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

probably in order to unambiguously indicate the syllabic nature of the sonorant.328 For
example the Sahidic predecessor of qni.t (qinVjtV) "to be fat" is written SKMN6, which is
probably to be interpreted as /'kna/. Instead, a writing *KN€ would suggest a pronuncia-
tion /'kne/. Bohairic has bK€MI which may have been pronounced f'koni] or ['keni] but has
probably been derived from earlier */'kni/. In Akhmimic, an additional consonant /j/ is
preserved in this word which makes doubling of the sonorant letter unneccessary: aKN£ie
/'knja/. Consider the following examples:



Egyptian
etymon

gloss

Classical
Sahidic

Akhmimic

Bohairic

Fayyumic

6

sb.t

to circumcize

ceee

CBB6

cefii

CHBBl

A

sml

to accuse

CAME

CAME

ceAi

CHAAI

N

qni.t

to be fat

KNN£

Ki-teie, KNMie

K6NI

KHMNI

\

qfr.t

door-bolt

KMe

-

KeM

KHJAl, K7TM

P

brj

to be new

Bppe

Bppe

Bepi

Bepi

5.10.4 Unstressed syllabic sonorants before consonants and in word-

final position

Syllabic sonorants can also occur in unstressed syllables but their status is quite
different here. They are mere positional variants of sonorants and not related to an
original i]ow.

It may be assumed that sonorants were generally pronounced syllabically when not
adjacent to a vowel. While verbs like H(J?idv2 /'Jlah/ "to be afraid" and sC(uTn /'sotp/ "to
choose" were probably pronounced as monosyllables (US' § 2.7.5), Sahidic verbs such as
SAK&2 "to be sad" and sCu)TA "to listen", which belong to the same morphological
classes as the above-mentioned verbs, may have been pronounced as disyllabics: /m'kah/,
/ sotm/, although this is by no means certain.

Sahidic has two forms of the definite article, a long form ()!£-) which appears before
consonant clusters, and a short form (FI-) which appears elsewhere. With nouns such as
pne "temple", both forms are attested: sne-pne ~ sn-pne,3*9 so no easy decision is
possible as to whether the initial sonorant was perceived as a consonant or as a vowel.

Unstressed syllabic sonorants also occur in Bohairic and Fayyumic where stressed
syllabic sonorants are unknown (or at least concealed on the graphic surface). However
in Bohairic (I leave aside Fayyumic here), only A and N can be written syllabically,
which, furthermore, is only encountered in word-initial position. In all other cases, the

328 Thus Sethe (1918). Hodge (1981) gives a different interpretation assuming that the
written sequence of two sonorants is a device for rendering a sequence /?/ +
sonorant in the spoken language.

329 Depuydt (1993: 350, 367f.). Depuydt states that "nepne is standard in good
manuscripts" (p. 367).

265