Abstract:

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Many pieces of advice, recommendations and warnings in Egyptian teaching texts are introduced by imperative verbal lexemes (which linguists call "directive speech acts"). Examples can be found, for example, in the teachings of Ptahhotep, Ani, and Amenemhat. The great numbers of imperative lexemes in these texts offer a wide range of spellings, syntactic constructions, and semantic contents. The same lexeme can appear in several forms within a single text, with various phonograms and classifiers. From a semantic point of view, there are also notable variations, such as the various meanings of <t>sA(w)</t>, which is usually translated as "refrain from", although it is polysemous. This paper gives an overview of a project that is intended to fill a gap in the Egyptological literature on directive speech acts. Every aspect of the related verbal lexemes is studied, including grammatical analysis, graphemic comparisons, lexicographical and semantic study, as well as issues arising and potential conclusions.

Notes:

OEB 284447