Peust, Carsten: Egyptian phonology: an introduction to the phonology of a dead language (Göttingen, 1999)

especially if it is comparatively short - indicate an intrusive segment which might
have been vocalic in nature, but might also have came close to a syllabic sonorant
("Murmelkonsonant").

• Nacel (1966) adopts Polotsky's view and refines it by asserting that any consonant
including obstruents can in principle form the nucleus of a syllable.

• Vergote (1973/83: la, § 68 and lb, § 40) considers the stroke principally a syllable
indicator. The syllable can be formed either by adding a weak vowel in pronuncia-
tion (a± in Vergote's transcription) or by using a sonorant as a syllable nucleus (he
notes the vocalic function of the sonorant by the abstract symbol a2). (Cf. already
Vergote 1954b: 105).

• Hintze (1980: 73-77) develops an abstract phonological representation of Coptic
which is supradialectal and serves as a deep structure from which dialectal
divergences as well as intradialectal morphophonological variation of Coptic can be
derived. In this deep structure, he does not admit consonant clusters within a
syllable but posits a phoneme /o/ in many places where in Sahidic the superlinear
stroke is written.

• Depuydt (1985a: i33f.) follows Worrell's and Polotsky's view and states:

" (...) the superlinear stroke is a syllabic marker: it is placed over conso-
nants that serve in place of a vowel as a sonorous center, and it extends
backward or forward so as to include in part a preceding or succeeding
letter belonging to the same syllable".

He does not clarify which factors determine the exact extension of the stroke. As is
elaborated in detail in Depuydt (1998: 341, 352L), he sees no difficulty for any
consonant in Coptic to be potentially a syllable nucleus. Just as Worrell did, he
considers the superlinear stroke as a means of guiding the reader towards the correct
syllabification, which is especially needed since Coptic texts lack word division
(Depuydt 1993: 358f.).

• Vycichl (1990: 203-207) likewise subscribes to the view that the superlinear stroke
is a syllabic marker, and that any consonant may be a syllable nucleus in Coptic. He
argues that assimilatory effects as evidenced by renderings like sAOTTttr (AO'B'Hr)
(besides SAOTTMK) (on this US' § 3.3.7) indicate that fl was in direct contact with the
following velar plosive, so the word was pronounced disyllabically as mu:-nk (and
not ...n»k or similarly). This changes, however, in the later stages of Coptic:

"Souvent une voyelle breve et peut-etre ultrabreve s'insere devant une con-
sonne syllabique [...]. Le timbre des voyelles developpees ulterieurement
est mal connu et n'etait certainement pas le meme dans toutes les parties
du pays." (Vycichl 1990: 207).

In sum, we have to state that neither the interpretation of the superlinear stroke as a
vowel sign nor as a syllabic marker is proven. For some additional evidence against its
interpretation as a syllabic marker Kg" §6.4.7.2. The syllable is in principle an

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