Date: Fri, 2 May 2008 14:13:53 -0700 (PDT)
From: Weben Banu <webenbanu@yahoo.com>
Subject: AEL Breaking down syllables in ancient Egyptian words
To: Ancient Egyptian Language List <AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk>

I've been wondering how to break Egyptian words down
into syllables.  For example, in the word jrp, "wine"
(
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v91/webenbanu/Digital%20Papyrus/jrp.gif
), should it be interpretted as eer-ep, or eerp?  Is
there a standardized way of doing this?  

At the beginning of Allen's book he recommends placing
e's between all phonemes except j, y, A, a, and w for
pronunciation's sake... but later on he introduces the
concept of vowel patterns which seems to suggest that
we know what some of them were.  So is there a pattern
which distinguishes one syllable from another?  And if
there is, are we fortunate enough to know which
syllable is customarily accented... or is that just a
pipe dream at this point in the language study?

Many thanks,
Katherine

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Date: Sun, 04 May 2008 08:24:31 +0200
From: Michael Hahn <hermann.haken@t-online.de>
To: Ancient Egyptian Language List <AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk>
Subject: Re: AEL Breaking down syllables in ancient Egyptian words

With some Egyptian words, it is indeed possible to determine the 
original vowels, the place of accent and the syllable structure. jrp, 
for example, had an accented vowel *u between j and r. According to the 
syllabification rules assumed to be operative in Egyptian, only the 
syllable types CVC and CV were possible. Additionaly, the last syllable 
of a word could only be CVC. jrp therefore was something like *jú|rVp 
with | marking the syllable division.

Regards,
Michael Hahn
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From: "A.K. Eyma" <ayma@tip.nl>
To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" <AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk>
Subject: Re: AEL Breaking down syllables in ancient Egyptian words
Date: Sun, 4 May 2008 17:15:35 +0200

Dear Katherine,

>I've been wondering how to break Egyptian words down
>into syllables.  For example, in the word jrp, "wine"
>), should it be interpretted as eer-ep, or eerp?  Is
>there a standardized way of doing this?

I do not think anyone would say eer-ep (but rather ee-rep).
But there are  no real rules for Egypto-speak; I think to
recall there are different 'dialects' per German university and
that Schenkel once wrote a GM article on that. Probably
US and Europe would also differ.

>For example, in the word jrp, "wine"
<snip>
> but later on he introduces the
>concept of vowel patterns which seems to suggest that
>we know what some of them were.  So is there a pattern
>which distinguishes one syllable from another?  And if
>there is, are we fortunate enough to know which
>syllable is customarily accented... or is that just a
>pipe dream at this point in the language study?

**With this notation:
C= consonant,
V = stressed vowel,
v = unstressed vowel
: =  long vowel
# = word end
/ = syllable boundary
@ = schwa / reduced vowel

The rules are like this for Middle Egyptian (hoping
not to goof or leave something out):
1) word stress is on one of the last two syllables.
2) there are restrictions on how syllables were formed,
e.g. a word final syllable always ends in a consonant (-C#)
and consonant clusters do not occur inside a syllable
(no /CC- or -CC/).
3) vowels are only long in syllables that are both
open (=not ending in a consonant) and stressed.
4) We can know how some words were vocalised and
were they had the stress if they survive in Coptic or are
rendered in cuneiform, Greek, Meroitic, etc.

Together 1 to 3 mean:
a) the stressed syllable and any syllable that follows can
be one of these:
/CVC#
/CV:/CvC#
/CVC/CvC#
b) The syllables before the stressed syllable can be
/Cv/ or /CvC/

[NB: there are four (possible) exceptions to 2&3,
proposed by Schenkel and Loprieno, in specific
word final circumstances, but I'll happily ignore
those here.]

If you look at the above, you can see that jrp with its
three consonants could in theory be:
/Cv/CVC#  -- jvrVp
/CV:/CvC# -- jV:rvp
In Coptic, wine is èrp, showing that the first vowel is
long (and the syllable thus stressed&open), while the
second vowel disappeared (and thus was unstressed)
So the second option (jV:rvp) applies.

In addition, there are also rules how vowels developped
in time, which is too much to explain here, but one of
these developements is Coptic è  = é:  < ú:. The unstressed
vowel in the word cannot be known (which usually is so in
general, although sometimes it can, eg if there are analogue
word formations, but that does not go for jrp, I think).

So the word was something like this:
*yú:rvp (OK) > *3ú:r@p (NK) > é:rp (Coptic)

[OK: *yú:rap, *yú:rip, or *yú:rup]

Aayko

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