language better
theirs is not. Then again, no one else’s is either. I am not sure as a phenomenon in general.
whether my desire that the linguistic sign become widely The present article is based on two unusual premises:
accepted as the foundation of the analysis of hieroglyphic 1) the honoree will agree with almost none of what Reintges
writing will ever be realized. In my opinion, it is the only writes (p. 174);
positive scientific foundation possible. And I seem to be all 2) the Egyptian passive sḏm.f is somehow historically and
alone in defending it and my confidence in it has only grown genetically related to the Semitic passive.
stronger over the years. As regards 1), I am aware that debate may be fertile. But
The authors are trying to pay homage to all that has been in the end, the truth still has to count for something. Disa-
written about hieroglyphic writing earlier. This is admirable. greement should not be pursued for its own sake. Wherever
Being cognizant of all that has been done on a subject dem- two disagree on scientific facts, one of the two must be
onstrates professionalism. But I have also known many an wrong. Pursuing disagreement for its own sake therefore
occasion on which large amounts of citations prevent a line sounds a little like purposefully pursuing falsehood.
of argument from moving forward from first principles in Because of all the uncertainties affecting the analysis of
clear and distinct steps towards a well-defined point, a quod the Old and Middle Egyptian verbal system (largely because
est demonstrandum, adducing what has been said by others vowels are not written), there has been an unusually large
earlier exclusively and only in subservience to the line of amount of writing on the passive in recent times. There is no
argument, a bit as in an Euclidean proof. Actually, is there denying that one can say an enormous number of things
any other kind of viable proof? There is a certain danger of about the passive in Old and Middle Egyptian without risk-
everyone citing everyone else in an endless game of footnote ing positive falsification, simply because hieroglyphic writ-
diplomacy. But maybe this is what committees approving ing obscures so much of the passive.
grants and promotions want to see. As regards 2), no one in the history of Egyptian linguistics
has ever stated that any Egyptian passive sḏm.f, or any sḏm.f
7.8. More on the Old and Middle Egyptian Passive by for that matter, is related historically to Semitic verb forms,
Reintges though outlier theories may have escaped my attention.
The contribution by Chris Reintges entitled “The Early 7.9. Arabic Verbs Borrowed into Coptic
Egyptian śḏm(.w)=f Passive Revisited” (I, pp. 175-226), is
quite long. The term “revisited” is to the point because In his contribution “On the Fringes of Egyptian Language
Reintges has written much about the passive in Old and Mid- and Linguistics” (I, pp. 227-242), Tonio Sebastian Richter
dle Egyptian. documents for the first time a phenomenon that seems to
In the study of Egyptian grammar, there has been a sharp have gone entirely unnoticed in the study of the Coptic lan-
divide in the last couple of decades between what might be guage, at least as far as the published record is concerned.
called linguistic grammarians and what might be called phil- Remarkable. It is the borrowing of Arabic verbs into Coptic.
ological grammarians. Most grammatical studies can be The borrowing of Arabic nouns into Coptic has been well
assigned to one group or the other. Just take those contribu- documented over the decades. But verbs? There is not a peep
tors to the present Festschrift whose contributions are gram- about it anywhere in the literature. How can this be? The
matical. Squarely belonging in the philological camp are the reason is that most borrowings of verbs occur in texts that
following: James Allen, Matthias Müller, Carsten Peust, remain largely unpublished, namely alchemical texts. Richter
is working on systematically gathering and editing these
texts. They typically date to about the tenth and eleventh
Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd Edition, Amsterdam, 2006, centuries c.e. This is virgin territory and Richter has set out
85-86; “Toward a Scientific Theory of (Egyptian) Hieroglyphic Writing in to conquer it. His results are eagerly awaited.
Boole’s, Saussure’s, and Maxwell’s Footsteps” (forthcoming in the acts of One question that Richter does not address is as follows:
a conference held at the Confucius Institute at Rutgers University on the
comparison of the world’s oldest scripts, Chinese, cuneiform, Egyptian, and Why are verbs not as obviously borrowed as nouns into Cop-
Mayan. tic? The phenomenon does not seem to be limited to Coptic.
Part of the answer may be as follows. Nouns are designations other languages. Satzinger is unable to document the prop-
of things or entities and verbs are descriptions of events. erty in any other languages. And he has investigated quite a
Consider visiting another culture. It would be easy to spot, few of them. This makes the property so far unique to Egyp-
so it seems to me, things or entities that one culture has but tian, until a language can be found that behaves like Egyp-
another does not. It would be impossible to refer to these tian. Satzinger uses the terms “strange” and “exotic” in the
things without the names that they bear in that other culture. title of his article to describe Egyptian.
The only alternative would be to invent new names. The first two matters together make for a striking coinci-
By contrast, events for the most part concern what hap- dence of two facts regarding a certain property. The property
pens to human bodies and what the human body does. Human is not only totally dominant in Egyptian. But it is also abso-
bodies are the same everywhere and there is no way in which lutely unique to Egyptian. These two facts combined may
human bodies could behave or be affected by events much well make the property in question into the most striking and
differently from one another in different cultures. An excep- prominent characteristic of Egyptian as compared to the
tion would be endeavors involving highly specialized tech- world’s other languages.
niques and actions, such as for example alchemy. Such The third matter is that Satzinger does not try to explain
endeavors would involve actions that are uniquely specific to why Egyptian behaves in this completely unique way among
that endeavor. Such actions would therefore become associ- the world’s languages.
ated with verbs as technical terms, verbs used in a very nar- But what is this property in question?
row sense to denote a very specific action. If one culture
adopts such an endeavor from another culture, the temptation 7.10.2. Definition of the Property
would be to adopt a technical term along with it. The property in question is that any third person markers
of pronominal conjugation are completely absent when the
7.10. The Most Remarkable Property of Verbal Conju- entity denoted by conjugation is nominal. One might say that
gation in Egyptian throughout Its History the third person pronominal element is entirely replaced by
the noun or noun phrase. Naturally, by the same token, one
might say that the noun or noun phrase is entirely replaced
7.10.1 Totally Dominant and Totally(?) Unique among the by the pronominal element. In other words, either one or the
World’s Languages other appears but never both at the same time. Perhaps, a
In his contribution entitled “These Strange, Exotic Egyp- happy way to express the fact is that the pronominal element
tian Verbal Formations” (I, pp. 243-255), Helmut Satzinger alternates with a noun or noun phrase.
studies an obvious yet truly remarkable property of those This is clearly not the case in most conjugations in other
Egyptian verbal conjugations in which suffix pronouns are languages. Just consider English “He runs.” One marker of
used when the entity denoted by the verbal conjugation is the third person singular is the ending s in “runs.” If the
strictly pronominal as opposed to nominal. In English “He entity denoted by conjugation is nominal, for example, “the
runs,” the entity in question is pronominal; in “The man man,” this marker does not vanish in “The man runs.” And
runs,” nominal. yet, there is strictly speaking no need for it. “The man run”
The conjugations in question are traditionally called suffix would be fully comprehensible. The s serves no practical
conjugations. Satzinger (p. 243) objects to the term. I do not function. There seems to be no need for it. The result is a
fully comprehend why. One might call them “suffix pronoun certain redundance.
conjugations” instead. This term seems descriptively 100% All this may seem rather self-evident. But nothing any-
accurate. It is then a small step to abbreviate the term to where close to this is found in all of Egyptian and Coptic
“suffix conjugations.” I do not see a problem. outside of the stative conjugation of earlier Egyptian. Egyp-
(I personally prefer to call change according to person, tian is efficient to an extremely high degree, as it were. Satz-
gender, and number “conjugation” and change according to inger calls Egyptian “strange” in this regard. But in some
gender and number “declension.” In conjugation, nouns and way, it is Egyptian that is normal and all the other languages
noun phrases are associated with the third person.) that are strange.
When I was Polotsky’s student, he used to direct my atten- Satzinger compares the suffix conjugation of Egyptian
tion to this remarkable property. And I do take care to point with verbal conjugation in many, many languages. His elabo-
it out to my own students when the occasion arises. The rate comparison makes it clear how very remarkable Egyp-
property is so obvious as to be easily overlooked. It is a good tian verbal conjugation is. But what Satzinger does not do is
thing that Satzinger finally paid some attention to it. ask, let alone try to answer, why the Egyptian language
There are three things that I was looking for in Satzinger’s behaves the way in which it does. What follows is designed
article but could not find either sufficiently articulated or to provide some kind of an answer.
even at all present. One likes to think that everything happens for a reason.
The first thing that I miss is a clearer acknowledgment of The question arises: What caused Egyptian to exhibit the
the vast scope of the suffix conjugation as a phenomenon of property defined above in such abundance and to even have
the Egyptian language. In earlier Egyptian, up to sometime it dominate 100% of its verbal system from sometime in Late
in the Late Egyptian stage, most conjugations are suffix con- Egyptian onward?
jugations. The only exception is the stative. From then on,
all the Egyptian conjugations are suffix conjugations except 7.10.3. Explaining the Property by means of Explaining a
the bipartite. Because the suffix conjugation is so absolutely Related Property
dominant throughout Egyptian, so is the specific property of In order to explain the property at hand, it is not in the
it studied by Satzinger. least necessary to try to explain the property itself. It is rather
The second matter that I miss is a clearer acknowledgment necessary to explain a closely related property. The closely
of the uniqueness of the property to Egyptian as supposed to related property automatically implies the property itself. If
one proves the closely related property, then one proves the 7.10.6. The Two Original Usages of the Suffix Personal Pro-
property itself. nouns
What is the closely related property? If one disregards verbal conjugation, what are the promi-
The closely related property is that, in the Egyptian suffix nent usages of the suffix pronouns? There are two — only
conjugations, the pronoun is still fully interpreted, or “felt,” two in fact — but they are very prominent and omnipresent.
as a pronoun. The same cannot be said about the ending s in One involves suffix pronouns following nouns or nominal
English “runs.” expressions denoting possession or the like, as in pr.f “his
What proves the fact that the marker of person, gender, house.” The other involves suffix pronouns following prepo-
and number in suffix conjugations is 100% a pronoun? It is sitions, as in n.f “for him.”
a fact that, everywhere else in Egyptian itself and in all lan- According to the passive participle theory, both these
guages of the world, a third person pronoun alternates with usages played a role in the formation of the suffix conjuga-
a noun or noun phrase always and only when it fully function. Put differently, all usages of the suffix conjugation
tions as a pronoun. Then why would Egyptian suffix conju- played a role in the formation of the suffix conjugation.
gations be any different? In fact, those who reject the passive participle theory prob-
It follows that, if one can explain the related property, then ably also mostly assume that the same two usages of the
one has explained the property investigated by Satzinger. suffix pronoun played a role in the formation of the suffix
But what is it exactly that one is trying to explain? conjugation.
7.10.4. Asking the Right Question This same theory also implies that the use of the suffix
pronouns to denote verbal conjugation is clearly secondary
The question is not: Why do the suffix pronouns marking in the history of the suffix pronouns. In the beginning, there
verbal conjugation behave like pronouns? Pronouns obvi- were the usages following nouns and prepositions. In fact, it
ously behave like pronouns. What else would they behave may well be that prepositions derive from nouns. It seems to
like? The question is rather: Why did the suffix pronouns in me quite probable that the preposition ḥr “on” derives from
question not cease behaving like suffix pronouns and behave the noun ḥr “face.” What is more characteristic of the face
instead like the ending s in “runs”? There is no doubt that, in relation to the human body than the fact that it is on it?
when the suffix conjugation came into existence, the suffix Presumably, in the beginning, the desire of human beings
pronouns marking conjugation at the time behaved like pro- was to name things. Prepositions, one assumes, came about
nouns. But what did they retain this property throughout later.
Egyptian history? In an Afroasiatic context, Egyptian shares the stative con-
But first something more on the circumstances in which jugation with Semitic. The stative conjugation must therefore
the Egyptian suffix conjugations came about. belong to the common prehistoric language from which both
7.10.5. The Passive Participle Theory of the Origin of the Egyptian and Semitic derive. The so-called prefix conjuga-
Suffix Conjugation tion must also belong to a common Afroasiatic ancestor
because Semitic shares it with Berber. But there is hardly a
For many decades, the passive participle theory was by far trace of the suffix conjugation in other Afroasiatic languages
the most popular theory about the origin of the suffix conju- outside Egyptian. There is something similar in Ethiopic, as
gations. The eminent Egyptologists Kurt Sethe and Alan H. pointed out by Satzinger. But this Ethiopic conjugation is
Gardiner were its principal creators and promoters. Accord- clearly not genetically related to the Egyptian suffix conjuga-
ing to this theory, there are two ways in which suffix conju- tion. Most everyone therefore accepts that the Egyptian suf-
gations derive from passive participles: 1) by direct attach- fix conjugations are unique to Egyptian.
ment to the participle; 2) by mediation of the preposition n.
Now, there is no doubt that not every suffix conjugation
can be derived smoothly from passive participles. The result 7.10.7. Historical Change and Causality: The Impossibility
has been a startling development in recent decades. Just of Identifying Definite Causes
about every grammarian who has made a pronouncement on The principal design of the present section is to make clear
the issue has abandoned the passive participle theory. my personal conviction that it is impossible to discern abso-
I somehow found myself in the position to be the only one lute and definite causes in historical processes. And that
still willing to defend it. And I did so, at some considerable includes the history of languages. And one example of a his-
length26). torical linguistic process is the way in which the suffix pro-
I pointed to the overwhelming presence of analogical for- nouns retained their pronominal status throughout the history
mations in the evolution of languages. Analogical formations of the Egyptian language when marking verbal conjugation.
are in origin in a certain sense “mistakes.” There are just a The best that one can do is to identify circumstances that
number of arguments that make the passive participle theory seem ideally placed to trigger a certain historical process.
by far the one that makes the most sense. How else can one But these circumstances derive their principal strength in
possibly explain the “cornerstone” (Polotsky) of the passive negative fashion, as follows: if they had not been in place,
participle theory, namely that “what he likes is” is rendered then the process would not have taken place.
by mrrt.f and not by *mrrt.f st? The key question at hand, then, is as follows: What pre-
To me, the more recent abandonment of the passive parti- vented suffix pronouns in the suffix conjugation from no
ciple theory is a showcase of throwing out the baby with the longer being treated as full-fledged pronouns but instead as
bathwater. I have personally no doubt that the passive parti- verbal conjugational endings?
ciple theory is the correct theory. One likes to think that everything happens for a reason.
The search is therefore for causes. But in historical pro-
26
) Leo Depuydt, “The Origin of the Egyptian Suffix Conjugation,” cesses, in my experience, it is mostly impossible to estab-
Lingua Aegyptia 11, 2003, 23-47. lish that one event directly caused another event. There is
always the possibility that the other event might not have of making it much, much more apparent that such a tiny
occurred. I will evoke the impenetrable complexity of cau- event could have such a big consequence.
sality below by briefly digressing with a remark on chaos A good example used by chaos theorists to convince the
theory. public at large about the validity of the theory concerns one’s
The false impression that causation is possible is derived own existence. What caused me to exist? Clearly, I would
from the fact that people and things do things to other people not exist if my parents had never met. But how did my par-
and things all the time, as “The baker baked the bread.” This ents get to know one another in the first place? They had to
can be restated as “The baker baked the dough. The dough meet for the first time at a certain place and at a certain time.
is baked.” The first event may be considered the cause of the In that regard, it is impossible to imagine the infinity of cir-
second event. But that is somewhat deceptive because only cumstances that needed to take place to make the meeting
a single event is concerned. The two sentences denote two possible.
facets of the same event and not really one event causing One simple scenario amply suffices to drive home this
another event. point. Just assume that a tiny corrosion in a carburetor made
But what about two events? Consider Saddam Hussein’s a car break down and thus prevent a certain woman to go to
invasion of Kuwait and the First Persian Gulf War, clearly a certain meeting and instead end up in a place where she
two distinct events. Did the invasion cause the war? It might first met your father. A simple nail in a car tire might also
not have. And in other cases, an invasion may not trigger a do the job. If such tiny events had not occurred, you would
war. But one thing is certain. There would have been no not exist.
Persian Gulf war at that time if there had been no invasion. The question arises: How many of these tiny events need
In other words, while one cannot with certainty establish that to be in place for an event to occur? It would seem that they
the occurrence of one event must cause the occurrence of are uncountable und also for the most part irretrievable. That
another event by some kind of absolute necessity, one can is also why, again, perfect weather prediction is a phantasy.
establish that the non-occurrence of one event would have And that is also why a full account of why the suffix conju-
caused, if one may call it that, the non-occurrence of another gation remained associated throughout Egyptian history with
event. the suffix pronouns is impossible.
But it is difficult to think of causation as something nega-
tive. Is there a way of stating in a positive way what has just 7.10.9. Explanation of the Related Property and Partial
been defined negatively? Let us again consider the invasion Causality
and the gulf war. One may be overwhelmed by the impres- How is what has been said above relevant to the present
sion that it is difficult to see what made the war happen, even query? In my impression, establishing causation in language
if the invasion cannot produce a war with mathematical change, as in any historical change, in the sense of one event
necessity. But reality is so complex that it is impossible to causing another event with mathematical necessity, is impos-
comprehend it all at once. The best that one can do is to sible. It would in fact amount to predicting the future.
conclude that the invasion must have made some kind of a It would amount to perfectly predicting the weather (which
contribution. Because if there had been no invasion, there is, as Lorenz first abundantly made clear, pure fantasy). Pre-
would have been no war. In that sense, the invasion with dicting is assessing a set of circumstances and concluding
high probability played some kind of a role. that this set of circumstances will unavoidably and definitely
Then why do invasions sometimes produce wars and lead to a certain event. That is simply humanly impossible.
sometimes not? Why does the suffix conjugation remain The best that one can do is to detect circumstances that
directly and tightly associated with suffix pronouns through- must have been the case for an event to take place. It cannot
out Egyptian history? The best answer that I can provide is be said that these circumstances alone triggered the event
that something else must have been present as well in addi- because they might well not have. There was something else.
tion to some obvious empirical conditions-without-which- Still, they did play some kind of a role.
not. But that something else is not retrievable. That is why Still, I would like to introduce a concept that I would pro-
identifying seamless full-fledged causality is impossible. It visionally term “partial causality.” It is based on two undeni-
is as impossible as perfect weather prediction, which is a able facts.
complete fantasy. What is that something else? Chaos theory The first fact is that detectable circumstances without
provides an answer. which an event cannot take place do play some kind of a
role. They somehow do something because, if they were
7.10.8. Chaos Theory and the Impossibility of Predicting an absent, nothing would happen. Their mere presence already
Event somehow does something.
Chaos theory shows that it is impossible to point to defi- So why can they not be described as full causes? That is
nite causes, events that automatically produce another event because, strictly speaking, (a set of) full causes by them-
without fail, in human history. One of the tenets of chaos selves ought to directly trigger an event. But they do not do
theory is that the smallest event can have the biggest so by themselves alone. Something else complements them.
consequences. What else? This is where the myriads of minuscule circum-
Chaos theory started with the computerized study of the stances of chaos theory described in the previous section
weather and was pioneered by the meteorologist Edward N. come into play. It is not possible to retrieve these.
Lorenz at MIT. The central idea is best exemplified by his There is therefore a distinction between detectable circum-
1972 world famous talk entitled “Predictability: Does the stances and undetectable circumstances. Truly determining
Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in causality would involve detecting and knowing all the cir-
Texas?” It seems as if the possibility of a positive answer to cumstances leading to an event. Chaos theory states that this
the question would only invite disbelief. Yet, there is a way is impossible.
Still, identifying detectable circumstances leads to a better I do know that there is a difference between transitivity in
understanding of the evolution of Egyptian. If there are sev- “The man killed the bear” and transitivity in “The man
eral of them, a favorable climate must have existed for a heard the whistle.” In the first example, the role of “The
certain development to take place. man” is rather active and dynamic; in the second example,
What are some of those detectable circumstances in the rather passive. Does this difference belong to the domain of
present case? “semantic transitivity”? If it does, then “semantic transitiv-
First is the relatively recent coming into existence of the ity” is concerned with certain nuances pertaining to “syntac-
suffix conjugation in the history of Afroasiatic. The suffix tic transitivity.” But is this what Stauder means by “semantic
conjugation did not exist in common Afroasiatic. It therefore transitivity”?
came into existence after Egyptian split off. That means less I wish that the article had presented a more accessible
of a time horizon for change to come about, in the sense of definition of “semantic transitivity” with simple examples.
suffix pronouns moving away from their origin as pronouns. But in any event, Stauder introduces “semantic transitiv-
Change takes time. ity” as an explanatory principle pertaining to his article’s
Second is the remarkable confluence of four facts: main design, that is, to explain a certain type of contrast
1) the new markers of conjugation were the suffix personal between the participle and the stative. To obtain a complete
pronouns (it did not have to be this way); picture, it is necessary to draw in the adjective, which Stauder
2) the new markers of conjugation involved all the prior does not do.
usages of the suffix pronouns (it did not have to be this As it happens, my theoretical approach to the main topic
way); of Stauder’s article is entirely different from his. It differs so
3) the suffix pronouns are abundantly present throughout the radically that I am not sure exactly how to engage his. What
language (it did not have to be this way); and I propose to do, therefore, as a reviewer is to present my own
4) the suffix pronouns remained abundantly present through- approach to the problem — though including the adjective
out the history of the Egyptian language (it did not have — in detail.
to be this way). All that I can offer readers is putting Stauder’s approach
Facts 1), 2), and 3) must have made for a very strong in perspective by presenting an approach that radically dif-
association at the outset between the new markers of conju- fers from it. Let others judge what to make of these two
gation and a specific set of pronouns when the suffix conju- approaches.
gations came into existence. In fact, the new markers of con-
jugation are the suffix pronouns. Fact 4) does much to 7.11.2. A Specific Contrast between Participle and Stative
explain why the association was never weakened. and the Need for an Explanation
Participles and statives can both denote complete sen-
tences together with a personal pronoun and, in the case of
7.11. The Relation between the Past Participle dns the stative, additionally a particle, like the participle in rḫ sw
(“Who/Which Has Become Heavy”), the Stative dns “He knows” and the stative in *jw.f rḫ “He knows.” Other
(“He Having Become and Hence Now Being paradigmatic examples might be *Ꜣtp sy, featuring a partici-
Heavy”), and the Adjective dns (“Heavy”) ple, and *jw.s Ꜣtp.tj, featuring a stative. Both can be trans-
lated as “It is loaded.”
Alan H. Gardiner describes the expression featuring the
7.11.1. What is “Semantic Transitivity”? participle as “the participle as adjectival predicate” in his
Andreas Stauder borrows the concept called “semantic celebrated Egyptian Grammar, at §374.B.
transitivity” from general linguistics and applies it to Egyp- Stauder’s article revolves entirely around and about the
tian in a study entitled “Semantic Transitivity: The Case of difference between the two afore-mentioned expressions.
the Pseudo-participle and of Qualitative Predication (La tran- What is the difference?
sitivité sémantique en égyptien: Le cas du pseudoparticipe Again, Stauder’s approach differs from mine. First, he
et de la prédication de qualité)” (I, pp. 257-276). relies on the principle of “semantic transitivity.” I am not
I think that I know what transitivity is. I know it as a entirely sure what to make of this principle and I see no need
property of verbs. Transitivity can be, and is usually, defined for it in my own approach.
as the ability of being followed by a direct object. I always In addition, Stauder believes that the “predication of qual-
prefer morphological and empirical definitions over semantic ity,” as expressed by a participle, is “not submitted to the
definitions. To me, an Old and Middle Egyptian verb is tran- flow of time (pas soumise au flux temporel),” whereas the
sitive if its verb forms conjugated according to person, gen- stative is. But then, this interpretation leaves unaddressed the
der, and number can be followed by the dependent pronoun, fact that both past and present participles appear in adjectival
for example sw in the third masculine singular. This is as sentences. The contrast between past and present is quite real
watertight and rock solid as can possibly be. and empirical and it has everything to do with tense or the
It seems clear that Stauder defines the above as what he flow of time. I do not quite comprehend how Stauder is able
calls “syntactic transitivity.” He feels that “syntactic transi- to eliminate tense, just like that, entirely from the picture.
tivity” does not exhibit sufficient explanatory power and I believe that tense, or the “flow of time,” is very much
therefore postulates a need for “semantic transitivity” in present. Therefore, in my opinion, in order to explain the
addition to “syntactic transitivity.” difference between the afore-mentioned usages of the parti-
The question is: What is “semantic transitivity”? I am not ciple and the stative, some concept other than tense needs to
sure that I fully, or even partially, understand to which patent be invoked. I believe that concept to be contrast between
empirical phenomenon the concept of “semantic transitivity” property, as expressed by adjectives, and circumstance, as
refers. expressed by adverbs.
7.11.3. The Difference between Property and Circumstance the latter does not and this is what the difference is about.
But is that all that the difference is about? I am not sure.
Many years ago, I was induced to contemplate the differ- Provisionally, I propose that the participle seems closer to a
ence between such simple expressions as *(jw gm.n.j) dpt dynamic passive, as in English “It has been loaded” whereas
Ꜣtpt “(I found) the loaded boat” and *(gm.n.j) dpt Ꜣtp.tj the stative seems closer to a statal passive, as in English
“I have found the boat loaded.” It is not even necessary to “It is loaded.”
focus on the Egyptian expressions. If one can just define the
difference between “the loaded boat” and “the boat loaded,” 7.11.4. The Most Striking Characteristic of Participles in
one would already come close to some kind of an under- Adjectival Sentences
standing of the corresponding difference in Egyptian. There is no property of participles in adjectival sentences
The first step in the present argument is the key observa- more striking than the following. And I would say that it
tion that “the loaded boat” and “the boat loaded” can refer does much to confirm what is proposed here: that the use of
to the exact same state of affairs. The reality that they participles in adjectival sentences is all about presenting a
describe can be the same. verbal action as a property.
What is more, in both cases, the boat has been loaded at The striking use in question is in conjunction with the
some point in the past. It is not being loaded in the present. preposition r to express the comparative degree, as in ꜥꜢ r
There is clearly a reference to tense in both cases. The “greater than.” Stauder does not single out the frequency of
expression “the loaded boat” is as little disconnected from this usage for special attention. But Gardiner already noted
“the flux of time” as is “the boat loaded.” it when he states the following in his Egyptian Grammar at
So what is the difference between “the loaded boat” and §374.B: “The examples show how often the construction is
“the boat loaded”? used in comparisons.” The frequency of occurrence is indeed
It evidently must have something to do with how the same remarkable.
reality is viewed differently by two different speakers or An additional good example occurs in the Loyalist Teach-
even by one and the same speaker looking at the same reality ing, version of Sehetepibre, §3, lines 12-13: swḏꜢ w(y) sw r
in two different ways. ḥꜥpy ꜥꜢ “Oh how he makes (things) more verdant than a great
In §7.4, I have already at length commented on the differ- flood.”
ence between property and circumstance. I refrain from A possible example is found in the very fragmentary Mid-
repeating from what I wrote there. As far as I am concerned, dle Egyptian version of the Tale of Horus and Seth, as pre-
when it comes to the contrast between “the loaded boat” and served in Lahun Papyrus UC 32158 with related fragments
“the boat loaded,” “loaded boat” denotes a property and UC 32148B and UC 32150A. The Late Egyptian version of
“boat loaded” a circumstance. A property is typically some- this tale is evidently well known. It is inscribed on one of the
thing more permanently associated with an entity. In that best preserved — if not the best preserved — ancient Egyp-
regard, “the loaded boat” can be associated with “the blue tian papyri, the Papyrus Chester Beatty I.
boat.” A blue boat typically stays blue more or less. By con- The Middle Egyptian example is as follows27): mk wnn
trast, “the boat loaded” can be associated with “the boat in nḏm sy ḥr jb.f r ḳꜢt[…] “Look, it is sweeter on his heart than
the harbor.” Boats typically do not permanently stay in a the height [… ].” The purport is sexual in nature and pertains
harbor. to the seduction of Horus by Seth.
The contrast between property and circumstance is one of How to make sense of wnn? Is it possible that wnn is a
the most fundamental properties of all languages. Just wit- participle and nḏm is a stative and that the two together are
ness the omnipresence of adverbs and what is adverbial and an adjectival conversion of jw.f nḏm? If so, the form wnn
of adjectives and what is adjectival in all languages of the nḏm would lend a peculiar twist to the present discussion of
world. the difference between participle and stative. It would some-
I conclude that the participle also denotes a property when how allow the stative to become part of the denotation of a
it is used as part of the adjectival sentence. In the sentence property.
*Ꜣtp sy “It is loaded,” the loadedness of the boat is presented But why does this striking usage support the notion that
as a property, something more permanently associated with the essence of participles is to denote properties?
the boat, a bit like an adjective. The boat has been loaded in The striking usage involves a comparison between two
the past. Hence the past passive participle. Tense is very entities that exhibit the same characteristic. The comparison
much relevant. And its being loaded is presented as a prop- revolves entirely around the fact that one entity exhibits the
erty in the same way that being blue could be a property. characteristic in question to a higher degree than the other
By contrast, in *dpt Ꜣtp.tj “the boat loaded,” the loaded- entity. But in order to make a comparison possible, the two
ness denotes a circumstance, something more transiently entities need to exhibit the characteristic in fairly permanent
associated with the boat, a bit like an adverb. The boat may fashion. What is the point of comparing if either entity can
right now be loaded. But it may have been unloaded before lose the characteristic because of a change in the state of
and may be unloaded again. affairs? I conclude that the characteristic must be a property,
But what about *jw dpt Ꜣtp.tj “The boat is loaded” or that is, a feature more permanently attached to an entity.
*jw.s Ꜣtp.tj “It is loaded”? In this compound verb form, the
adverbial character of the stative has become obscured. The
adverbial stative has merged with the auxiliary to form a
main verb form.
Stauder’s article revolves entirely around the contrast 27
) I cite from Stephen Quirke, Egyptian Literature 1800 BC: Questions
between an expression such as *Ꜣtp sy and an expression and Readings, Golden House Publications, Egyptology 2, London, 2004,
such as *jw.s Ꜣtp.tj. I say: the former denotes a property and 181.
7.11.5. The Difference between Stative, (Past Passive) Par- The English translations deceptively make it seem as if the
ticiple, and Adjective two expressions do not differ in meaning. But they do so in
In what precedes, a proposal has been made as to how to a radical way: *dns sw denotes a pure state; but *jw.f dns
differentiate stative and participle, both verb forms. The par- in addition expresses the past process that led to the state.
ticiple is an adjectival verb form. But how does the adjective In that regard, *dns sw means just “He is heavy,” but jw.f
relate to both the stative and the participle? dns denotes literally something like “He has become heavy
Distinctions are the stuff of which knowledge is made. It and hence now is heavy.” The stative clearly implies the past
seems opportune to summarize in a table how all three — process that led to the state.
stative, participle, and adjective — relate to one another in In this connection, it may be useful to point out explicitly,
relation to two distinctions. for the first time ever I believe, a remarkable historical fact.
It is discussed in the next section.
DISTINCTION 1 DISTINCTION 2
7.11.7. Rapprochement of the Stative to the Adjective in
circum- Later Egyptian
process state property
stance
In later Egyptian, especially Demotic and Coptic, the sta-
YES/NO
VERB stative YES YES NO
(later NO)
tive of so-called adjective verbs often came to denote a pure
FORMS state. For example, in Coptic, statives of so-called transitive
participle YES YES YES NO verbs often translate Greek adjectives. Old and Middle Egyp-
NOT A tian statives are never equivalent in meaning to adjectives.
VERB adjective NO YES YES NO They always express both a past process and the state to
FORM which the process led.
I have not found this remarkable fact noted anywhere in
By “Distinction 1” and “Distinction 2,” I have nothing the literature.
extremely theoretical in mind. My vision of these distinctions When the stative of earlier Egyptian and the adjective
could not be more empirical. relate to one another as marked form, denoting both a pro-
As regards Distinction 1, what I see in my mind’s eye is cess and a state, and unmarked form, denoting only a state.
the difference between “sitting down” and “being seated.” It therefore appears that the stative could on occasion lose its
Something is moving in the former. That is a process, for distinctive mark and become the unmarked form. The marked
lack of a better term. All is at rest in the latter. That is a state, form was now expressed by the past or perfect tense, sḏm.f
for lack of a better term. What is a little confusing about the in Demotic and ⲁϥⲥⲱⲧⲙ in Coptic. That became possible
term “stative” is that it denotes, not only a stative, but also when, with the advent of Demotic, intransitive verbs could
— in addition — a process. It needs to be admitted that there be used in the past sḏm.f, which earlier they could not. The
is a slight contradiction in calling something a stative that entry of intransitive verbs into the past sḏm.f therefore went
also denotes the opposite of a state. hand in hand with the loss of reference to a prior process on
As regards Distinction 2, what I see in my mind’s eye is the part of the stative.
the difference between “I am good” and “I am well.” I have on quite a few occasions observed how, in the
As to the difference between stative and participle, I would meanings of words, the evolution from marked to unmarked
assign it entirely to the contrast between property and cir- occurs quite frequently in the history of Egyptian28). I may
cumstance. Both are verb forms referring to both a process well be the only Egyptologist who has in the past thirty
and a state. Something happened in the past. But all is now years, if not ever, attempted to observe rule-determined pro-
at rest. cesses in historical semantics29). Nor do I readily find obser-
But where is the adjective positioned in relation to these vations on such processes in the literature on general linguis-
two? tics. Egyptian is the longest attested of all the world’s
The adjective is definitely closer to the participle than to languages. Surely, one would think that one might learn
the stative. It is differentiated from the participle according something from it about the evolution of the meanings of
to only one of the two criteria. But it is differentiated from words. So far, I seem to be the only one to have taken advan-
the stative according to both criteria. Though not always. tage of this unique circumstance.
Only when the stative denotes a circumstance, which it not
always does. 7.12. On the Distinction between Purpose and Result, or
between Final Clauses and Consecutive Clauses
7.11.6. The Stative and the Adjective in Earlier Egyptian Sami Uljas’s contribution revolves entirely around the dif-
It has been noted above that the stative may or may not ference between what he calls purpose and result. In his
denote a circumstance. In the transition from Middle Egyp-
tian to Late Egyptian, the stative for the most part lost its 28
) See, for example, Leo Depuydt, “Von ‘schlafen’ zu ‘liegen’: Mar
ability to denote a circumstance by itself. But even in Middle kierungsverlust als ein Hauptgesetz der ägyptischen Sprachentwicklung,”
Egyptian, it does not always denote a circumstance. When it in: Louis Painchaud and Paul-Hubert Poirier (eds.), Coptica – Gnostica –
does not, only a single difference sets it apart from the adjec- Manichaeica. Mélanges offerts à Wolf-Peter Funk, Bibliothèque copte de
Nag Hammadi, Section « Études », 7, Louvain/Paris, 123-133.
tive. It denotes both a process and a state whereas the adjec- 29
) For a list of contributions, see footnote 6 at pp. 7-8 in Leo Depuydt,
tive denotes only a state. “Zur unausweichlichen Digitalisierung der Sprachbetrachtung: ‘Allein,’
A simple example. Take the root dns “become heavy.” It ‘anderer,’ ‘auch,’ ‘einziger,’ ‘(seiner)seits,’ und ‘selbst’ als digitales
is used in the stative in a Middle Egyptian expression such Wortfeld im Ägyptisch-Koptischen und im Allgemeinen,” in: Anke Ilona
Blöbaum, Kathrin Butt, and Ines Köhler (eds.), Lexical Fields, Semantics
as *jw.f dns “He is heavy.” It is used as an adjective in an and Lexicography, Aegyptiaca Monasteriensia 7, Aachen, 2007, 2011,
expression such as *dns sw “He is heavy.” 5-38.
terminology, result is the same as consequence. Purpose is expression. My suspicion is only confirmed by what I per-
expressed by so-called final clauses and result is expressed ceive to be a distinct deficit in Uljas’s article. His design is
by so-called consecutive clauses. to study the expression of purpose and the expression of
Uljas posits that the notion of purpose is well understood result. The reader might expect two lists in such an article:
whereas the concept of result is much less so. The quest of a list of Egyptian linguistic expressions denoting purpose and
his article is therefore a better understanding of consecutive a list of Egyptian linguistic expressions denoting result. The
clauses. absence of such lists gives one the impression that the dis-
The question arises: What is the difference between pur- tinction does not exist, for the most part, in the Egyptian
pose and result? The key differentiating notion appears to be language but to a great extent only in the heads of modern
intent. And this is apparently also how Uljas understands it. interpreters. Modern interpreters make the decision as to
A purpose has it and a result does not, it would seem. whether there is or there is not intent.
Final clauses and consecutive clauses both refer to events
that relate in a certain way to an event denoted by the main 7.13. Fuzzy Boundaries, Funny Syntax
clause to which they are subordinated. In his contribution “Fuzzy Boundaries, Funny Syntax:
If intent is the key distinctive criterion, then final clauses Some Reflections on the Progressive and Other Construc-
denote an event that is the intended or desired outcome of tions in Late Egyptian (Quelques réflexions sur le progressif
the event denoted by the main clause. By contrast, the event et d’autres constructions en néo-égyptien)” (I, pp. 311-331),
denoted by consecutive clauses is accidental to the main whose main title is in English whereas its subtitle and the
event. article itself are in French, Jean Winand takes the metaphor-
According to this definition, final clauses denote presence Fest to the next level by diagnosing, not only things that are
of intent and consecutive clauses denote absence of intent. It fuzzy, but also things that are funny. If one could just add
is tempting to interpret the contrast between final clauses and what is plain silly, the farce would be complete.
consecutive clauses as a contrast between marked and Winand does sensibly state (I, p. 311) that the theory of
unmarked. If so, all purposes would also be results but not fuzzy boundaries has itself been on occasion fuzzy. Fuzzi-
all results would be purposes. But this contrast between ness squared, as it were. Still, he accepts that there is such a
marked and unmarked is not suitable here. The reason is that thing as fuzzy boundaries as a property of reality whereas
any intent ought to be conveyed already by the main clause. I am much more sceptical. I reiterate my belief that there is
The event denoted by the main clause ought to exist in har- nothing fuzzy in the least about reality. I am therefore very
mony with the event denoted by the subordinate clause as its tempted to locate the totality of the fuzziness in the minds of
desired intent. Therefore, the intent is very much part of the the authors of the volume.
main clause. The subordinated clause associated with a main I am not sure that I have been able to follow in greatest
clause denoting intent cannot be a consecutive clause denot- detail every facet of Winand’s argument. I was therefore
ing an accidental result. There would be an internal contra- looking for its basis in fact. Winand is a specialist of Late
diction between intent and absence of intent. Egyptian. I have this impression that the article revolves
According to the proposed analysis, all comes down to entirely around a paramount and startling fact of Late Egyp-
detecting either the absence or the presence of intent. In that tian, as far as it makes itself manifest at the present time. The
regard, Uljas’s means of detecting one or the other seem less fact concerns the difference between the general present or
than perfect. aorist, as in “He (generally) eats,” and the actual present, as
For example, he contrasts (I, p. 277) the two sentences in “He is eating (right now).” It would appear that, in Late
“Harry brought the board so that Hermione might read the Egyptian, in the affirmative, both are expressed by the so-
text on it” and (Hermione said) “Clean the board, so that it called First Present, namely twj (ḥr) sḏm.
will be readable.” He assumes that “so that it will be read- One thing is certain. In Old and Middle Egyptian, the
able” denotes a result because “so that” can be replaced by aorist is expressed by jw.f sḏm.f; in Demotic and Coptic, by
“and.” However, is this not a function of the tense? If one ḫr jr.f sḏm/ϣⲁϥⲥⲱⲧⲙ (which derives from Middle and Late
makes the first sentence into future tense, as in “Harry will Egyptian ḫr sḏm.f). I have documented this crucial shift as
bring the board,” then “so that” can be replaced by “and,” part of a larger study that postulated the existence of contin-
as in “Harry will bring the board and Hermione will read the gent tenses, that is, tenses that are dependent on conditions.30))
text on it.” The events are the same but the tense differs. The Up to that time, it had not been fully clear in grammatical
difference is that a clause referring to the future can denote studies that Demotic ḫr jr.f sḏm is the clear and unambiguous
an intent or a purpose where a clause referring to the past successor of Middle Egyptian jw.f sḏm.f. Since that time, I
cannot because one already knows what happened. have had the opportunity to consolidate my understanding of
Surely, certain events involve intent and others do not. But the phenomenon of the condition in physical and mathemati-
can the difference be conveyed linguistically? I was trained cal terms as part of a comprehensive theory of rational
as a classicist and we were taught that the Latin conjunction human intelligence. It has only much strengthened my belief
ut followed by the conjunctive denotes both consecutive in the existence of contingent tenses in Old and Middle
clauses denoting consequences or what Uljas calls results Egyptian and perhaps to some extent also in Late Egyptian.
and final clauses. We were also taught that ut is typically The question arises: How was the aorist expressed in Late
negated in consecutive clauses by ut non and in final clauses Egyptian? Middle Egyptian had become obsolete and ḫr
typically by ne. It is what one finds in grammars. I have, sḏm.f was presumably still too contingent in flavor. Accord-
however, never been comfortable with this distinction. ingly, the so-called First Present came to be used instead.
To a great if not exclusive extent, I suspect that the dis-
tinction between purpose and result is a factor of modern 30
) Leo Depuydt, Conjunction, Contiguity, Contingency, New York,
interpretation and is not at all reflected in the linguistic 1993, 201-255.
45 trick or treaty?46
Is this fuzzy? I do not think so. Reality is so diverse that

human language can never express it in all its diversity. The
shortcomings of language are not fuzziness. What matters is
to determine sharply, without any fuzziness, what language
can do and cannot do when it comes to denoting the tremen-
dous variety of reality. There is nothing fuzzy about deter-
mining these facts. Language is a tool that comes with its
limitations. I believe that it is wrong to describe these limita-
tions as fuzziness. I rather prefer to describe the limitations
as razor sharp facts.
The quest for knowledge is not served by the postulation
of fuzziness.
8. Conclusion
I have made an attempt to acknowledge those contribu-

tions to this Festschrift with whose topics I am more familiar
with a certain level of intellectual engagement. In doing so,
I have covered about a quarter to a third of the Festschrift.
At the present rate, if I had had the competence to keep
going, I would have needed to write a book. But then, due to
lack of expertise, I could not have dignified most of the other
articles anyhow with more than a brief summary. I hope that,
instead, there will be other reviewers of this important pub-
lication who will address other facets of this Festschrift.
It is time to wrap up. A mere superficial perusal of the rest
of the Festschrift makes it very clear that there are a lot of
people who have a lot of nice things to say about Antonio
Loprieno. I will conclude by simply stating their names and
encourage anyone to read all the interesting things that they
have to say. The gallery of tributes is as follows.
The following persons contributed to the section “Litera-
ture and Image (Literatur und Bild)” (I, pp. 335-459): Mar-
celo Campagno, Michael Cooperson, Alexander Honold,
Hanna Jenni, Efraim Kristal, Ludwig Morenz, Herbert Mor-
ris, Miriam Ronsdorf, Thomas Schneider, and Rolf Stucky.
The contributors to the section “Histories (Geschichte(n))”
(II, pp. 463-843) are as follows: Daniel Arpagaus, Jan Ass-
mann, John Baines, Susanne Bickel, Alfred Bodenheimer,
Martin Bommas. Mark Collier, Andreas Dorn, Madeleine
Herren, Victoria Loprieno (Antonio Loprieno’s daughter),
Maria Michela Luiselli, Ueli Mäder, Ronald Mellor, Gerald
Moers, David Meyers, Rainer Nutz, Claudia Rapp, Maurus
Reinkowski, William Schniedewind, Stuart Tyson Smith,
Anthony Spalinger, Deborah Sweeney, Noémi Villars, and
Martin Wallraff.
The following acquaintances of Antonio Loprieno contrib-
uted to the section on “Academic Culture (Akademische Kul-
tur)” (II, pp. 847-979): Hans Amstutz, Dominique Arlettaz,
Crispino Bergamaschi, Mauro Dell’Ambrogio, Ulrich Druwe,
Alex Eberle, Ernst Mohr, Georg Pfleiderer, Ursula Renold,
and Ralf Simon. The last contribution by Simon is character-
ized in the table of contents, not as “(no.) 61,” but as
“60+1.” Topical, cute.
All in all, as one can see, this is an impressive lineup of
prominent minds joining forces to deliver a fitting tribute to
an accomplished individual.
Norton, MassachusettsAugust 2016

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on fuzzy boundaries and razor sharp boundaries, and something on bari6

hoofdartikelen essential, in order to understand the work’s conceptualiza-

6.4. Obsessive Maniacs on the Loose in Egyptian Lin-

Is this fuzzy? I do not think so. Reality is so diverse that

I have made an attempt to acknowledge those contribu-

Norton, MassachusettsAugust 2016

You might also like

Depuydt 2017 Fuzzy

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Depuydt 2017 Fuzzy

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Copyright

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Did you find this document useful?

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Depuydt 2017 Fuzzy

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5

on fuzzy boundaries and razor sharp boundaries, and something on bari6

hoofdartikelen essential, in order to understand the work’s conceptualiza-

6.4. Obsessive Maniacs on the Loose in Egyptian Lin-

Is this fuzzy? I do not think so. Reality is so diverse that

I have made an attempt to acknowledge those contribu-

Norton, MassachusettsAugust 2016

You might also like

on fuzzy boundaries and razor sharp boundaries, and something on bari6

6.4. Obsessive Maniacs on the Loose in Egyptian Lin-

Norton, MassachusettsAugust 2016