SENTENCE PATTERN AND VERB FORM:EGYPTIAN GRAMMAR SINCE POLOTSKY

H.J. Polotskys discovery, now more than half a century old, that allstages of Egyptian exhibit verb forms serving in clauses equivalent infunction to that-clauses found in the construction It is that as in It is to the specialist we must look if the papyri are to be utilizedto the full and It was not the externals only of the volume of whichthe University was proud1 has served over the decades as a catalystfor an overhaul of much of Egyptian and Coptic syntax.2

The aim of this brief paper is, first (I), to define, as narrowly as pos-sible, the Archimedean point of Polotskys contribution to Egyptiangrammar; second (II), to show how a key observation made in 1936 onthe basis of a handful of examples already exhibited the most funda-mental property of his overall contribution, namely the firm linkage oftwo basic components that had previously stood side by side or beenrelated in maladroit ways: sentence patterns and verb forms; and third(III), to make a distinction between a special theory and a general theoryin his writings on the structure of Egyptian.

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But at the outset, it may be useful to review an important distinctionbetween Old and Middle Egyptian, on the one hand, and Late Egyptian,Demotic, and Coptic, on the other, as regards the function of the above-mentioned verb forms.

In Old and Middle Egyptian, these verb forms appear in most posi-tions in which a substantive or substantival phrase may be found. But byLate Egyptian, their functional scope had shrunk considerably and theywere henceforth used as a rule only in sentences in which a certain ele-

1 For these examples, see POLOTSKY, tudes de syntaxe copte, Cairo, 1944, p. 60-61.Polotskys writings up to the mid sixties have been conveniently gathered in his CollectedPapers, Jerusalem, 1971. For the tudes, see p. 102-207.

2 For H.J. Polotsky (1905-1991) the scholar, see Orientalia, 61 (1992), p. 208-13(A. SHISHA-HALEVY); Rassegna di Studi Etiopici, 34 (1992), p. 115-25 (S. HOPKINS); SestoCongresso Internazionale di Egittologia: Atti, 1992, p. XXXIII-XXXIV (M. LICHTHEIM);Zeitschrift fr gyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde, 120 (1992), p. III-V (J. OSING). See alsoE. ULLENDORFF (ed.), Hans Jacob Polotsky: Ausgewhlte Briefe, thiopistische Forschungen34, Stuttgart, 1992 (cf. Journal of Semitic Studies, 38 [1993], p. 327-30 [P.J.L FRANKL]);The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, vol. 6, Oxford, 1994, p. 3226 (A. SHIVTIEL).

ment receives emphasis of the isolating kind by being presented as dis-tinct from and at the exclusion of other elements.

A singular characteristic of Egyptian is that it typically uses differentconstructions depending on whether the emphasized element is adverbial,that is, refers to a circumstance (see to the specialist cited above), ornominal, that is, refers to an entity (see the externals only of the volumecited above). This difference is foreign to English and other European lan-guages as well as to Semitic. It is ultimately just one aspect of a largerphenomenon that is perhaps the most typical characteristic of Egyptian,namely that someones being somewhere is expressed by a differentsentence pattern, namely the adverbial sentence, than someones beingsomeone or something, which is denoted by the nominal sentence.

The reduction in functional scope from Middle to Late Egyptian men-tioned above may be illustrated by two lists presented below.3 In List 1,pertaining to Old and Middle Egyptian, thirteen different positions inwhich the verb forms in question can occur are illustrated by examples.All thirteen positions are substantival in the sense that substantives orsubstantival phrases can elsewhere be found in them. It seems thereforelegitimate to call the Old and Middle Egyptian verb forms substantival,as they now often are.

But by Late Egyptian, as illustrated by List 2, the descendants of theOld and Middle Egyptian substantival verb forms have disappeared fromall but two of these positions, namely Nos. 5 and 12.4

40 L. DEPUYDT

3 Additional members have been proposed for both lists, some controversial, but themembers listed here, which include all those established with certainty, should suffice toportray the conspicuous shift from Middle Egyptian to Late Egyptian.

4 This creates a problem of terminology. At the transition from Middle to Late Egypt-ian, substantival verb forms lost the versatility of assuming just about any position inwhich a substantive can also be found. It would therefore be confusing to call the LateEgyptian, Demotic, and Coptic descendants of substantival verb forms also substantival,as this obscures an essential difference in scope of function. It has even been doubtedwhether the Late Egyptian, Demotic, and Coptic forms are at all still substantival, but thisproblem cannot be dealt with in this brief note.

Which alternative terms are there? For Late Egyptian, there is only one: emphatic.No other has ever been proposed, or might be, it seems, any time soon. This term suffersfrom the disadvantage of having been created as part of an earlier, erroneous, viewregarding the function of the verb forms in question. It was meant to describe that theaction or event expressed by the verb forms in question is uttered with emphasis, that is,with insistence and intensity. But when this theory became obsolete, the term emphaticwas retained and its spurious origin is usually commemorated by placing it between quo-tation marks. Now, Late Egyptian emphatic verb forms do, quite by coincidence,involve emphasis, but emphasis of a different kind than that for which the term was cre-ated. This circumstance may help explain the durability of the term emphatic. In fact,it is tempting, and even seems opportune, simply to redefine emphatic as shorthand forfunctioning in sentences in which a certain element is emphasized, that is, presented asdistinct from and at the exclusion of other elements, and simply delete the quotation

LIST 1: POSITIONS SHARED BY SUBSTANTIVES ANDSUBSTANTIVAL VERB FORMS IN OLD AND MIDDLE EGYPTIAN

All usages are illustrated by distinctive writings with gemination inthe present/aorist tense, except Nos. 12 and 13, which only allow futuresubstantival verb forms, of which examples with distinctive writingsexhibiting the ending w are presented.5

I. BASIC COMPONENT OF NON-VERBAL SENTENCES

A. Substantival Sentence

Bimembral with pw

1. mhh jb.f pw It means that his heart is forgetful.

Trimembral with pw

2. jsst pw h.k r .t What does it mean that you fall on the field?Wechselsatz

3. dd.k dd.tw n.k s-t When you sail northward, respect is paid toyou. Literally: That you sail north is (means) that respect is paidto you.

B. Adjectival Sentence

4. qsn mss.s Her bearing was painful. Literally: That she bears(was) difficult.

SENTENCE PATTERN AND VERB FORM 41

marks. The term is used without quotation marks, for example, in J. WINAND, tudes deno-gyptien, 1: La morphologie verbale, Aegyptiaca Leodiensia, Lige, 1992, p. 259-87.

Coptic grammar too is affected by the problem that no term has ever been proposed toreplace the traditional designation Second Tenses, which these verb forms have bornesince before their meaning was identified. Even the term emphatic verb forms, espe-cially as redefined above, would be preferable to Second Tenses. As for Demotic, thechoice is between emphatic, as in Late Egyptian, and Second Tenses, as in Coptic.Second Tenses is used, for example, in J.H. JOHNSON, The Demotic Verbal System,Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 38, Chicago, 1976, p. 99-126.

In conclusion, whatever the term that will find favor may be, it would be opportune togive the related verb forms in Late Egyptian, Demotic, and Coptic the same name.

5 The sources of the thirteen examples are as follows: 1. pEbers, 102,15; 2. A.ERMAN, Reden, Rufe und Lieder auf Grberbildern des Alten Reiches, APAW 1918,Berlin, 1919, p. 58 (cited by POLOTSKY, Orientalia, 38 [1969], p. 470); 3. . NAVILLE,The Temple of Deir el Bahri, 6 vols., London, [1895]-1908, Plate 114; 4. pWestcar, 9,22;5. Eloquent Peasant, B1,267; 6. Kmjjt, VIII; 7. Hammamat, 113,10; 8. pWestcar, 7,21;9. pEbers, 97,13; 10. Sinuhe, B263; 11. CT, IV 42e; 12. PT, 822b; 13. pEbers, 65,5.

C. Adverbial Sentence

5. sqdd t ft w.k It is according to your command that the land sails.Literally: That the land sails is according to your command.

II. SATELLITE OF A VERB

A. Subject

6. jw mr rmm.s w She bitterly weeps for you. Literally: (The fact)that she weeps for you is bitter.

B. Direct Object

7. jw grt w.n m.f prr(.j) r st tn His Majesty ordered that I go tothis desert.

III. SUBORDINATED IN THE GENITIVE PHRASE

A. Indirect Genitive, Following n of

8. spssw n dd nsw fine things which the king gives. Literally: finethings of (pertaining to) that-the-king-gives.

B. Direct Genitive

9. hrw mss.tw.f the day (on which) he is born. Literally: the dayof that-he-is-born.

IV. OTHER

A. Object of Prepositions

10. jrr m.k m mrr.f May Your Majesty do as he likes. Literally: according to that-he-likes.

B. Title of a Text

11. jrr s prw Undergoing Transformations. Literally: (About theFact) That a Man Undergoes Transformations.

C. Basic Component of the Cleft Sentences (Future Only!)

12. stt ssmw.s n It is she who will lead you. Literally: (It is) shethat will lead you.

42 L. DEPUYDT

D. Following jr if6 (Future Only!)

13. jr mw.s If it is dry Literally: As for the fact that it will bedry.

LIST 2: POSITIONS IN WHICH EMPHATIC VERB FORMSARE USED IN LATE EGYPTIAN7

5. .jr.j d.f n snd It is out of fear that I said it.

12. r ntk .jr.k Cn-smjj n ty r.w It is you that will report aboutthem to the vizier.

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(I) During the summer of 1936 in Jerusalem, Polotsky set himselfto reading the wellknown Late Egyptian Story of Horus and Seth in anattempt to discover the difference between the verb form jw.f r smand .jr.f sm.8 The observation of certain verb forms in this text ledto a seminal insight on which he would build much of his later con-tributions to our understanding of Egyptian grammar. The outline ofwhat would later be published in the tudes de syntaxe copte (1944)was conceived in a matter of one or two days. After Late Egyptian,Coptic first came to mind, only then Classical Egyptian, thus Polot-sky. Three intriguing questions arise regarding this brief communica-tion.

(1) What might attract one to the difference between jw.f r sm and.jr.f sm in 1936?

(2) What was the discoverys Archimedean point, the handful of pas-sages whose comparison provided the crucial insight?

(3) Why did Late Egyptian provide the clue rather than Coptic? Clas-sical Egyptian, with its synthetic character, is more difficult to penetratethan either Late Egyptian or Coptic.

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6 Literally: as for (the fact that).7 The sources of the two examples are pMayer, A 6,17 and LRL, 70,14-15. 8 Polotsky, personal communication, Jerusalem, 25 November 1989. The Story had

been published twice by A.H. GARDINER in The Library of A. Chester Beatty, London,1931 and in Late-Egyptian Stories, Bibliotheca Aegyptiaca 1, Brussels, 1932. Gardinerspremonition that the story belongs linguistically and intrinsically to the most importanttexts we possess (LES, p. V) was proven right a few years later.

(1) In the early part of this century, the evolution of the verbal systemfrom Late Egyptian through Demotic to Coptic was still imperfectlyknown. One problematic area was the historical relationships betweenCoptic conjugation bases consisting of a single vowel such as av- andev- and conjugation bases in Late Egyptian and Demotic such as jw.f and.jr.f (also written r.jr.f and jw.jr.f). The matter is of some complexityand cannot be reviewed in detail here. But, for example, anyone searchingfor the etymology of the so common Coptic past verb form avswtM heheard, he has heard would be intrigued that Late Egyptian jw.f r smand .jr.f sm are both past in meaning, though the latter form not exclu-sively so. The study of the behavior of these two past verb forms, what-ever its outcome, must have seemed a worthwhile endeavor. It is nowknown that jw.f r sm, which cannot head a sentence, disappeared afterLate Egyptian, and that past .jr.f sm only survives with certainty inthe Faiyumic dialect of Coptic as aavswtM, also written avswtM,whereas Coptic past avswtM derives from neither of these Late Egypt-ian verb forms, but rather from the periphrastic verb form jr.f sm,which became common in late Demotic, gradually replacing past sm.f.

(2) In order to show that contrasts, alternations, in short, all kinds ofsyntactic relationships, are real and not invented by grammarians, theyshould be documented by examples in which the related features occuralongside one another in actual context.9 The pivotal passages from theStory of Horus and Seth are in all probability not found in the celebratedtudes de syntaxe copte (1944), but rather in an article that appearedfour years earlier in the Annales du Service des Antiquits de lgypte.10

The following five examples are quoted there. The first three feature theverb forms jw.f r sm and .jr.f sm mentioned above. The fact that allfive resemble one another in containing the interrogative pronoun jmust have encouraged the search for the specific difference.

EMPHATIC VERB FORM ADVERBIAL r j(a) .jr.k djt jj.st r j Why did you let her cross? (7,12-13). (b) .jr.k qndt r j Why are you angry? (8,5).

OTHER VERB FORM j AS DIRECT OBJECT(c) jw.k d n.s j What did you tell her? (7,8). Past jw.f (r) sm.(d) twtn dj ms.tj r jrt j m-rC What are you doing, sitting here

like this? (8,3). Present sw r sm.

44 L. DEPUYDT

9 POLOTSKY, A Note on the Sequential Verb-form in Ramesside Egyptian and in BiblicalHebrew, Pharaonic Egypt, the Bible, and Christianity, Jerusalem, 1985, p. 157-61, at p. 158.

10 Une rgle concernant lemploi des formes verbales dans la phrase interrogative enno-gyptien, ASAE 40 (1944), p. 241-45 (Collected Papers, p. 33-37).

(e) jw. (r) djt n.j j What will you give me? (5,12). Future jw.f(r) sm.It is the comparison of examples such as (a) .jr.k djt jj.st r j and(c) jw.k d n.s j, perhaps even these very ones, occurring in closevicinity, that must have inspired the conclusion that the emphatic verbform is used when the interrogative pronoun is part of an adverbialphrase. This is confirmed by the other three examples. Thus the linkbetween the adverbial sentence pattern, on the one hand, and theemphatic verb forms, on the other hand, was established as well as themechanism by which the two concepts interlock.11 Most everything elseimportant, including the substantival nature of the Old and MiddleEgyptian verb forms, follows logically from this.12

(3) The contrast between absence and presence of an emphatic verbform illustrated by the two examples .jr.k djt jj.st r j Why haveyou let her cross? and jw.k d n.s j What have you told her? inLate Egyptian is no longer fully observed in all Coptic dialects. InSahidic, for example, Second Tenses are used also when the interroga-tive pronoun is not part of an adverbial phrase. Examples in which itfunctions as direct object are as follows.

SENTENCE PATTERN AND VERB FORM 45

11 As Polotsky notes (ASAE, 40 [1940], p. 241 n. 1 [Collected Papers, p. 33 n. 1];tudes, p. 54-56 [Collected Papers, p. 158-60]), F. Praetorius and to some extent L. Sternwere the first to identify the Coptic past Second Perfect as a relative verb form of theabstract kind used in a cleft sentence construction. But this insight had very limitedpotential as long as the crucial link between the Second Tenses and the so quintessentiallyEgyptian structure of the adverbial sentence was not made. Praetorius, for example, pos-tulated an omitted copula pe, thus linking the construction in which Second Tenses appearwith the nominal sentence.

12 It may be noted that the crucial observation was syntactic in nature. As regards themeaning or signified of the construction, the omnipresent Aristotelian categories of sub-ject and predicate were employed to conclude that emphasis involves a shift from statusas subject to status as predicate or vedette. I believe, however, as I have stated else-where, that the matter can be described satisfactorily without having recourse to conceptssuch as subject and predicate. Instead, the construction in which emphatic verb forms andsubstantival verb forms appear has, it seems to me, a form and meaning just as the wordwith the form horse has the meaning large, solid-hoofed, herbivorous mammal

As to the form of the construction, the adverbial sentence pattern makes it possible tosingle out an adverbial element syntactically as a distinct component of a sentence. Asregards meaning, this setting apart is produced with the aim of presenting that adverbialelement as distinct from and at the exclusion of other elements. This peculiar kind ofisolating contrast S. Groll has referred to it as the polemic mood is the signifiedor meaning of the emphatic construction.

Anything beyond this simple attaching of a meaning to an empirical signal seems tome speculation about the nature of thought, a topic whose ultimate question is: Why dowe say what we say and not rather something else? This question seems fundamental andworthwhile, but it is difficult and may unnecessarily burden the description of emphaticand substantival verb forms.

pdikaios NtavR ou What has the just man done? (Psalms 10,3).ekouej ou nMman What do you want from us? (Matthew 8,29).

This fact makes it possible to understand why the key observationregarding the link between the Second Tenses or emphatic verb forms,on the one hand, and the adverbial sentence, on the other hand, wasmade in a Late Egyptian text rather than in a Coptic one, even thoughCoptic was better known at the time. Indeed, the very link had beenloosened to some degree by the time of Coptic.

It also follows that Polotskys observation on the obligatory use of theSecond Tenses with interrogative pronouns in the Gttinger GelehrteAnzeigen of 1934,13 reporting an observation by L. Stern,14 was isolatedand did not involve understanding of the function of the Second Tenses,as confirmed by Polotsky himself (see n. 8).

In this respect, it is significant that, in none of the Coptic examplesexplicitly cited in GGA 1934, the interrogative pronoun is part of anadverbial phrase. Such examples would not enable one to make theessential link between the use of the Second Tenses and the adverbialsentence pattern, because they illustrate how this link had loosened to acertain degree by the time of Coptic.15

Even if the observation in GGA 1934 set the stage for focusing onsentences with interrogative pronouns, it only shows that such a frequentphenomenon as the Second Tenses would not escape the attention andthe reflection of the perceptive grammarian.

As distinct from GGA 1934, the communications in Comptes rendusdu Groupe linguistique dtudes chamito-smitiques, 3 (1937), p. 1-3(Collected Papers, p. 99-101) and in ASAE, 40 (1940), p. 241-45 (Col-lected Papers, p. 33-37) do anticipate the tudes of 1944.16

(II) By itself, relating the presence of r to the presence of .jr in.jr.k djt jj.st r j and relating the absence of the former to theabsence of the latter in jw.k d n.s j seems a rather small scale obser-vation, but it involved no less than relating in an utterly novel way twomain structural features of the language to one another, verb forms and

46 L. DEPUYDT

13 GGA, 196 (1934), p. 58-67 (review of W. TILL, Koptische Dialektgrammatik,Munich, 1931), at p. 63-64 (Collected Papers, p. 363-72, at p. 368-69).

14 Koptische Grammatik, Leipzig, 1880, p. 213, 216, 220. 15 Likewise, Psalms 10,3 and Matthew 8,29, cited above, in which the emphasized

element is also not adverbial, are taken from paragraphs in Sterns Koptische Grammatik(see n. 14) that are given as references in GGA 1934.

16 See also SHISHA-HALEVY, Coptic Grammatical Categories, Analecta Orientalia 53,Rome, 1986, p. 62; W. SCHENKEL, Einfhrung in die altgyptische Sprachwissenschaft,Darmstadt, 1990, p. 146.

sentence patterns, which up to that point were unconnected and seeminglyincompatible, as mass and speed once were. Previously, the inability tolink verb forms and sentence patterns had culminated in the monstrousconcept of the verbal nominal sentence.

Much of Polotskys later work in Egyptian grammar revolved aroundthe link between verb forms and sentence patterns and ultimately led tothe statement at the beginning of his Grundlagen that two propertiesmainly shape the structure of Egyptian and Coptic, (1) the existence ofdifferent sentence patterns, and (2) the ability of each sentence pattern tofunction as a substantive, an adjective, or an adverb through variousgrammatical means, including substantival, adjectival, and adverbialverb forms.17

(III) Hardly anyone today would doubt that the Second Tenses (Cop-tic, Demotic), emphatic verb forms (Demotic, Late Egyptian), and sub-stantival verb forms (Old and Middle Egyptian) are used in construc-tions in which certain elements are presented as distinct from and at theexclusion of other elements, and that moreover, the Old and MiddleEgyptian verb forms are able to appear in most substantival slots, andonly there. These observations have a certain empirical immediacy andpractical applicability, and they can collectively be described as the spe-cial theory in Polotskys writings on Egyptian grammar.

But the grand scheme that Polotsky developed over the years, whichinvolves a more general theory and is sometimes referred to as the Stan-dard Theory, has been the subject of some debate.18 In recent years, crit-icism has focused on the adverbial category.

It is true that there is a measure of intuition involved in the postula-tion of the adverbial category. But as L. Wittgenstein noted in his Trac-tatus logico-philosophicus, language is an image or model of reality aswe think or perceive it. The human condition of beholding fixed itemssuch as entities (car), which have properties attached to them(blue), and are found in certain circumstances (in the street), seemsreflected in language in that much of linguistic structure clusters aroundthe substantival, adjectival, and adverbial categories.

Unlike properties, circumstances typically change (from in thestreet to in the garage, while the car remains blue). To expresschange, language exhibits verbs. A. Meillet referred to the verb as a

SENTENCE PATTERN AND VERB FORM 47

17 Grundlagen des koptischen Satzbaus, American Studies in Papyrology 27 and 29,Decatur, Georgia, 1987/90, vol. 1, p. 1.

18 For the elaboration of this scheme, see, in addition to the Grundlagen, Les trans-positions du verbe en gyptien classique, Israel Oriental Studies, 6 (1976), p. 1-50.

time word, but perhaps it is better called a change word. Becausecircumstances change, it comes as no surprise that adverbs and adverbialphrases are closely associated with the verb; there is a deep truth in thetraditional view that adverbs modify verbs.

It has to be admitted, though, that the adverbial category is morpho-logically less distinct than the substantival and adjectival categories, andfor this reason probably more subject to criticism. Here one is remindedof Saussures view that an association between forms can exist in theabsence of any material support, and he gives as an example the asso-ciation that exists between the forms domin-i, reg-is, and ros-arum,three Latin genitives with different endings.19 What associates theseforms with one another is a sense of a common value dictating an iden-tical use, and so it is to a considerable extent with the members of theadverbial category.20 Forms are tangible but there are limitations to whatthey can tell us. Along these same lines, Shisha-Halevy refers to Polot-skys doubt as to whether our understanding of hieroglyphic Egyptianwould be advanced by discovering the full morphological shape of theforms.21

Near universal acceptance of the special theory only came in the lateeighties with a wave of new teaching grammars of Middle Egyptian per-meated by Polotskyan thought. If it took nearly half a century for thespecial theory to reach this status, we may have to wait well beyond2020 for the general theory to become more widely accepted, if such isto be its fate. Much will also depend on how the Saussurean legacyevolves in the coming decades.

Brown University Leo DEPUYDTBox 1899Providence, RI 02912U.S.A.

48 L. DEPUYDT

19 Cours de linguistique gnrale, Lausanne and Paris, 1916, p. 190. 20 In addition, empirical features setting apart adverbial verb forms from other verb

forms did in fact exist in my opinion. They are described in DEPUYDT, On the EmpiricalDistinctness of Certain Adverbial Clauses in Old and Middle Egyptian, Chroniqued'gypte, 138 (1995) (forthcoming).

21 Orientalia, 61 (1992), p. 210.