Mittel[ddot{a}]gyptische Grundgramnwtik: Abriβ der mittel[ddot{a}]gyptischen Grammatik von Hellmut Brunner in Neubearbeitung.

• Author: DEPUYDT, LEO
• Position: Review

Mittelagyptische Grundgrammatik: Abri[Beta] der mittelagyptischen Grammatik von Hellmut Brunner in Neubearbeitug. By BOYO OCKINGA. Mainz: VERLAG PHILIPP VON ZABERN, 1998. Pp. xi + 180

The seemingly elusive quest for the ideal Middle Egyptian grammar continues. Egyptian was both spoken and written for about four thousand years, from the earlier third millennium B.C.E. onwards. Students traditionally first engage Middle or Classical Egyptian, spoken around 2000 B.C.E. Recently, several brief museum guides to hieroglyphic Egyptian and seven beginners' grammars (see my notice "A New Generation of Teaching Grammars of Egyptian [1987-93]," Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica 25 [1994]: 275-76) have testified to the subject's popular appeal. No new reference grammar has been published so far, but M. Malaise's and J. Winand's Grammaire raisonnee de l'egyptien classique (Liege: Centre informatique de philosophie et lettres) has just been announced for spring 1999.

Boyo Ockinga's grammar updates and expands that of Hellmut Brunner, his teacher. Ockinga had earlier produced an English version of Brunner's Abri[Beta]. The language is described in eighty pages, unencumbered by bibliography or source references, as one would expect in an "outline." A preface (pp. ix-xi) and an introduction to the hieroglyphic script (pp. 1-7) precede. Appendices on royal titulary and syllabic writing (pp. 87-88), a sign-list (pp. 89-115), exercises (pp. 116-33), selected texts (pp. 134-43), vocabulary (pp. 144-71), and indexes (pp. 172-80) follow.

Because hieroglyphic writing represents Middle Egyptian inadequately, studying the language involves an unusually large theoretical component; writing a grammar of Middle Egyptian therefore differs from writing grammars of most other languages. I develop this scientific credo in my forthcoming Fundamentals of Egyptian Grammar, part 1. The term "Standard" theory is often used in recent work on Middle Egyptian grammar to denote a model for the analysis of the language proposed by H. J. Polotsky. The theory gives great prominence to the three categories "substantival," "adjectival," and "adverbial." Some accept this model, others reject it. In a comment made in the preface, Ockinga decides to adopt "individual observations" but not "the entire system." However, he may be trying too hard to abandon the system entirely. At pp. 37-38, for example, five usages are listed for geminating jrr.f. Three are called substantival. The two others...