Evelyn Perry

Université de Paris-Dauphine (France), CICLaS Research Centre

Literacy in the ancient world : the nominal group in Middle Egyptian non-verbal sentences

The present paper studies the nominal group and its place in early Egyptian literary texts. In the pre-literate context of ancient Egypt, the written language was passed down from one generation of scribes to the next, remaining very constant in its formal features over time. In the classical phase of the language, known as Middle Egyptian (2150 – 1300 BCE), both verbal and non-verbal constructions played fundamental roles. To date, little work has been done to investigate possible differences in function between the two basic sentence types or to define the role of nominal groups occurring in verbal, as opposed to non-verbal, constructions.

Following a systemic functional framework, I will set forth the basic sentence types attested for Middle Egyptian, analysing the role of the nominal group in non-verbal utterances, with special attention to modification in the nominal group. Examples will be drawn from a well-preserved Middle Kingdom literary text, ""The Eloquent Peasant"". Establishing a typology of modification in non-verbal constructions will provide the basis for further studies comparing the use of nominal groups in the two fundamental Egyptian sentence types.

References:

Doret, Etienne. « Phrase nominale, identité et substitution dans les Textes des Sarcophages » Revue d’Egyptologie 40 (1989), 49-63 ; 41(1990), 39-56 ; 43 (1992), 49-73.

Fontaine, L and E Perry. “A Contrastive Study of Post-modification in the Nominal Group : the case of native and non-native academic writing in English” Talk presented to the 15th Euro-International Systemic Functional Linguistics Workshop July 20-23, 2003.

Loprieno, Antonio. Ancient Egyptian. Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Perry, Evelyn. A Critical Study of “The Eloquent Peasant”. Doctoral thesis under the direction of Hans Goedicke, The Johns Hopkins University, 1986. Michigan University Microfilm Dissertation Series.