119-508: The Egyptian language , or Ancient Egyptian ( r n kmt ; "speech of Egypt") is an extinct branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages that was spoken in ancient Egypt . It is known today from a large corpus of surviving texts, which were made accessible to the modern world following the decipherment of the ancient Egyptian scripts in the early 19th century. Egyptian is one of the earliest known written languages , first recorded in
238-547: A case system with at least two cases. Proto-Afroasiatic may have had marked nominative or ergative-absolutive alignment. A deverbal derivational prefix *mV- is also widely reconstructed. While there is disagreement about the forms of the PAA personal pronouns, there is agreement that there were independent and "bound" (unstressed, clitic ) forms. There is also agreement that a widespread demonstrative pattern of n = masculine and plural, t= feminine goes back to PAA, as well as about
357-599: A dental consonant but does co-occur with other pharyngeal consonants , it must itself have originally been a dental *d in Proto-Afroasiatic, which later became *ʕ in Egyptian. Rössler's ideas have come to dominate the field of Egyptology without, however, achieving general acceptance. Orin Gensler argues that Rössler's sound change is typologically extremely unlikely, though still possible, while many of
476-771: A literary language , and was also the language of the New Kingdom administration. Texts written wholly in Late Egyptian date to the Twentieth Dynasty of Egypt and later. Late Egyptian is represented by a large body of religious and secular literature , comprising such examples as the Story of Wenamun , the love poems of the Chester–Beatty I papyrus, and the Instruction of Any . Instructions became
595-518: A synthetic language , Egyptian by the Late Egyptian phase had become an analytic language . The relationship between Middle Egyptian and Late Egyptian has been described as being similar to that between Latin and Italian. The Late Egyptian stage is taken to have ended around the 8th century BC, giving rise to Demotic. Demotic is a later development of the Egyptian language written in the Demotic script , following Late Egyptian and preceding Coptic ,
714-410: A terminative case in -iš . Scholars debate whether these are vestigial cases or adverbial postpositions . The ending -iš has often been connected to the Egyptian postposition js and is sometimes used to reconstruct a Proto-Afroasiatic locative case. Diakonoff also believed he could reconstruct a comitative - dative case in *-dV or *-Vd , an ablative - comparative case in *-kV ,
833-557: A "directive" case in *-l , and an ablative case in *-p . A prefix mV- is the most widely attested affix in AA that is used to derive nouns. For PAA, its shape has variously been reconstructed as *ma- , *ma(i)- , *mV- , and *-m- . In the daughter languages, it is attested with a wide variety of meanings and functions, such as forming deverbal agent nouns , place nouns, instrument nouns, as well as participles. Erin Shay argues that *mV-
952-554: A consonant; consonants included in the pattern often involve gemination . If root-and-pattern morphology originated in Proto-Afroasiatic, then an explanation must be found for why it has mostly disappeared in the Omotic and Chadic branches; if it was not present in PAA, then an explanation must be found for why it developed independently in the Semitic, Egyptian, and Cushitic branches. Hans-Jürgen Sasse proposed that Proto-Afroasiatic
1071-464: A demonstrative *h- ('this/that') or *ha- ('this/that one'). The most common Afroasiatic interrogative pronoun is *mV , which Ehret reconstructs as *ma , *mi 'what?'. Diakonoff argued that *mV ultimately derived from a demonstrative stem *m- . Only the Semitic reflexes of this root have separate forms for animate ('"who?") and inanimate ("what?") referents. The Old Egyptian and Berber descendants both appear to be used regardless of whether
1190-405: A fact which has not yet been explained. Additionally, it is not always clear which words are cognates, as some proposed cognates may be chance resemblances. Moreover, at least some cognates are likely to have been altered irregularly due to analogical change , making them harder to recognize. As words change meaning over time, the question of which words might have originally meant the same thing
1309-432: A few branches, making them difficult to reconstruct. In addition to a singular and plural, Egyptian and Semitic attest a dual , the endings of which can be reconstructed respectively as Ancient Egyptian : * -a(y) and Semitic * -ā (nominative) and * -ay (oblique). These endings are very similar to each other, and due to the dual's attestation in the two earliest attested branches of Afroasiatic it
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#17327726399231428-556: A few have survived that were written in hieratic and (later) demotic. There was also a form of cursive hieroglyphs , used for religious documents on papyrus, such as the Book of the Dead of the Twentieth Dynasty ; it was simpler to write than the hieroglyphs in stone inscriptions, but it was not as cursive as hieratic and lacked the wide use of ligatures . Additionally, there was a variety of stone-cut hieratic, known as "lapidary hieratic". In
1547-495: A few specialists in the language. For all other purposes, the Egyptological pronunciation is used, but it often bears little resemblance to what is known of how Egyptian was pronounced. The following consonants are reconstructed for Archaic (before 2600 BC) and Old Egyptian (2686–2181 BC), with IPA equivalents in square brackets if they differ from the usual transcription scheme: / l / has no independent representation in
1666-528: A form of the copula 'to be' or a particle meaning 'self'. Afroasiatic languages attest a variety of determiners , only some of which are likely to derive from Proto-Afroasiatic. As first noticed by Joseph Greenberg , Afroasiatic languages in all branches but Omotic attest a series of third person agreement markers in the form n- (masculine), t- (feminine), and n- (plural), which probably derive from Proto-Afroasiatic determiners; Omotic attests t- (feminine) alone of this set. Additionally, Omotic attests
1785-663: A grammatical rather than a lexical function, and argue that there is thus no basis to reconstruct it as a lexical feature in PAA, as Diakonoff does; they find Ehret's reasoning more sound. Igor Diakonoff argues that Proto-Afroasiatic required a consonant at both the beginning of a syllable and the end of a word, and that only one consonant was possible at the beginning or end of a syllable. Zygmont Frajzyngier and Erin Shay note that these rules appear to be based on Semitic structures, whereas Chadic includes syllables beginning with vowels as well as initial and final consonant clusters. Christopher Ehret argues that all word stems in PAA took
1904-404: A marked nominative language. However, Abdelaziz Allati notes that, if PAA was originally ergative-aligned, it is unclear why both the attested ancient languages and modern AA languages predominantly have nominative-accusative alignment . Proto-Afroasiatic word order has not yet been established. Igor Diakonoff proposed that PAA had verb-subject-object word order (VSO word order), meaning that
2023-438: A masculine agreement form k- , while Chadic and Cushitic show a gender- and number-neutral form k- : both likely go back to a Proto-Afroasiatic determiner *k- , reconstructed by Ehret as *kaa 'this'. Diakonoff argues that in Proto-Afroasiatic these forms were originally demonstrative pronouns that later developed into third person personal pronouns in some branches and into genitive markers in others. Ehret also reconstructs
2142-608: A pluralizing morpheme in which a vowel *a was inserted between the two final consonants of the root, possibly replacing another vowel via apophony . However, Paul Newman has argued that while plurals via vowel alteration are frequent in Chadic, they cannot be reconstructed back to Proto-Chadic or Proto-Afroasiatic. Andréas Stauder likewise argues that Coptic and Egyptian plurals via vowel change may have developed independently. Lameen Souag argues that while some form of vowel-changing plural likely goes back to Proto-Afroasiatic, many of
2261-439: A popular literary genre of the New Kingdom, which took the form of advice on proper behavior. Late Egyptian was also the language of New Kingdom administration. Late Egyptian is not completely distinct from Middle Egyptian, as many "classicisms" appear in historical and literary documents of this phase. However, the difference between Middle and Late Egyptian is greater than the difference between Middle and Old Egyptian. Originally
2380-441: A scribe jokes that his colleague's writing is incoherent like "the speech of a Delta man with a man of Elephantine ." Recently, some evidence of internal dialects has been found in pairs of similar words in Egyptian that, based on similarities with later dialects of Coptic, may be derived from northern and southern dialects of Egyptian. Written Coptic has five major dialects, which differ mainly in graphic conventions, most notably
2499-522: A series of emphatic consonants , a three-vowel system /a i u/ , a nominal feminine suffix * -at , a nominal prefix m- , an adjectival suffix -ī and characteristic personal verbal affixes. Of the other Afroasiatic branches, linguists have variously suggested that the Egyptian language shares its greatest affinities with Berber and Semitic languages, particularly Arabic (which is spoken in Egypt today) and Hebrew . However, other scholars have argued that
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#17327726399232618-502: A stressed vowel (⟨ bjn ⟩ = */ˈbaːjin/ 'bad') and as ⟨ jj ⟩ word-medially immediately before a stressed vowel ( ⟨ḫꜥjjk⟩ = */χaʕˈjak/ 'you will appear') and are unmarked word-finally (⟨ jt ⟩ = /ˈjaːtVj/ 'father'). In Middle Egyptian (2055–1650 BC), a number of consonantal shifts take place. By the beginning of the Middle Kingdom period, / z / and / s / had merged, and
2737-508: A stressed vowel in syllables that had been closed in earlier Egyptian (compare ⲛⲟⲩⲃ < */ˈnaːbaw/ 'gold' and ⲧⲁⲡ < * /dib/ 'horn'). The phonemes /d g z/ occur only in Greek loanwords, with rare exceptions triggered by a nearby /n/ : ⲁⲛⲍⲏⲃⲉ/ⲁⲛⲥⲏⲃⲉ < ꜥ.t n.t sbꜣ.w 'school'. Earlier *d ḏ g q are preserved as ejective t' c' k' k ' before vowels in Coptic. Although
2856-409: A suffix *-Vb- used to mark harmful animals. Vladimir Orel also attests less well-defined uses for this suffix, while Ehret takes this as a suffix to mark animals and parts of the body. Afroasiatic languages today clearly distinguish singular and plural. One of the first features of Proto-Afroasiatic proposed by Joseph Greenberg was the existence of "internal-a plurals" (a type of broken plural ):
2975-661: A third consonant. As early as the Middle Ages, however, grammarians had noticed that some triradical roots in Arabic differed in only one consonant and had related meanings. According to supporters of original triradicalism such as Gideon Goldenberg, these variations are common in language and inconclusive for the matter. He compares phonetic similarity between words with similar meanings in English such as glow , gleam , glitter , glaze , and glade . Other scholars argue that
3094-483: A tonal system of at least two tonal phonemes, falling tone, rising tone, and possibly a third tone, level tone. Other scholars argue that Proto-AA had a pitch accent and some branches subsequently developed tone. Such scholars postulate that tones developed to compensate for lost or reduced syllables, and note that certain tones are often associated with certain syllable-final consonants. Zygmunt Frajzyngier and Erin Shay note that in AA tonal languages, tone usually has
3213-643: A transliteration of the corresponding Demotic "alphabetical" sign(s) in angle brackets ⟨ ⟩ . More changes occur in the 1st millennium BC and the first centuries AD, leading to Coptic (1st or 3rd – c. 19th centuries AD). In Sahidic ẖ ḫ ḥ had merged into ϣ š (most often from ḫ ) and ϩ / h / (most often ẖ ḥ ). Bohairic and Akhmimic are more conservative and have a velar fricative / x / ( ϧ in Bohairic, ⳉ in Akhmimic). Pharyngeal *ꜥ had merged into glottal / ʔ / after it had affected
3332-468: A two vowel system ( *a and *ə ), as supported by Berber and Chadic data, and then developing further vowels. Some scholars postulate that Proto-Afroasiatic was a tonal language, with tonality subsequently lost in some branches. Igor Diakonoff argued for the existence of tone based on his reconstruction of many otherwise homophonous words. Christopher Ehret instead takes the fact that three branches of AA have tone as his starting point; he has postulated
3451-464: A uniliteral hieroglyph. Egyptian scholar Gamal Mokhtar noted that the inventory of hieroglyphic symbols derived from "fauna and flora used in the signs [which] are essentially African", reflecting the local wildlife of North Africa, the Levant and southern Mediterranean. In "regards to writing, we have seen that a purely Nilotic, hence [North] African origin not only is not excluded, but probably reflects
3570-400: Is c. 4000 BCE , after which Egyptian and the Semitic languages are firmly attested. However, in all likelihood these languages began to diverge well before this hard boundary. The estimations offered by scholars as to when Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken vary widely, ranging from 18,000 BCE to 8,000 BCE. An estimate at the youngest end of this range still makes Afroasiatic
3689-480: Is a later development, which he associates primarily with Semitic. Helmut Satzinger has argued that the earliest form of conjugation in Afroasiatic was the so-called "prefix conjugation," a form found in Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic that uses prefixes to conjugate verbs for person, gender, and number. Other scholars ague that, as there is no evidence for the "prefix conjugation" in Omotic, Chadic, or Egyptian,
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3808-416: Is also a divergent proposal that has become popular among Egyptologists ; there is no agreement about PAA's vowels, the existence of tone , or its syllable structure. At the same time, scholars disagree to whether and to what extent the classical Semitic languages are a conservative, faithful representation of PAA morphology. This is particularly important for the question of whether the lexical roots in
3927-461: Is also accepted by Takács, but he reconstructs it as *ʔaw / *wa 'who?'. Diakonoff also reconstructs an interrogative adjective, *ayyV- , which he claims left traces in Semitic, Cushitic, and Omotic. Lipiński, on the other hand, holds this term to be Semitic and deriving from a particle ʔay 'where?'. Takács derives this particle from PAA *ʔay / *ya , a variant of *ʔaw / *wa 'who?'. Most morphological reconstruction for PAA has focused on
4046-470: Is also debate about whether some of the forms may have been nominal (using verbal nouns), or possibly participial or gerundival , rather than purely verbal. TAMs may have been indicated by both changes in the verb stem and the use of suffixes and prefixes. Some scholars argue that prefixes were used for "eventive" (describing things happening) aspects, as opposed to the "suffix conjugation," which described states. Abdelaziz Allati, however, argues that this
4165-409: Is also possible for forms closer to PAA to be preserved in languages recorded later, while languages recorded earlier may have forms that diverge more from PAA. In order to provide a more accurate reconstruction of Afroasiatic, it will be necessary to first reconstruct the proto-forms of the individual branches, a task which has proven difficult. As of 2023, there is only the beginning of a consensus on
4284-491: Is also usually reconstructed for the proto-language. The loss of the dual in the other branches over time is a well attested feature in languages, including within the Egyptian and Semitic branches themselves. There is widespread agreement that Proto-Afroasiatic had case inflexion . First proposed by Hans-Jürgen Sasse on the basis of his reconstruction of the Proto-Cushitic case system in 1984, Proto-Afroasiatic
4403-425: Is attested among the Semitic languages and may have been dialectal in origin. The forms of the personal pronouns are very stable throughout Afroasiatic (excluding Omotic), but there is no consensus on what the reconstructed set of Afroasiatic pronouns might have looked like. Most modern branches have an independent / absolute pronoun, an object pronoun, and a suffix /possessive pronoun. According to Igor Diakonoff,
4522-437: Is evidence for natural gender in all branches, including Omotic, perhaps marked originally by an opposition of PAA *-u (masculine) and *-i (feminine), as also found in the second person singular pronouns . In addition to grammatical gender, Igor Diakonoff argues that Afroasiatic languages show traces of a nominal classification system , which was already unproductive in the Proto-Afroasiatic stage. In particular, he noted
4641-436: Is found in the two oldest attested branches of the family. In the Semitic languages, the "nisba" is used to form adjectives, derive nouns for people associated with a place or profession, and to form hypercoristic names . In Egyptian, it forms adjectives and nouns from nouns and prepositions. The "nisba" is often assumed to be connected to the genitive case ending in Semitic and possibly Cushitic. Igor Diakonoff argued that
4760-429: Is likely that this is inherited from proto-Afroasiatic. Vladimir Orel and Olga Stolbova (1995) reconstruct 32 consonant phonemes, while Christopher Ehret reconstructs 42. Of these, twelve in both reconstructions rely on the same sound correspondences, while an additional eighteen rely on more or less the same sound correspondences. Both reconstructions also include a number of other consonants. While some of these are
4879-494: Is no evidence for this in Ancient Egyptian, Cushitic, or Chadic, perhaps indicating that there was no gender distinction in the plural in Proto-Afroasiatic. Chadic has both an inclusive and exclusive form of "we", which Igor Diakonoff and Václav Blažek reconstruct also for Proto-Afroasiatic. Helmut Satzinger has argued that Proto-Afroasiatic only distinguished between the "object" and "possessive" pronouns, deriving
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4998-449: Is not a contrastive feature; all obstruents are voiceless and all sonorants are voiced. Stops may be either aspirated or tenuis (unaspirated), although there is evidence that aspirates merged with their tenuis counterparts in certain environments. The following table presents the consonants of Demotic Egyptian. The reconstructed value of a phoneme is given in IPA transcription, followed by
5117-499: Is often difficult to answer. As a result, Robert Ratcliffe suggests that Proto-Afroasiatic may never be reconstructed in the same way that Proto-Indo-European has been. The current state of reconstruction is also hindered by the fact that the Egyptian and Semitic branches of Afroasiatic are attested as early as 3000 BCE, while the languages of the Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, and Omotic branches are only attested much later, sometimes in
5236-410: Is sometimes reserved for the earliest use of hieroglyphs, from the late fourth through the early third millennia BC. At the earliest stage, around 3300 BC, hieroglyphs were not a fully developed writing system , being at a transitional stage of proto-writing ; over the time leading up to the 27th century BC, grammatical features such as nisba formation can be seen to occur. Old Egyptian is dated from
5355-423: Is the best-documented variety of the language, and has attracted the most attention by far from Egyptology . While most Middle Egyptian is seen written on monuments by hieroglyphs, it was also written using a cursive variant , and the related hieratic . Middle Egyptian first became available to modern scholarship with the decipherment of hieroglyphs in the early 19th century. The first grammar of Middle Egyptian
5474-412: Is the only prefix in the AA phylum that clearly goes back to the proto-language rather than possibly being an areal feature . The precise meaning and origin of this prefix in PAA are debated. There is a long tradition of comparing the prefix to the interrogative pronoun *mā 'who'. Carsten Peust has suggested a common PAA origin for the prefix in forming nouns of place and instrument, but proposes that
5593-482: Is the reconstructed proto-language from which all modern Afroasiatic languages are descended. Though estimations vary widely, it is believed by scholars to have been spoken as a single language around 12,000 to 18,000 years ago (12 to 18 kya ), that is, between 16,000 and 10,000 BC . Although no consensus exists as to the location of the Afroasiatic homeland , the putative homeland of Proto-Afroasiatic speakers,
5712-406: Is the tripling of ideograms , phonograms, and determinatives to indicate the plural. Overall, it does not differ significantly from Middle Egyptian, the classical stage of the language, though it is based on a different dialect. In the period of the 3rd dynasty ( c. 2650 – c. 2575 BC ), many of the principles of hieroglyphic writing were regularized. From that time on, until
5831-500: Is the use of the prefix *ʔan-/*ʔin- , which appears in the Semitic and Old Egyptian first person independent pronouns, the Old Egyptian, Cushitic, and Semitic second person singular and plural pronouns, and the Old Egyptian and Berber third person singular and plural independent pronouns. While Ehret reconstructs this as the original form of the first person singular pronoun, other scholars argue that this element either represents
5950-518: Is usually reconstructed with a case system similar to Proto-Semitic. This gives a nominative ending *-u , accusative or absolutive *-a , and genitive *-i . Besides Proto-Semitic, evidence for these endings is derived from the Cushitic languages and has been argued to exist in Berber as well. The Egyptian nominal ending -w , found on some masculine nouns, may also be evidence of this system. Some evidence for nominative -u may also exist from
6069-456: Is widely agreed to have been present in Proto-Afroasiatic. However, Russell Schuh argues that there was no gender distinction in the plural, as this feature is found only in Semitic and Berber (see also personal pronouns ). Christopher Ehret argues against the consensus that grammatical gender existed in Proto-Afroasiatic, arguing that its development is an isogloss separating all other Afroasiatic languages from Omotic, which alone preserves
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#17327726399236188-409: The *mV- prefix used in agent nouns and participles is actually a post-PAA development, derived from the interrogative pronoun *mā 'who'. Christopher Ehret, meanwhile, proposes that the prefix did not exist in PAA at all, but is a later development from the interrogative pronoun. Gábor Takács and Andrzej Zaborski both reject a connection to *mā entirely; Takács instead suggests that a connection to
6307-563: The Coptic Catholic Church . Most hieroglyphic Egyptian texts are written in a literary prestige register rather than the vernacular speech variety of their author. As a result, dialectical differences are not apparent in written Egyptian until the adoption of the Coptic alphabet . Nevertheless, it is clear that these differences existed before the Coptic period. In one Late Egyptian letter (dated c. 1200 BC ),
6426-474: The Moscow School of Comparative Linguistics including Igor Diakonoff and Alexander Militarev includes also *pʼ, *tɬ, *ʃ, *kx⁽ʷ⁾, *gɣ⁽ʷ⁾, *kxʼ⁽ʷ⁾, *x⁽ʷ⁾. Taking Ehret's labialized velars as equivalent to Orel and Stolbova's non-labialized set, and taking Ehret's extra nasals as equivalent to Orel and Stolbova's <n>, the two reconstructions mostly agree on the following correspondences between
6545-616: The Roman era , diversified into various Coptic dialects . These were eventually supplanted by Arabic after the Muslim conquest of Egypt , although Bohairic Coptic remains in use as the liturgical language of the Coptic Church . The Egyptian language branch belongs to the Afroasiatic language family . Among the typological features of Egyptian that are typically Afroasiatic are its fusional morphology, nonconcatenative morphology ,
6664-519: The article wizard to submit a draft for review, or request a new article . Search for " R n kmt " in existing articles. Look for pages within Misplaced Pages that link to this title . Other reasons this message may be displayed: If a page was recently created here, it may not be visible yet because of a delay in updating the database; wait a few minutes or try the purge function . Titles on Misplaced Pages are case sensitive except for
6783-588: The hieroglyphic and hieratic scripts. Demotic is the name of the script derived from the hieratic beginning in the 7th century BC. The Coptic alphabet was derived from the Greek alphabet , with adaptations for Egyptian phonology. It was first developed in the Ptolemaic period , and gradually replaced the Demotic script in about the 4th to 5th centuries of the Christian era. The term "Archaic Egyptian"
6902-496: The hieroglyphic script in the late 4th millennium BC . It is also the longest-attested human language, with a written record spanning over 4,000 years. Its classical form, known as " Middle Egyptian ," served as the vernacular of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt and remained the literary language of Egypt until the Roman period . By the time of classical antiquity , the spoken language had evolved into Demotic , and by
7021-410: The "nisba" was an "expanded" form of the genitive suffix: he reconstructs the "nisba" suffix as *-iya or -*ī ; he also suggests the existence of a variant *-uwa . Lipiński suggests that the "nisba" originated as a postposition, which was also used to create the genitive case. Christopher Ehret argues that the original form of the suffix was -*iy and also reconstructs a form -*ay . This latter form
7140-526: The 20th century. The long history of scholarship of the Semitic languages compared to other branches is another obstacle in reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic; typical features of Semitic have often been projected back to the proto-language, despite their cross-linguistic rarity and lack of correspondences in other branches. Like cognates, shared morphological features tend to disappear over time, as can be demonstrated within Afroasiatic by comparing Old Egyptian (2600–2000 BCE) with Coptic (after 200 CE). Yet it
7259-607: The Egyptian language shared closer linguistic ties with northeastern African regions. There are two theories that seek to establish the cognate sets between Egyptian and Afroasiatic, the traditional theory and the neuere Komparatistik , founded by Semiticist Otto Rössler. According to the neuere Komparatistik , in Egyptian, the Proto-Afroasiatic voiced consonants */d z ð/ developed into pharyngeal ⟨ꜥ⟩ /ʕ/ : Egyptian ꜥr.t 'portal', Semitic dalt 'door'. The traditional theory instead disputes
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#17327726399237378-482: The Egyptian preposition m needs further consideration, while Zaborski argues for a connection to a verb *VmV- 'to be'. The term "nisba" refers to a suffix found in the Semitic ( -iy ) and Egyptian ( -j ) branches, with possible relict traces in Berber. A related suffix -āwi occurs in Arabic and possibly Egyptian, as suggested by e.g. ḥmww 'craftsman', from ḥmt 'craft'. Carsten Peust argues that this suffix descends from Proto-Afroasiatic, as it
7497-413: The Omotic branch. By the evidence of Semitic, in the dual and plural , only the nominative and an oblique were distinguished. David Wilson, on the other hand, argues that the case endings are often not cognate in the individual branches of Afroasiatic and that this precludes their reconstruction for the proto-language. Old Akkadian and Palaeosyrian have two additional cases, a locative in -um and
7616-555: The PAA root may have originally been mostly biradical, to which a third radical was then added. Christopher Ehret argues that the third consonants were derivational affixes, proposing as many as thirty-seven separate verbal extensions that subsequently became fossilized as third consonants. This theory has been criticized by some, such as Andrzej Zaborski and Alan Kaye, as being too many extensions to be realistic, though Zygmont Frajzyngier and Erin Shay note that some Chadic languages have as many as twelve extensions. An alternative model
7735-420: The PAA root was originally biradical but saw the biradical roots outside of Semitic as largely the result of losing a third consonant. Afroasiatic languages feature a "root-and-pattern" ( nonconcatenative ) system of morphology, in which the root consists of consonants alone and vowels are inserted via apophony according to "templates" to create words. A "template" consists of one or more vowels and sometimes
7854-541: The Semitic preference for triradical roots. Egyptian is probably more conservative, and Semitic likely underwent later regularizations converting roots into the triradical pattern. Although Egyptian is the oldest Afroasiatic language documented in written form, its morphological repertoire is very different from that of the rest of the Afroasiatic languages in general, and Semitic languages in particular. There are multiple possibilities: perhaps Egyptian had already undergone radical changes from Proto-Afroasiatic before it
7973-458: The addition of a consonant. Not all triradical roots can be convincingly explained as coming from biradicals, and there are cases in which triradical roots with similar meanings appear to differ in one consonant due to root-internal changes or derivation via rhyme. Andréas Stauder argues that the evidence from Ancient Egyptian shows that both tri- and biradical verbs were probably present in Proto-Afroasiatic. Igor Diakonoff, in contrast, argued that
8092-475: The central vowels *e and *o could not occur together in the same root. Taking a different approach, Ronny Meyer and H. Ekkehard Wolff propose that Proto-Afroasiatic may have had no vowels as such, instead employing various syllabic consonants (*l, *m, *n, *r) and semivowels or semivowel-like consonants (*w, *y, *ʔ, *ḥ, *ʕ, *h, *ʔʷ, *ḥʷ, *ʕʷ, *hʷ) to form syllables; vowels would have later been inserted into these syllables ("vocalogenesis"), developing first into
8211-610: The definite article ⲡ is unaspirated when the next word begins with a glottal stop: Bohairic ⲡ + ⲱⲡ > ⲡⲱⲡ 'the account'. The consonant system of Coptic is as follows: Here is the vowel system reconstructed for earlier Egyptian: Vowels are always short in unstressed syllables ( ⟨tpj⟩ = */taˈpij/ 'first') and long in open stressed syllables ( ⟨rmṯ⟩ = */ˈraːmac/ 'man'), but they can be either short or long in closed stressed syllables ( ⟨jnn⟩ = */jaˈnan/ 'we', ⟨mn⟩ = */maːn/ 'to stay'). r n kmt From Misplaced Pages,
8330-473: The different branches of Afroasiatic: Additionally, there is another proposal for the sound correspondences between – and phonetic values of – Egyptian and Semitic consonants. This second theory is known as neuere Komparatistik and was first proposed by Semiticist Otto Rössler on the basis of consonant incompatibilities . In particular, Rössler argued that, since the hieroglyph conventionally transcribed as <ʿ> and described as *ʕ never co-occurs with
8449-427: The difficulty in reconstruction is likely related to the use of vowel changes known as apophony (or "ablaut") in the "root-and-pattern" system found in various Afroasiatic languages. In addition to apophony, some modern AA languages display vowel changes referred to as umlaut . Igor Diakonoff, Viktor Porkhomovksy and Olga Stolbova proposed in 1987 that Proto-Afroasiatic had a two vowel system of *a and *ə , with
8568-635: The emphatic consonants were realised is unknown. Early research had assumed that the opposition in stops was one of voicing, but it is now thought to be either one of tenuis and emphatic consonants , as in many Semitic languages, or one of aspirated and ejective consonants , as in many Cushitic languages . Since vowels were not written until Coptic, reconstructions of the Egyptian vowel system are much more uncertain and rely mainly on evidence from Coptic and records of Egyptian words, especially proper nouns, in other languages/writing systems. The actual pronunciations reconstructed by such means are used only by
8687-437: The end of a stressed syllable and eventually null word-finally: ⟨pḏ.t⟩ */ˈpiːɟat/ > Akkadian transcription -pi-ta 'bow'. The most important source of information about Demotic phonology is Coptic. The consonant inventory of Demotic can be reconstructed on the basis of evidence from the Coptic dialects. Demotic orthography is relatively opaque . The Demotic "alphabetical" signs are mostly inherited from
8806-442: The etymologies proposed in support of the theory have been attacked by Gábor Takács. The most important sound correspondences in the neuere Komparatistik that differ from the traditional understanding are: Attempts to reconstruct the vocalic system of Proto-Afroasiatic vary considerably. While there is no consensus, many scholars prefer to reconstruct a simple three vowel system with long and short *a , *i , and *u . Some of
8925-444: The existence of an interrogative pronoun *mV , which may not have distinguished animacy . There is some agreement that the PAA verb had two or possibly three basic forms, though there is disagreement about what those forms were and what tenses, aspects, or moods they expressed. There is also widespread agreement that there were possibly two sets of conjugational affixes (prefixes and suffixes) used for different purposes. Additionally,
9044-443: The first character; please check alternative capitalizations and consider adding a redirect here to the correct title. If the page has been deleted, check the deletion log , and see Why was the page I created deleted? Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_n_kmt " Proto-Afroasiatic Proto-Afroasiatic ( PAA ), also known as Proto-Hamito-Semitic , Proto-Semito-Hamitic , and Proto-Afrasian ,
9163-547: The first known Coptic text, still pagan ( Old Coptic ), from the 1st century AD. Coptic survived into the medieval period, but by the 16th century was dwindling rapidly due to the persecution of Coptic Christians under the Mamluks . It probably survived in the Egyptian countryside as a spoken language for several centuries after that. Coptic survives as the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church and
9282-450: The forms of the pronouns in the other branches show evidence of marked nominative alignment. Igor Diakonoff instead argued that Proto-Afroasiatic was an ergative-absolutive language, in which the ergative case marks the subject of transitive verbs and the absolutive case marks both the object of transitive verbs and the subject of intransitive verbs. Satzinger suggests that Proto-Afroasiatic may have developed from ergative-absolutive to
9401-891: The 💕 Look for R n kmt on one of Misplaced Pages's sister projects : [REDACTED] Wiktionary (dictionary) [REDACTED] Wikibooks (textbooks) [REDACTED] Wikiquote (quotations) [REDACTED] Wikisource (library) [REDACTED] Wikiversity (learning resources) [REDACTED] Commons (media) [REDACTED] Wikivoyage (travel guide) [REDACTED] Wikinews (news source) [REDACTED] Wikidata (linked database) [REDACTED] Wikispecies (species directory) Misplaced Pages does not have an article with this exact name. Please search for R n kmt in Misplaced Pages to check for alternative titles or spellings. You need to log in or create an account and be autoconfirmed to create new articles. Alternatively, you can use
9520-653: The graphemes ⟨s⟩ and ⟨z⟩ are used interchangeably. In addition, / j / had become / ʔ / word-initially in an unstressed syllable (⟨ jwn ⟩ /jaˈwin/ > */ʔaˈwin/ "colour") and after a stressed vowel ( ⟨ḥjpw⟩ */ˈħujpVw/ > /ˈħeʔp(Vw)/ '[the god] Apis'). In Late Egyptian (1069–700 BC), the phonemes d ḏ g gradually merge with their counterparts t ṯ k ( ⟨dbn⟩ */ˈdiːban/ > Akkadian transcription ti-ba-an 'dbn-weight'). Also, ṯ ḏ often become /t d/ , but they are retained in many lexemes ; ꜣ becomes / ʔ / ; and /t r j w/ become / ʔ / at
9639-458: The great amount of time since Afroasiatic split into branches, there are limits to what scholars can reconstruct. Cognates tend to disappear from related languages over time. There are currently not many widely accepted Afroasiatic cognates, and it is difficult to derive sound correspondence rules from a small number of examples. The most convincing cognates in Afroasiatic often have the same or very similar consonants but very different vowels,
9758-433: The hieroglyphic orthography, and it is frequently written as if it were / n / or / r / . That is probably because the standard for written Egyptian is based on a dialect in which / l / had merged with other sonorants. Also, the rare cases of / ʔ / occurring are not represented. The phoneme / j / is written as ⟨ j ⟩ in the initial position (⟨ jt ⟩ = */ˈjaːtVj/ 'father') and immediately after
9877-517: The hieroglyphic script, and due to historical sound changes they do not always map neatly onto Demotic phonemes . However, the Demotic script does feature certain orthographic innovations, such as the use of the sign h̭ for / ç /, which allow it to represent sounds that were not present in earlier forms of Egyptian. The Demotic consonants can be divided into two primary classes: obstruents ( stops , affricates and fricatives ) and sonorants ( approximants , nasals , and semivowels ). Voice
9996-427: The importance of verbal gemination and reduplication and the existence of three derivational affixes, especially of a causative -*s-, are commonly reconstructed. A numeral system cannot be reconstructed, although numerous PAA numerals and cognate sets from 1 to 9 have been proposed. There is no consensus as to when Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken. The absolute latest date for when Proto-Afroasiatic could have been extant
10115-450: The independent pronouns via various processes in the branches. He argues that the independent pronouns derive from various strategies combining pronominal elements with different nominal or pronominal bases. Václav Blažek reconstructs an original set of independent pronouns but argues that the ones found in most current Afroasiatic languages arose by a process of suppletion similar to that argued by Satzinger. An example of one such process
10234-561: The individual daughter languages. Most reconstructions agree that PAA had three series of obstruents ( plosives , fricatives , and affricates ) and that the continuants were all voiceless. There is also general agreement that obstruents were organized in triads of voiceless, voiced, and "emphatic" (possibly glottalized ) consonants, and that PAA included pharyngeal and laryngeal consonants . Disagreement exists about whether there were labialized velar consonants. Several Afroasiatic languages have large consonant inventories, and it
10353-622: The language were originally mostly biradical or triradical , that is, whether they originally had two or three consonants. It also plays into the question of the degree to which Proto-Afroasiatic had root-and-pattern morphology , as most fully displayed in the Semitic , Egyptian , and Cushitic branches. There are nonetheless some items of agreement and reconstructed vocabulary. Most scholars agree that Proto-Afroasiatic nouns had grammatical gender , at least two and possibly three grammatical numbers (singular, plural, and possibly dual ), as well as
10472-464: The language's final stage of development, the Coptic alphabet replaced the older writing system. Hieroglyphs are employed in two ways in Egyptian texts: as ideograms to represent the idea depicted by the pictures and, more commonly, as phonograms to represent their phonetic value. As the phonetic realization of Egyptian cannot be known with certainty, Egyptologists use a system of transliteration to denote each sound that could be represented by
10591-433: The later realized as [i] or [u] depending on its contact with labial or labialized consonants . Christopher Ehret has proposed a five vowel system with long and short *a , *e , *o , *i , and *u , arguing that his reconstruction is supported by the Chadic and Cushitic vowels. Vladimir Orel and Olga Stolbova instead proposed a six vowel system with *a , *e , *o , *i , *ü ([ y ]), and *u ; they further argued that
10710-406: The latter of which it shares much with. In the earlier stages of Demotic, such as those texts written in the early Demotic script, it probably represented the spoken idiom of the time. However, as its use became increasingly confined to literary and religious purposes, the written language diverged more and more from the spoken form, leading to significant diglossia between the late Demotic texts and
10829-706: The majority of scholars agree that it was located within a region of Northeast Africa . The reconstruction of Proto-Afroasiatic is problematic and has not progressed to the degree found in Indo-European linguistics . The immense amount of time over which the branches have been separated, coupled with the wide gap between the attestations of the original branches (3rd millennium BC for Egyptian and Semitic, 19th and 20th centuries for many Chadic , Cushitic , and Omotic languages ) mean that determining sound correspondences has not yet been possible. In addition to more traditional proposed consonant correspondences, there
10948-459: The oldest known complete sentence, including a finite verb , which has been found. Discovered in the tomb of Seth-Peribsen (dated c. 2690 BC ), the seal impression reads: Extensive texts appear from about 2600 BC. An early example is the Diary of Merer . The Pyramid Texts are the largest body of literature written in this phase of the language. One of its distinguishing characteristics
11067-485: The oldest proven language family. Contrasting proposals of an early emergence, Tom Güldemann has argued that less time may have been required for the divergence than is usually assumed, as it is possible for a language to rapidly restructure due to areal contact , with the evolution of Chadic (and likely also Omotic) serving as pertinent examples. At present, there is no commonly accepted reconstruction of Afroasiatic morphology, grammar, syntax, or phonology. Because of
11186-531: The original gender system of Afroasiatic had masculine endings *-y/*-w (later *-Vy / *-Vw ) and feminine endings *-H/*-y (later *-āʔ / *-āy ), the later of which was later ousted by feminine *-(a)t on nouns. Marijn van Putten has reconstructed a feminine ending *-ay/*-āy from Semitic and Berber evidence: he argues that this ending comes down from the last common ancestor of Berber and Semitic, which may be Proto-Afroasiatic. Despite arguing that Proto-Afroasiatic had no grammatical gender, Ehret argues that there
11305-465: The original, genderless grammar of the proto-language. Other scholars such as Lionel Bender argue that Omotic has lost grammatical gender despite originally having had it. A feminine morpheme -Vt is found widely in Afroasiatic languages. Lameen Souag argues that this feminine ending -t is probably a case of a grammaticalized demonstrative , as this feature has also independently developed in some Chadic and Cushitic languages. Diakonoff argued that
11424-406: The prefix conjugation may be a shared innovation in Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic. In those languages where it appears, the "prefix conjugation" is used with two stems, with Igor Diakonoff identifying one as perfective/punctual as well as jussive, and the other with the imperfective. These stems may also be known as "short form" (=perfective) and "long form" (=imperfective). Assuming a PAA origin,
11543-399: The prefixes can be reconstructed as agreeing with the forms of the "bound" personal pronouns in having *n- for first person plural, *t- for second person plural and singular and feminine third person singular, and *y/*i- for third person masculine and third person plural; the form of the first person singular is unclear, but may be *ʔ- . The prefixes may have originally developed from
11662-509: The quality of the surrounding vowels. / ʔ / is not indicated orthographically unless it follows a stressed vowel; then, it is marked by doubling the vowel letter (except in Bohairic): Akhmimic ⳉⲟⲟⲡ /xoʔp/ , Sahidic and Lycopolitan ϣⲟⲟⲡ šoʔp , Bohairic ϣⲟⲡ šoʔp 'to be' < ḫpr.w * /ˈχapraw/ 'has become'. The phoneme ⲃ / b / was probably pronounced as a fricative [ β ] , becoming ⲡ / p / after
11781-868: The reality" that the geographical location of Egypt is, of course, in Africa. While the consonantal phonology of the Egyptian language may be reconstructed, the exact phonetics is unknown, and there are varying opinions on how to classify the individual phonemes. In addition, because Egyptian is recorded over a full 2,000 years, the Archaic and Late stages being separated by the amount of time that separates Old Latin from Modern Italian , significant phonetic changes must have occurred during that lengthy time frame. Phonologically, Egyptian contrasted labial, alveolar, palatal, velar, uvular, pharyngeal, and glottal consonants. Egyptian also contrasted voiceless and emphatic consonants, as with other Afroasiatic languages, but exactly how
11900-420: The reconstruction of Proto-Semitic , and no widely accepted reconstruction of any of the other branches' proto-forms. Current attempts at reconstructing Afroasiatic often rely on comparing individual words or features in the daughter languages, which leads to results that are not convincing to many scholars. There is currently no consensus on the consonant phonemes of Afroasiatic or on their correspondences in
12019-443: The referent is a person or thing. It is therefore not clear if this pronoun differentiated animacy in Proto-Afroasiatic. Lack of differentiation between "who?" and "what?" is also sporadically attested in Semitic and Cushitic, but appears to be absent in Chadic; most modern AA languages use different lexical roots to make the distinction. Ehret also reconstructs a second interrogative *wa-/*wi- 'what?'. The PAA origin of this form
12138-595: The same graphemes are used for the pulmonic stops ( ⟨ ⲧ ϫ ⲕ ⟩ ), the existence of the former may be inferred because the stops ⟨ ⲡ ⲧ ϫ ⲕ ⟩ /p t c k/ are allophonically aspirated [pʰ tʰ cʰ kʰ] before stressed vowels and sonorant consonants. In Bohairic, the allophones are written with the special graphemes ⟨ ⲫ ⲑ ϭ ⲭ ⟩ , but other dialects did not mark aspiration: Sahidic ⲡⲣⲏ , Bohairic ⲫⲣⲏ 'the sun'. Thus, Bohairic does not mark aspiration for reflexes of older *d ḏ g q : Sahidic and Bohairic ⲧⲁⲡ */dib/ 'horn'. Also,
12257-768: The same, they rely on correspondences in the daughter languages which cannot be reconciled. For instance, although both Ehret and Orel and Stolbova reconstruct *tʼ , Ehret gives its Egyptian correspondence as s , while Orel and Stolbova give it as d and t ; and though both reconstruct PAA *tlʼ , Ehret gives its Arabic correspondence as ṣ , while Orel and Stolbova give it as ḍ . Additionally, Ehret has reconstructed 11 consonants not found in Orel and Stolbova, while Orel and Stolbova have reconstructed 2 not found in Ehret. The additional consonants are: An earlier, larger reconstruction from 1992 by Orel, Stolbova and other collaborators from
12376-431: The script was supplanted by an early version of Coptic (about the third and fourth centuries), the system remained virtually unchanged. Even the number of signs used remained constant at about 700 for more than 2,000 years. Middle Egyptian was spoken for about 700 years, beginning around 2000 BC, during the Middle Kingdom and the subsequent Second Intermediate Period . As the classical variant of Egyptian, Middle Egyptian
12495-477: The shape CV (with a possible alternate form VC) and CVC, with suffixes often giving the syllabic shape CVCC. David Wilson agrees with Diakonoff that the root syllable could only begin with a single consonant, but adds a requirement that syllables have two mora weight and argues for the possibility of an extra-syllabic consonant at the end of a root (CVC-C or CV:C). The degree to which the Proto-AA verbal root
12614-476: The southern Saidic dialect, the main classical dialect, and the northern Bohairic dialect, currently used in Coptic Church services. Most surviving texts in the Egyptian language are written on stone in hieroglyphs . The native name for Egyptian hieroglyphic writing is zẖꜣ n mdw-nṯr ("writing of the gods' words"). In antiquity, most texts were written on the quite perishable medium of papyrus though
12733-618: The spoken language of the time, similar to the use of classical Middle Egyptian during the Ptolemaic Period. Coptic is the name given to the late Egyptian vernacular when it was written in a Greek-based alphabet, the Coptic alphabet; it flourished from the time of Early Christianity (c. 31/33–324) , but Egyptian phrases written in the Greek alphabet first appeared during the Hellenistic period c. 3rd century BC , with
12852-620: The suffix/possessive pronoun was originally used as the object of verbs and to show a possessive relationship, the "independent" pronoun served to show emphasis, and the "object" pronoun was used to mark the subject of intransitive verbs and the direct object of transitive verbs. All Afroasiatic branches differentiate between masculine and feminine third person singular pronouns, and all except for Cushitic and Omotic also differentiate between second person singular masculine and feminine pronouns. Semitic and Berber also differentiate between masculine and feminine second and third person plural, but there
12971-663: The templates found in the branches likely do not. Several Afroasiatic languages of the Semitic, Chadic, and Cushitic branches attest pluralization via reduplication , a feature which has often been assumed to go back to Proto-Afroasiatic. Robert Ratcliffe has instead argued that this reduplicating pattern originated after PAA, as a way to allow biradical nouns to insert "internal-a," a process which then became generalized to other roots in some languages; as an alternative hypothesis, they may have developed from forms with plural suffixes. Afroasiatic languages also use several pluralizing affixes – few of these, however, are present in more than
13090-641: The values given to those consonants by the neuere Komparatistik , instead connecting ⟨ꜥ⟩ with Semitic /ʕ/ and /ɣ/ . Both schools agree that Afroasiatic */l/ merged with Egyptian ⟨n⟩ , ⟨r⟩ , ⟨ꜣ⟩ , and ⟨j⟩ in the dialect on which the written language was based, but it was preserved in other Egyptian varieties. They also agree that original */k g ḳ/ palatalise to ⟨ṯ j ḏ⟩ in some environments and are preserved as ⟨k g q⟩ in others. The Egyptian language has many biradical and perhaps monoradical roots, in contrast to
13209-745: The verb would come first in most sentences. Carsten Peust likewise supports VSO word order, as this is found in the two oldest attested branches, Egyptian and Semitic. However, Ronny Meyer and H. Ekkehard Wolff argue that this proposal does not concord with Diakonoff's suggestion that PAA was an ergative-absolutive language, in which subject and object are not valid categories. Zygmont Frajzyngier and Erin Shay further note that, if Proto-Afroasiatic had VSO word order, then an explanation must be found for why two of its branches, Omotic and Cushitic, show subject–object–verb word order (SOV word order). Both sets of scholars argue that this area needs more research. A system of sex-based male and female grammatical gender
13328-404: The verb, with categories found in Semitic languages such as aspect , voice , and person . There is little agreement about which tenses, aspects, or moods ( TAMs ) Proto-Afroasiatic might have had: it may have had two basic forms (indicative vs. subjunctive, state vs. action, transitive vs. intransitive, or perfective vs. imperfective) or three (unmarked vs. perfective vs. imperfective). There
13447-400: Was a marked nominative language, in which the nominative case is only used to mark the subject of a verb, whereas an absolutive case is the citation form of the noun and also marks the object. Evidence for marked nominative alignment comes primarily from the use of cases in Cushitic and the so-called "states" of the noun in Berber languages; additionally, Helmut Satzinger has argued that
13566-404: Was originally triradical (having three consonants) or biradical (having two consonants) is debated. Among the modern branches, most Semitic roots are triradical, whereas most Chadic, Omotic, and Cushitic roots are biradical. The "traditional theory" argues for original triradicalism in the family, as is the case in Semitic. In this theory, almost all biradical roots are the result of the loss of
13685-536: Was proposed by Georges Bohas , who argued that the third consonants were added to differentiate roots of similar meaning but without the third consonant having a particular meaning itself. Biradical verbs may also have been made triradical on the model of so-called "weak verbs," which have a final radical y or w . Many scholars do not argue for the original nature of either biradical or triradical roots, instead arguing that there are original triradical roots, original biradical roots, and triradical roots resulting from
13804-426: Was published by Adolf Erman in 1894, surpassed in 1927 by Alan Gardiner 's work. Middle Egyptian has been well-understood since then, although certain points of the verbal inflection remained open to revision until the mid-20th century, notably due to the contributions of Hans Jakob Polotsky . The Middle Egyptian stage is taken to have ended around the 14th century BC, giving rise to Late Egyptian. This transition
13923-415: Was recorded; or the Afroasiatic family has so far been studied with an excessively Semitocentric approach; or, as G. W. Tsereteli suggests, Afroasiatic is a sprachbund , rather than a true genetic language family. The Egyptian language can be grouped thus: The Egyptian language is conventionally grouped into six major chronological divisions: Old, Middle, and Late Egyptian were all written using both
14042-529: Was taking place in the later period of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt (known as the Amarna Period ). Original Old Egyptian and Middle Egyptian texts were still used after the 14th century BCE. And an emulation of predominately Middle Egyptian, but also with characteristics of Old Egyptian, Late Egyptian and Demotic, called " Égyptien de tradition " or "Neo-Middle Egyptian" by scholars,
14161-606: Was used as a literary language for new texts since the later New Kingdom in official and religious hieroglyphic and hieratic texts in preference to Late Egyptian or Demotic. Égyptien de tradition as a religious language survived until the Christianisation of Roman Egypt in the 4th century. Late Egyptian was spoken for about 650 years, beginning around 1350 BC, during the New Kingdom of Egypt . Late Egyptian succeeded but did not fully supplant Middle Egyptian as
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