Jump to content

User:Vorziblix/Egyptian reconstructed pronunciations with issues

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

No listed descendants, citations, or foreign transcriptions/no given basis for reconstruction

[edit]

More parts reconstructed than the evidence warrants

[edit]
  • ꜣḫ (noun) — the second syllable — why not with -j, as Osing has it?
  • fnṯ — the second syllable — again, why not with -j?
  • msdmt
  • ḥḏt
  • z — also, the vowel doesn’t match descendants — Akhmimic and Fayyumic have /a/ here, not /e/
  • kꜣpt

Irregular developments/sound changes

[edit]
  • ꜣbd — development of -w at the end of the first plural would regularly be to /u/ rather than schwa; perhaps the form ought to be (contra Loprieno) not */ʀaˈbutʼw/ but */ʀaˈbutʼjaw/? Also unclear why initial unstressed /a/ is reduced in most descendants
  • jꜣbtj — if the first vowel is /a/ it shouldn’t reduce to schwa
  • jꜥn — the Sahidic descendant is unaccounted for
  • jfdw — if the first vowel is /a/ it shouldn’t reduce to schwa; the Akkadian transcription also suggests something else is going on in the first syllable
  • jmntj — if the first vowel is /a/ it shouldn’t reduce to schwa
  • jḥ — if the first vowel is /a/ it shouldn’t reduce to schwa
  • jḥw — if the first vowel is /a/ it shouldn’t reduce to schwa; also, the ending conflicts with Loprieno’s reconstruction, which we give at the singular
  • jt — /t/ irregularly preserved in the plural
  • ꜥnḏw — strange developments of first syllable, and the ending needs justification
  • ꜥḥꜣwtj — why is the first syllable lost?
  • ꜥqw — why does /w/ become /j/? Or why does Loprieno reconstruct /w/ rather than /j/? Note that Osing and Vycichl both reconstruct -/jVw/, not -/wVw/
  • wpwt — irregular change of initial /w/ > /j/, and why is the second /w/ lost?
  • wnn — inexplicable disappearance of the first n
  • bjt — stressed vowel doesn’t match
  • pt — given plural form (which is not in the Loprieno citation) would be expected to have the change /w/ > /j/ and end up as */peːʔ/
  • mꜣj — irregular preservation of ꜣ > /j/ in this position
  • mwt (mother) — irregular loss of final syllable; should become schwa
  • mnty — irregular preservation of final schwa
  • mr (to suffer) — unexplained retention of final /ɾ/; maybe restored by analogy with other verb forms?
  • msḏj — irregular preservation of final schwa, perhaps by analogy with other verbs?
  • nḥḥ — irregular monophthongization; descendants seem to demand /ˈnuːħVħ/, which, however, doesn’t match the given etymology
  • ršwt — irregular disappearance of /w/ from final /wə/
  • r-pr — descendants cannot possibly come from r-pr, must be a form like *r-prjt or somesuch
  • rd (bud, shoot) — why does final /wə/ in the plural develop as if it’s /jə/?
  • hbj — unaccounted-for monophtongization and metathesis (why not just /ˈhiːbaj/, plural /hiˈbaːjiw/ or somesuch? this is similar to what Osing proposes)
  • ḥꜣb — glottal stop should come after the stressed vowel. But how to satisfy this when the stressed vowel is short and the word ends in /p/ rather than /β/?
  • ḥfꜣw — /j/ from /ʀ/ should be preserved in this position and then vocalized, yielding Late Egyptian */ħafi/ rather than */ħaf/
  • ḫprw — why does /w/ disappear in the plural? Once again, why does Loprieno reconstruct /w/ rather than /j/?
  • ḫt — Bohairic would be expected to be *ϣⲁ (*ša), unless the original vowel is actually /u/ rather than /i/
  • ẖpꜣ — irregular preservation of final schwa. Vycichl suggests the Coptic forms actually come from *ẖpꜣt */ˈçuplat/
  • ẖt — the whole final syllable
  • zꜣw — not sure exactly how to derive the Coptic forms, or why the Akkadian has tonic /a/ so early (or was it transcribed relatively late?)
  • zt — vowel doesn’t match descendants — Akhmimic and Fayyumic have /a/ here, not /e/
  • sw — why no vowel change?
  • sbꜣ (gate) — is the Fayyumic descendant regular? And is the Akkadian transcription explicable? Vycichl gives it as pu-us-bé-u.
  • šmj — irregular development /mj/ > /jj/ > /j/? > /ʔ/; Junge accepts such a development, but Vycichl postulates two different words instead, */ʃim/ and */ˈʃimjat/
  • šr — irregular preservation of final schwa
  • qbb — final /b/ fails to develop to /p/ — perhaps by analogy with the first /b/, since this is a reduplicated stem?
  • kꜣmw — seems to me both singular and plural should have /u/ rather than /i/ as the stressed vowel. The plural also should maybe have a single rather than geminated /w/
  • gbb — final /b/ vanishes or develops as if /w/ (perhaps /b/ > /w/ irregularly happened by the time of the New Kingdom?)

Other issues

[edit]
  • .sn — should generally develop as if unstressed, right?
  • jꜥḥ — not a problem with our reconstruction per se, but with the whole reconstruction model — a form like /jaʕħ/ is highly implausible
  • jtrw — need to ask User:Rhemmiel about source for ‘loss of t before r is a Late Egyptian sound change’; note that t before r behaved differently depending on whether the preceding vowel was stressed — maybe there’s some confusion here, whether on my part or theirs?
  • -w — need to think through the possible forms & developments. Also not sure if Loprieno’s model of the suffix (which we currently follow) is widely accepted or needs changing
  • mdwj — …what about that w? is this verb 4ae-inf or what?
  • nb — sort out what’s going on with those speculative notes on dialect
  • nswt — reconstructed based on what is probably an incorrect derviation; see etymology notes (and yet it works surprisingly well)
  • hrw — is what’s going on at the end of the reconstructed plural idiosyncratic to Loprieno? should we reconstruct differently?
  • ḥꜣtj — needs page for Loprieno citation
  • ḥtp — labelled as a participle, but is it really? or just a rendering of the infinitive?
  • z-n-wsrt — needs more careful investigation and coparison with Greek renderings to correctly determine how the compound developed
  • sḫm — cited to Loprieno, but what evidence is he basing this on, and which of the nouns does this reconstruction correspond to?
  • shouldn’t ejective and aspirable plosives be merged in most positions by 800 BCE? Current reconstructions don’t reflect this
  • did final schwa from lost glides in fact survive into the Neo-Assyrian period? evidence in favor: jwnw, ḥr, šn, wꜥw; evidence against: ḫmnw, psḏw
  • does ˈiː > ˈeː occur also in other environments? Peust in “Zur Herkunft des koptischen ⲏ”, page 118–119, says that Osing gives its environment as / _[ʕ, ħ, χ, q’, j] (but optional in all cases). If those conditions are still accepted as valid, it would at least in part explain nḥḥ above