Eitan Grossman
I'm interested in linguistic typology, historical linguistics, and language description. Current projects mostly focus on the different aspects of the typology of contact-induced change, e.g., adposition borrowing, valency and transitivity in contact, and contact-induced sound change.
Phone: +972 2 588 3809 (office)
Address: Department of Linguistics
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Mount Scopus, Jerusalem 91905
Israel
Phone: +972 2 588 3809 (office)
Address: Department of Linguistics
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Mount Scopus, Jerusalem 91905
Israel
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We also have plenty of sound files, so feel free to ask for our data!
We also have plenty of sound files, so feel free to ask for our data!
aspects of Egyptian- Coptic language structures, see Haspelmath (this volume).
St. Polis & J. Winand
Eitan Grossman, Stéphane Polis & Jean Winand (eds.),
Lexical Semantics in Ancient Egyptian,
Lingua Aegyptia Studia Monographica 9,
Hamburg 2012: Widmaier Verlag,
hardcover (cloth), vi, 490 pages,
ISSN: 0946-8641,
ISBN: 978-3-943955-09-5,
€ 69 (subscribers' price/pre-order price: € 59).
All prices include German VAT (7 %).
This volume is the first to be devoted specifically to the study of lexical
semantics in Ancient Egyptian. While much research has been dedicated
to a wide range of grammatical issues in past decades, lexical semantics
has rarely been treated in a systematic fashion. The papers collected here
treat a range of semantic phenomena, from the lexical semantics of spatial
expressions, to the problems of analyzing polyfunctionality and even to the
semantics of the Egyptian writing system. The scope of these issues goes
well beyond the individual 'word' or lexical item, as a number of papers
address the semantics of syntactic constructions. Some authors call into
question the distinction between lexicon and grammar, or analyze the
lexical semantics of items usually considered 'grammatical' or 'function'
words, such as discourse particles. This volume also spans a number
of theoretical frameworks and methodologies that have not been
prominent in Egyptian linguistics and philology, such as
typologically-oriented semantic maps and other visual tools.
The papers in this volume do not aim to define the 'state of the art,' but
rather seek to stimulate the study of meaning in Ancient Egyptian, to
point to innovative avenues for future research, and to engage in a
broader dialogue between Egyptian linguistics and philology, on the
one hand, and the research frameworks and agendas of general
linguistics, on the other.
- Lingua Aegyptia Studia Monographica 9 is in press and will be
published at the same time as LingAeg 19 (September 2012).
- A special price is offered for advance orders and for subscribers
of LingAeg (see above).
- Postage charges are variable depending on weight anddestination.
- Each subscriber of LingAeg who orders StudMon volumes before
the publication of LingAeg 19 will receive all books together without
paying extra p&p.
For orders and further information please contact the publisher:
[email protected]
CONTENTS
- Eitan Grossman & Stéphane Polis,
"Lexical semantics in Ancient Egyptian. An introduction"...(1-15)
- Orly Goldwasser & Colette Grinevald,
"What are 'Determinatives' good for?"...(17-53)
- Eliese-Sophia Lincke & Frank Kammerzell,
"Egyptian classifiers at the interface of lexical semantics and
pragmatics"...
(55-112)
- Eliese-Sophia Lincke & Silvia Kutscher,
"Motivated sign formation in Hieroglyphic Egyptian and German Sign
Language (DGS). Towards a typology of iconic signs in visual linguistic
systems"...(113-140)
- Rune Nyord,
"Prototype structures and conceptual metaphor. Cognitive Approaches to
Lexical Semantics in Ancient Egyptian"...(141-174)
- Eitan Grossman & Stéphane Polis,
"Navigating polyfunctionality in the lexicon. Semantic maps and Ancient
Egyptian lexical semantics"...(175-225)
- Elsa Oréal,
"Discourse markers between grammar and lexicon. Two Ancient Egyptian
cases for (de)grammaticalization?"...(227-245)
- Camilla Di Biase-Dyson,
"A diachronic approach to the syntax and semantics of Egyptian
spatio-temporal expressions with HA-t 'front'. Implications for
cognition and metaphor"...(247-292)
- Daniel Werning,
"Ancient Egyptian Prepositions for the Expression of Spatial Relations
and their Translations. A typological approach"...(293-346)
- Matthias Müller,
"Spatial frames of reference in Egyptian. Diachronic evidence for Left/Right
patterns"...(347-378)
- Joachim Friedrich Quack,
"To clothe or to wipe. On the semantics of the verb nms"...(379-386)
- Pascal Vernus,
"Le verbe gm(j): essai de sémantique lexicale"...(387-438)
- Alessandro Stella,
"Le verbe de perception nw(A) en égyptien ancien. Étude de sémantique
lexicale"...(439-458)
- Jean Winand,
"Le verbe et les variations d'actance. Les constructions réversibles
(= Études valentielles, 2)"...(459-486)
or triggers. While there are certainly lexical items for which this is appropriate, there are nonetheless other ways of describing polyfunctionality, a generic term for situations in which multiple functions (or meanings or senses) are associated with a single signifier. The goal of the present article is to
demonstrate that other kinds of analyses are possible, and can be equally interesting and useful for describing the facts of Ancient Egyptian and for relating them to cross-linguistic research. Moreover we show that Ancient Egyptian linguistic data allow us to test — corroborate, extend, or revise —
hypotheses that have been proposed in the typological literature. The paper is structured as follows: Part 1 raises the problem of polyfunctionality and possible approaches to this pervasive linguistic phenomenon; Part 2 presents the (classical) semantic map model developed by typologists in order to account for the cross-linguistically recurrent relationships between two or more meanings of single linguistic forms; Part 3 examines the applicability and usefulness of this model in Ancient Egyptian with two small-scale case studies dealing with specific semantic areas ([a] instrument-companion and [b] allative). In each case, the semantic map provides a principled method for the analysis of polyfunctionality in both synchrony and diachrony.
The talk has two main goals: one, to sketch the integration of Greek loan verbs into Coptic valency and transitivity patterns; and two, to argue that using the comparative concept/descriptive category distinction is useful for fine-grained studies of transitivities in contact.