Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T14:43:03.707Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What's mine is yours: Stable variation and language change in Ancient Egyptian possessive constructions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2017

Shayna Gardiner
Shayna Gardiner*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Variation is described as two or more variants competing for finite resources. In this model, two outcomes are possible: language change or specialization. Specialization can be broken down further: specialization for different functions, and partial specialization – stable variation. In this paper, I analyze the differences between stable variation and language change using the two variables present in Ancient Egyptian possessive constructions. Observing four Egyptian possessive variants, split into two groups with two variants each – clitic possessor variants and full nominal possessor variants – for a total of 2251 tokens, I compare factors affecting variant choice in each possessive group. Results of distributional and multivariate analyses indicate that a) change over time occurs in clitic possession, while stable variation occurs with noun variants; and b) different kinds of factors govern the two sets: the continuous variable phrase complexity affects variant choice in nominal possession, but does not affect the clitic variants.

Résumé

On décrit la variation comme deux ou plusieurs variantes en concurrence pour des ressources finies. Dans ce modèle, deux résultats sont possibles : le changement linguistique ou la spécialisation sémantique. Cette dernière peut également être décomposée : la spécialisation pour différentes fonctions et la spécialisation partielle (ou variation stable). Dans cet article, j'analyse les différences entre la variation stable et le changement linguistique en utilisant les deux variables présentes dans les constructions possessives en égyptien ancien. En observant quatre variantes possessives, divisées en deux groupes de deux variantes chacun – variantes de possesseurs clitiques et variantes de possesseurs nominaux complets – pour un total de 2 251 occurrences, je compare les facteurs affectant le choix de variante dans chaque groupe. Les résultats des analyses distributionnelles et de régression multiple indiquent que a) le changement au fil du temps se produit dans les variantes clitiques, alors que la variation stable se produit avec les variantes nominales ; et b) différents types de facteurs conditionnent les deux ensembles : la complexité de la phrase variable continue affecte le choix de variante dans la possession nominale, mais n'affecte pas les variantes clitiques.

Keywords

possessive constructionslanguage variationsociolinguisticslanguage changeEgyptian languageconstructions possessivesvariation de languesociolinguistiquechangement de languelangue égyptienne
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 62 , Issue 4: Variation at the Crossroads: Advancing theory by integrating methods/La Variation: Faire progresser la théorie par l'intégration des méthodes , December 2017 , pp. 639 - 660
Copyright
© Canadian Linguistic Association/Association canadienne de linguistique 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen, James P. 2010. Middle Egyptian: An introduction to the language and culture of hieroglyphs. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Allen, James P. 2013. The ancient Egyptian language: An historical study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischer-Elfert, Hans W. 2003. Representations of the past in the New Kingdom literature. In Never had the like occurred: Egypt's view of its past, ed. Tait, John W., 119–138. London: University College London Institute of Archaeology, an imprint of Cavendish Publishing Ltd.Google Scholar
Fruehwald, Josef and Wallenberg, Joel C.. 2013. Optionality is stable variation is competing grammars. Paper presented at the 25th Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics, Formal Ways of Analyzing Variation (FWAV) Workshop, University of Iceland.Google Scholar
Gardiner, Alan Henderson. 1957. Egyptian grammar. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gardiner, Shayna. 2015. Taking possession of the constant rate hypothesis. In University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: Selected papers from NWAV 43, ed. Fisher, Sabriya. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Gardiner, Shayna. In press. The spread of the new pronominal possessive construction: A variationist approach to the letters of the Middle and New Kingdom. In Possession in ancient Egyptian, ed. Grossman, Eitan and Polis, Stephane. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Hoch, James E. 1997. Middle Egyptian grammar. Mississauga: Benben.Google Scholar
Johnson, Daniel Ezra. 2015. Rbrul version 2.29: A variable rule application in R. Available from <http://www.danielezrajohnson.com/Rbrul.R>..>Google Scholar
Kammerzell, Frank. 2000. Egyptian possessive constructions: A diachronic typological approach. Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 53(1): 97–108.Google Scholar
Kroch, Anthony S. 1989. Reflexes of grammar in patterns of language change. Journal of Language Variation and Change 1(3): 199–244.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kroch, Anthony S. 2001. Syntactic change. In Handbook of contemporary syntactic theory, ed. Baltin, Mark and Collins, Chris, 699–729. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Kroch, Anthony S. 2005. Modeling language change and language acquisition. Expansion of an LSA Institute forum lecture.Google Scholar
Kupreyev, Maxim. 2013. The development of the definite article in Egyptian. Paper presented at the Central European Conference of Egyptologists VI.Google Scholar
Loprieno, Antonio. 1995. Ancient Egyptian: A linguistic introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
R Core Team. 2013. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. <http://www.R-project.org/>..>Google Scholar
Redford, Donald B. 1984. Akhenaten: The heretic king. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Ritter, Elizabeth. 1988. A head-movement approach to construct-state noun phrases in Modern Hebrew. Linguistics 26(6): 909–929.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ritter, Elizabeth. 1992. Cross-linguistic evidence for number phrase. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 37(2): 187–219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sethe, K. 1960. Ägyptische Lesestücke zum Gebrauch im akademischen Unterricht [Egyptian readings for use in teaching]. Hildesheim: G Olms.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A. 2006. Analysing sociolinguistic variation. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
TLA. 2016. Thesaurus linguae aegyptiae. <http://aaew.bbaw.de/tla/>..>Google Scholar
Wallenberg, Joel C. 2013. A unified theory of stable variation, syntactic optionality, and syntactic change. Paper presented at the 15th Diachronic Generative Syntax (DiGS) Conference, University of Ottawa.Google Scholar
Weinreich, Uriel, Labov, William, and Herzog, Marvin I.. 1968. Empirical foundations for a theory of language change. In Directions for historical linguistics, ed. Lehman, W. P. and Malkiel, Y., 95–198. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar