The conjunctive is still the most mystifying clause-form in Egyptian, from LE through Demotic to Coptic. For several reasons, including its shadowy origins and puzzling morphology, but especially because of its elusive semantics and syntactic properties, and indeed, its syntactic essentials, it is still not clearly understood and probably often misinterpreted. […]

While the usual paradigmatic (binary or “polyvalent”) conception of grammatical opposition as envisaged by the Geneva, Prague and Copenhagen structural schools is unidimensional, representing the tension between two poles, more complex oppositions are often observable. These are “disjointable” i.e. decomposable and resolvable into two or more “simple” paradigms, yet, in actual linguistic reality, constitute multifaceted categories. […]

A major dialect of Coptic, called “Memphitic”, ‘the northern dialect”, or “dialect of Lower Egypt” in earlier terminology, or simply “Coptic” in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century treatises, Bohairic being the first Coptic dialect with which Western scholarship became aquainted. “Bohairic” (B) was first used by Stern (1880, p. xii).

Sahidic (siglum S) is a major Coptic dialect, earlier known as Upper Egyptian, Theban, or the southern dialect; the term “Sahidic”, used by Athanasius of Quṣ, was adopted by Stern (1880). In twentieth-century Coptology, S has been the main dialect of study and research—indeed Coptic par excellencem today totally supplanting Bohairic in this respect (compare, for instance, its precedence in Crum, 1939, to that of Bohairic in Stern, 1880). […]

“Shenutean Coptic” is the term applied to the idiom, including the grammatical norm and stylistic-phraseological usage, observable in the corpus of writing by the archimandrite Apa Shenute (334–451), outstanding among Coptic literary sources in that it constitutes the single most extensive homogenous and authentic testo di lingua for Sahidic and Coptic in general. […]

In the following pages, I wish to scan a neglected, if familiar, construction of Coptic for some of its most striking formal and functional, paradigmatic and syntagmatic aspects of significance nd implications. I refer to the construction sometimes called the “tautological”, “absolute”, or paronomastic infinitive, in which an infinitive is followed by a homolexemic (or otherwise related) finite verbal form, the two constituting together a single clause pattern: […]

The present investigation, which is to be view as a seminal or pilot study of proper-name grammar in Coptic rather than a definitive “Grammar of Proper Names”, attempts to observe the PN environmentally (in both syntagmatic and paradigmatic dimensions of grammatical environment, examining commutabilities and compatibilities), its syntactic incorporation, especially its signalling — the formal means for its distinction from other nominal and pronominals; its structural role, identity and role relationships. […]

This series of notes is meant to suggest and define relevant issues and systemic implications, reflecting on certain not unimportant grammatical phenomena of Demotic. They constitute annotated documentation or record, combining the time-honoured categories of “Miszellen”, “Lesefrüchte”, and “Vermischte Beiträge” (In the spirit of A. Tobler’s [1886–1912], on Old French and Romance syntax. Often, they suggest diachronic “tie-ins” between comparable Demotic and Coptic facts, and almost always they have direct bearing on locus interpretation. The evidence adduced is predominantly local or incidental and lays no claim to exhaustiveness, the discussion suggestive and not definitive; its chief justification is in putting the discussed phenomena in systemic perspective and “opening pigeonholes” for further documentation and consideration.

A review article of Éric Doret, The Narrative Verbal System of Old and Middle Egyptian.The importance of the narrative parole to descriptive grammar is (esp. in a written or dead language) greater than that of dialogue, because of the heavier contribution of pragmatic factors and circumstances in the latter case; that is, in narrative these are “segmented” and cotextually given and the “environmental” factor is therefore much more considerably textual. This makes the book under review so important as a comprehensive component study of Egyptian grammar in general and an account of the Old and Middle Egyptian verb in particular.[…]

In a review article of the first edition of the Hieratic text in P. Vandier, an attempt is made to locate the linguistic usage of the story on the recto in Egyptian diachrony. Taken as a corpus consistently and coherently representative and état de langue, the text is systematically scanned for grammatical features and feature clusters as cumulative indications of affinity with Late Egyptian or alternatively Demotic. The Hieratic script notwithstanding, the linguistic picture observed — remarkably rich and varied — is that of an Early Demotic linguistic system, strikingly similar to that of P. Rylands IX. The evidence points insistently to Demotic (or post-LE) typology, while presenting virtually no unambiguous evidence of Late Egyptian grammar associations.[…]

(I). Aims and conception. The following reasoned collection of text is intended to serve as a means for acquiring acquaintance with the elements of Sahidic Coptic grammar, giving the student the competence and confidence which should enable him to deal subsequently with any Coptic text as far as grammatical analysis and translation is concerned; it is meant for students approaching the language for its general linguistic, Egyptological, theological or literary interests. This is neither a grammar, nor a textbook, not yet an “Introduction to Coptic”, but a custom-built annotated anthology meant as a one-year (approx. 40 weeks, 4 to 6 weekly hours) course of initiation into the analysis of Coptic texts, expressly meant as a substitute to so-called “grammars”. […]

The book before us [Callender’s Studies in the Nominal Sentence in Egyptian and Coptic] is not a reworking of the author’s 1970 University of Chicago dissertation — and this is a disappointment, for here one misses much important information on the Nominal Sentence (NS) which was provided in the dissertation, such as predicate constituency (Chap. I), predicate determination (II) and apposition (V). Yet the present monograph merits more attention than might seem called for at first glance; more, indeed, than is warranted by its contribution to our understanding of the grammatical phenomena discussed. For this is the first time that a method-conscious linguist treats this issue comprehensively, in a way representative of a major methodological trend of present-day Egyptology: the generative-transformational method.[…]

This book is not a Coptic grammar, nor is it cast in the semblance of one: it is a series of studies of a fairly central area of Coptic syntax, a detailed systematic charting of a subsystem or more or less continuous range of grammatical phenomena.

In a terminological note with the title, “The Possessive Relation Marker in Coptic” (Enchoria 12:191–193, 1984), P. Swiggers criticizes and corrects the conventional designation “possessive article” or “possessive prefix” for ⲡⲁ-/ⲧⲁ-/ⲛⲁ- “he/she/they of-” and, much less explicitly, ⲡⲉϥ- “his”. Following several arguments meant to establish that these morpheme set(s) are “neither an article, nor a prefix”, Dr. Swiggers offers to replace the current terms with a new one, namely “possessive relation-marker”, presumably for both ⲡⲁ- and ⲡⲉϥ-.