Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:35:39 -0000 (GMT) Subject: AEL Advice for an Egyptian grammar From: msore@albawaba.com To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" While thinking about what an Egyptian grammar might be, or in other words, what various AEL grammars try to be, I came across these points made in the introduction of A Late Egyptian Grammar (Third updated edition, 1984) Cerny, Groll and Eyre pages li and lii "(d) Every language, at any given point in time, must be described according to certain systematic rules which are characteristic of the language. These rules have a universal validity in regard to that particular stage of the language, and by discovering them the language can be analysed as a coherent system. These universal rules constitute the distinctive character of any given grammatical analysis... (e) Considerations of meaning and grammar cannot be kept separate in a dead language written in a script which does not indicate vowels. One must bear in mind that the first stage of Egyptian grammar was the understanding of the meaning of the written records. That is to say, in practice the first 'grammars' were base on intuitive translations, not VICE-VERSA. Of course, every 'grammar' improves our translations, and eventually these improve the subsequent grammars. Thus, is its practically impossible to separate considerations of meaning from grammar. Semantics and philological interpretation necessarily form a part of the grammar. The establishment of Egyptian grammars proceeds by: (1) intuitive translation, (2) grammar, (3) improved translation, (4) improved grammars, and so on. (f) Morphology and syntax cannot be treated independently ... The purely practical procedure of singling out the simple minimal' grammatical units it necessarily connected with environmental syntactic considerations. Thus, our description is basically a morpho-syntactic one, i.e., it is a context sensitive grammar." Note that this view precludes there being ONE final grammar. Rather, a linguistic grammar is a constantly refined account of the facts and interactions at the various levels of organization. Bettering the grammar is a responsibility of the responsible grammar-writer. A critical question, then, is WHAT determines whether a grammar is improved or not over past efforts? The answer, possibly expressed in many ways, is "linguistics". matthew ============================================================================== From: Louise Walker To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL Advice for an Egyptian grammar Date: Sat, 27 Jun 2009 19:37:15 +0100 Hhi I have been trying to learn hieroglyphs with Gardiner and have found it rather hard going. I will keep an eye out for the new Glyph study group as that might be helpful. I work so can only study it in my spare time. I have ben to Egypt before and am going again next yr and would love to be able to make more sense of the inscriptions in the temples. Thanks for the advice. Louise ==============================================================================