Sapirian ‘drift’ towards analyticity and long-term morphosyntactic change in Ancient Egyptian
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Chris H. Reintges
Abstract
Starting from Sapir’s (1921) concept of linguistic “drift”, this chapter explores long-term morphosyntactic change in Ancient Egyptian, with particular attention to the typological shift from agglutinative–synthetic to largely analytic morphological structure. The momentum for the continuing and pervasive analyticization process is to be sought in the profusion of a broad range of auxiliary verb constructions. The flipside of the drift towards analyticity is the decreasing morphological productivity of synthetic inflectional patterns. The structurally marked features of the Coptic particle system can however not exclusively be explained by the general pattern of analytic drift. Rather, the global effects of the long-term analyticization process have been optimized by a short-term process of accelerated grammaticalization during a period of language revival and genesis.
Abstract
Starting from Sapir’s (1921) concept of linguistic “drift”, this chapter explores long-term morphosyntactic change in Ancient Egyptian, with particular attention to the typological shift from agglutinative–synthetic to largely analytic morphological structure. The momentum for the continuing and pervasive analyticization process is to be sought in the profusion of a broad range of auxiliary verb constructions. The flipside of the drift towards analyticity is the decreasing morphological productivity of synthetic inflectional patterns. The structurally marked features of the Coptic particle system can however not exclusively be explained by the general pattern of analytic drift. Rather, the global effects of the long-term analyticization process have been optimized by a short-term process of accelerated grammaticalization during a period of language revival and genesis.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword and Acknowledgements vii
- Editors’ introduction 1
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Part I. Grammaticalization
- The role of historical research in building a model of Sign Language typology, variation, and change 15
- On the origin of Niger-Congo nominal classification 43
- A closer look at subjectification in the grammaticalization of English modals 67
- Subjectivity encoding in Taiwanese Southern Min 83
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Part II. Problems in historical comparison and reconstruction
- Emergence of the tone system in the Sanjiazi dialect of Manchu 101
- Searching for undetected genetic links between the languages of South America 115
- Reconstructing the category of “associated motion” in Tacanan languages (Amazonian Bolivia and Peru) 129
- The mirage of apparent morphological correspondence 153
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Part III. Historical development of morphosyntactic features
- Analogy as a source of suppletion 175
- The rise and demise of possessive classifiers in Austronesian 199
- Immediate-future readings of universal quantifier constructions 227
- The historical development and functional characteristics of the go-adjective sequence in English 243
- Recycling “junk” 267
- Sapirian ‘drift’ towards analyticity and long-term morphosyntactic change in Ancient Egyptian 289
- Language index 329
- Index of terms 333
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword and Acknowledgements vii
- Editors’ introduction 1
-
Part I. Grammaticalization
- The role of historical research in building a model of Sign Language typology, variation, and change 15
- On the origin of Niger-Congo nominal classification 43
- A closer look at subjectification in the grammaticalization of English modals 67
- Subjectivity encoding in Taiwanese Southern Min 83
-
Part II. Problems in historical comparison and reconstruction
- Emergence of the tone system in the Sanjiazi dialect of Manchu 101
- Searching for undetected genetic links between the languages of South America 115
- Reconstructing the category of “associated motion” in Tacanan languages (Amazonian Bolivia and Peru) 129
- The mirage of apparent morphological correspondence 153
-
Part III. Historical development of morphosyntactic features
- Analogy as a source of suppletion 175
- The rise and demise of possessive classifiers in Austronesian 199
- Immediate-future readings of universal quantifier constructions 227
- The historical development and functional characteristics of the go-adjective sequence in English 243
- Recycling “junk” 267
- Sapirian ‘drift’ towards analyticity and long-term morphosyntactic change in Ancient Egyptian 289
- Language index 329
- Index of terms 333
