Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem Bölcsészettudományi Kar DOKTORI DISSZERTÁCIÓ Egedi Barbara Coptic noun phrases – Kopt főnévi szerkezetek Történelemtudományok Doktori Iskolája A doktori iskola vezetője: Dr. Székely Gábor Egyiptológia Doktori Program A program vezetője: Bács Tamás PhD A doktori bizottság tagjai: Elnök: Adamik Tamás professor emeritus Bírálók: Hasznos Andrea PhD Helmut Satzinger PhD Titkár: Schreiber Gábor PhD Tagok: Kóthay Katalin PhD Bács Tamás PhD Takács Gábor PhD Témavezető: Dr. Luft Ulrich DSc Budapest 2012 Ntamaau to my Mother 2 Table of Contents Preface 5 1 Introduction 7 1.1 What is this thesis about? 7 1.2 Coptic and the relevance of its research 9 1.2.1 The definition of Coptic 9 1.2.2 Vocalization, dialects and the Greek-Egyptian contact 10 1.2.3 Prehistory 16 1.3 The Coptic dialects 17 1.3.1 How many dialects are there and how are they related? 17 1.3.2 Names and sigla, the Kasser-Funk Agreement 19 1.3.3 The major literary dialects, dialectal groups from the south to the north 20 1.3.4 The current state of research 27 1.4 The sources 28 2 The Coptic noun 32 2.1 Terminology 33 2.2 Morphology 34 2.2.1 Gender, number and case 34 2.2.2 The remnant morphological plural – some considerations 38 2.3 On the edge of nominality 40 2.3.1 Is there an adjectival category in Coptic? 40 2.3.2 No verbs in Coptic? Once more on a problem of categorization 45 2.3.3 How nominal are the Copto-Greek verbs? 47 2.4 Determination 56 2.5 Adnominal modification 63 2.5.1 Possessive constructions 65 2.5.2 Attributive constructions 67 2.5.3 Partitive constructions 71 2.5.4 Quantification 72 3 Determination 75 3.1 Where do Coptic determiners come from? 75 3.2 Forms and use of the determiners in Sahidic 78 3.1.1 Articles, demonstratives and possessives 78 3.1.2 Special cases of determination 80 3 3.3 Alternative systems: a dialectal perspective 83 3.3.1 The case of Bohairic 83 3.3.2 The case of Mesokemic 88 3.3.3 The case of early Fayyumic 93 4 Possessive constructions in Coptic 95 4.1 The Sahidic distribution: Pattern A and B 95 4.2 Aspects of obligatory definiteness 112 4.2.1 The construct state phenomenon 112 4.2.2 The direct and indirect genitive constructions of Earlier Egyptian 113 4.2.3 Change and conservation 118 4.3 Possessive constructions in the early Coptic dialects – a comparative study 121 4.3.1 Lycopolitan 123 4.3.2 Akhmimic 126 4.3.3 Bohairic 128 4.3.4 Mesokemic 140 4.3.3 Dialect W 142 4.3.3 Fayyumic 144 5 Attributive constructions – a diachronic perspective 147 5.1. Attribution vs. possession 147 5.2 Reconstruction of the diachronic process: origin and development 148 5.2.1 Motivation 148 5.2.2 Syntactic and semantic preconditions for the n-marked attribution 149 5.2.3 Generalized adnominal modifier-marker 153 5.2.4 Problems with defining the exact time of the grammaticalization 154 5.3 Concluding remarks on the Coptic construction types 155 6 Conclusion 156 List of abbreviations 158 References 159 4 Preface When I was awarded the State Scholarship for PhD studies, I was aiming to summarize and analyze everything that can be known and said about the structure of the Sahidic noun phrase, but my aims gradually changed in the course of time – which can hardly be surprising when one begins to work on such an enterprise as compiling a dissertation. Originally, I was interested in the possessive and attributive constructions in Sahidic, and also started to investigate the diachronic development of their distributional characteristics. My participation at a conference in Leipzig (Linguistic Borrowing into Coptic, Inaugural Conference of the DDGLC project. 26-28 April 2010. Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig), however, pushed me to study the dialectal variation in Coptic. During the subsequent three months I spent in Berlin at the Ägyptologisches Seminar (Freie Universität), I had access to various text editions that are not available in my home country so I was able to collect the required material to start such a new research direction. Even a superficial investigation made it clear to me that a remarkable variation can be observed in the inner structure of noun phrases if one compares the various dialects, and no description or comprehensive studies have been carried out about these phenomena. Parts of the thesis, observations and conclusions that appear at different points of this study, were presented at conferences and published in scholarly journals or edited volumes. While completing the thesis I was working in a research group ( Hungarian Generative Diachronic Syntax ) located at the Research Institute for Linguistics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and funded by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA grant No. 78074). Although this project is concerned with Old and Middle Hungarian, I profited from this work in many respects: first of all, my research topic in Hungarian linguistics slightly overlaps with that in Egyptology, since I study nominal constructions, determination and their developments in the history of Hungarian. Moreover, the Research Institute for Linguistics did not only provide me with a place to work at, but also with excellent colleagues to work with, who are always ready to listen to my “exotic” Egyptian data and to discuss the problems I am struggling with. I wish to thank especially Vera Hegedűs for all the talks we had on the subject and for her occasional help in English phrasing. The institute supported me financially as well through travel grants I applied for and successfully won. Thereby I could attend the 10th International Congress of 5 Egyptologists (22-29 May 2008, Rhodes, Department of Mediterranean Studies of the University of the Aegean) and I will be able to give a talk at the 10th International Congress of Coptic Studies to be held in Rome this September. In 2010, I could spend three months at the Freie Universität of Berlin, thanks to the support of the Hungarian State Eötvös Fellowship. I owe special thanks to Sebastian Richter, who has organized excellent conferences on the Egyptian language in Leipzig and who also invited me to take part at the above mentioned inaugural conference of the DDGLC project. Similarly, I am indebted to the Ägyptologisches Seminar in Basel for inviting me to give a talk at the Crossroads IV conference. These occasions were essential in my academic curriculum because of the personal acquaintance of many excellent scholars who are concerned with Egyptian from a linguistic point of view and because of the valuable feedbacks I could get at these meetings regarding my work. I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Ulrich Luft who introduced me to the Egyptian language and from whom I learnt Coptic for numerous semesters at the University. I am also particularly grateful to Andrea Hasznos, whose MA thesis first directed my attention to the linguistic aspects of the contact between Greek and Coptic, and who never hesitated to help me to obtain rare items of the Coptological literature. Last but not least, I wish to thank my parents for their never-ceasing patience, encouragement, and faith in my work as well as for the support (both material and emotional) without which this thesis would never have been completed. 6 1 Introduction 1.1 What is this thesis about? This thesis is concerned with the noun phrase structure in Coptic with a special concentration on definiteness and possessive constructions as well as on attributive patterns insofar as these latter are related to the possessives in form. The thesis has both a diachronic and a comparative dialectological perspective, and this duality will be present throughout the chapters. The methods, however, will accurately be kept apart: while a diachronic study may compare data from different stages, spanning over centuries or even millennia, to get as close as possible to the understanding of language change, the study of a synchronic grammar must strictly concentrate on the system of oppositions which is in operation in the actual use of the language, without considering where the various patterns come from. The thesis does not aim at being exhaustive in listing all kinds of elements (modifiers, quantifiers, pronouns, etc.) that may come up in a noun phrase. Only those phenomena will be discussed that have relevant features either from a dialectal or from a diachronic perspective. It must be established as well that focus is on the inner constructional properties of the Coptic noun phrase rather than on how it appears in the sentence structure; reference to its behavior in the sentence will be made only if it is necessary for the discussion. The dissertation is organized as follows. The second section of this introductory chapter offers a definition of the Coptic language positioning it in a cultural, historical and diachronic setting. A short presentation of the dialects follows for the readers who are not so familiar with the different Coptic varieties. Chapter two has multiple goals: it aims to provide background information both about the main properties of the Coptic nominal category and the structures that can be built on it and about the linguistic concepts and theoretical assumptions which are required for a good understanding of the rest of the thesis. Chapter three takes some unsteady steps on the shaky grounds of determination. Although both the origin and the synchronic system of the Sahidic determiners are quite well understood, other dialects seem to exhibit alternative systems with multiple definite 7 articles in seemingly overlapping functions.