The missing piece in the jigsaw puzzle
A psycholinguistic account of the beginnings of the Coptic alphabet
Past research approached the origins of the Coptic alphabet sociolinguistically and empirically. Neither can fully explain the comparatively sudden and fundamental change from a supraphonemic to a phonemic writing system for Egyptian around the second century AD. This paper adds the cognitive-linguistic concept of the grain size of a writing system to the picture. In essence, by the second century, sound changes in Egyptian had resulted in a phonological structure of the language that mapped more easily onto a phonemic writing system than previous stages of the language. This coincided with socio-political developments favouring the Greek alphabet. As a result, multiple writing systems, which shared the underlying structure, alphabetic, and model, the Greek alphabet, emerged. Eventually, one of these prevailed, the Coptic alphabet.
Article outline
- 1.Language and script
- 1.1Script and language
- 1.2Previous research
- 1.3Aims and objectives
- 2.Writing systems
- 2.1Supraphonemic writing systems
- 2.2Phonemic writing systems
- 2.3The Coptic alphabet
- 2.3.1Adoption
- 2.3.2Adaptation
- 2.3.3Standardisation
- 3.Situational contexts
- 3.1Socio-political circumstances
- 3.2Socio-linguistic circumstances
- 3.3Socio-cultural circumstances
- 4.Sociolinguistic approach: Creation?
- 4.1Domains of usage (text type and functionality)
- 4.2Social networks (communities of practice)
- 4.3Linguistic identity (in light of political fragmentation)
- 5.Psycholinguistic approach: Evolution?
- 5.1Cognitive aspects: Grain size theory
- 5.2Phonological aspects
- 5.3Coptic
- 6.Summary and conclusion
- Notes
-
References
References (115)
References
Adams, James. (2003). Bilingualism and the Latin Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Allen, James. (2013). The Ancient Egyptian Language: An Historical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Asfaha, Yonas, Kurvers, Jeanne & Kroon, Sjaak. (2009). Grain Size in Script and Teaching: Literacy Acquisition in Ge’ez and Latin. Applied Psycholinguistics 301: 709–734.
Bagnall, Roger. (1993). Egypt in Late Antiquity. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Bagnall, Roger. (2005). Linguistic Change and Religious Change: Thinking about the Temples of the Fayoum in the Roman Period. In Gawdat Gabra (ed), Christianity and Monasticism in the Fayoum Oasis: Essays from the 2004 International Symposium of the Saint Mark Foundation and the Saint Shenouda the Archimandrite Coptic Society in Honor of Martin Krause, 11–19. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press.
Baroni, Antonio. (2011). Alphabetic vs. non-alphabetic writing: Linguistic fit and natural tendencies. Rivista di Linguistica 23(2): 127–159.
Biber, Douglas & Conrad, Susan. (2009). Register, Genre, and Style. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brehmer, Bernhard. (2015). The Cyrillic Script as a Boundary Marker between “Insiders” and “Outsiders”: Metalinguistic Discourse about Script Choices in Slavic-German Bilingual Computer-Mediated Communication. In Peter Rosenberg, Konstanze Jungbluth & Dagna Zinkhahn Rhobodes (eds), Linguistic construction of ethnic borders, 55–80. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Bubenik, Vit. (1993). Dialect contact and koineization: The case of Hellenistic Greek. Journal of the Sociology of Language 99(1): 9–23.
Bucking, Scott. (2012). Towards an archaeology of bilingualism. In Alex Mullen & Patrick James (eds), Multilingualism in the Graeco-Roman Worlds, 225–264. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chappell, Hilary. (1980). The Romanization Debate. The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 41: 105–18.
Choat, Malcolm. (2006). Belief and Cult in Fourth-Century Papyri. Turnhout: Brepols.
Choat, Malcolm. (2009). Language and Culture in Late Antique Egypt. In Philip Rousseau & Jutta Raithel (eds), A Companion to Late Antiquity, 342–356. Chicester: John Wiley & Sons.
Choat, Malcolm. (2012). Coptic. In Christina Riggs (ed), The Oxford handbook of Roman Egypt, 581–593. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Clackson, Sarah. (2010). Coptic or Greek? Bilingualism in the papyri. In Arietta Papaconstantinou (ed), The multilingual experience in Egypt: From the Ptolemies to the ’Abbasids, 73–104. Farnham: Ashgate.
Clarysse, Willy. (1993). Egyptian Scribes writing Greek. Chronique d’Egypte 68(135–136): 186–201.
Clarysse, Willy. (2013). Determinatives in Greek loan-words and proper names. In Sven Vleeming (ed), Aspect of Demotic orthography; Acts of an International colloquium held in Trier, 8 November 2010, 1–24. Leuven: Peeters.
Colvin, Stephen. (2009). The Greek Koine and the Logic of a Standard Language. In Alexandra Georgakopoulou & Michael Silk (eds), Standard languages and language standards: Greek, past and present, 33–45. Farnham: Ashgate.
Crellin, Robert. (2018). Measuring ambiguity and the invention of vowel-writing in Greek. Paper presented at
International Colloquium on Ancient Greek Linguistics 9 (Helsinki, 30th August – 1st September 2018).
Crespo, Emilio. (2007). The linguistic policy of the Ptolemaic kingdom. In Miltiades Chatzopoulos & Vassia Psilakakou (eds), Phōnēs charaktēr ethnikos: actes du Ve Congrès international de dialectologie grecque (Athènes 28–30 septembre 2006), 35–49. Athens: Kentron Hellēnikēs kai Rōmaïkēs Archaiotētos, Ethnikon Hidryma Ereunōn.
Cribiore, Raffaella. (1996). Writing, Teachers, and Students in Graeco-Roman Egypt. Atlanta: Scholars Press.
Cribiore, Raffaella. (1999). Greek and Coptic Education in Late Antique Egypt. In Stephen Emmel (ed), Ägypten und Nubien in spätantiker und christlicher Zeit: Akten des 6. Internationalen Koptologenkongresses, Münster, 20.-26. Juli 1996, 279–286. Wiesbaden: Reichert.
Cribiore, Raffaella. (2001). Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Dahlgren, Sonja (2017). Outcome of long-term language contact: transfer of Egyptian phonological features onto Greek in Graeco-Roman Egypt. Helsinki: University of Helsinki.
Dahlgren, Sonja. (2016). Towards a definition of an Egyptian Greek variety. Papers in Historical Phonology 11: 90–108.
Daniels, Peter. (2018). An Exploration of Writing. Sheffield: Equinox Publishing.
Depauw, Mark. (1997). A Companion to Demotic Studies. Bruxelles: Fondation égyptologique reine Élisabeth.
Depauw, Mark. (2009). Bilingual Greek-Demotic Documentary Papyri and Hellenization in Ptolemaic Egypt. In Peter Van Nuffelen (ed), Faces of Hellenism. Studies in the History of the Eastern Mediterranean (4th century B.C.-5th century A.D.), 120–139. Leuven: Peeters.
Depauw, Mark. (2012). Language use, literacy and bilingualism. In Christina Riggs (ed), The Oxford Handbook of Roman Egypt, 493–506. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Depauw, Mark & Clarysse, Willy. (2013). How Christian was Fourth Century Egypt? Onomastic Perspectives on Conversion. Vigiliae Christianae 67(4): 407–435.
Depauw, Mark & Coussement, Sandra. (2014). Identifiers and Identification Methods in the Ancient World: Legal Documents in Ancient Societies III. Leuven: Peeters.
Dieleman, Jacco. (2005). Priests, Tongues, and Rites: The London-Leiden Magical Manuscripts and Translation in Egyptian Ritual (100–300 CE). Leiden: Brill.
Dillon, Matthew. (1997). A Homeric pun from Abu Simbel (Meiggs & Lewis 7A). Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 1181: 128–130.
Esling, John. (2013). Phonetic notation. In William Hardcastle, John Laver & Fiona Gibbon (eds), The Handbook of phonetic sciences (second edition), 678–702. Chicester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Förster, Hans. (2002). Wörterbuch der griechischen Wörter in den koptischen dokumentarischen Texten. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.
Foss, Clive. (2003). The Persians in the Roman near East (602–630 AD). Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 13(2): 149–170.
Fournet, Jean-Luc. (2019). The Rise of Coptic: Egyptian versus Greek in Late Antiquity (Rostovtzeff Lectures). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Gardiner, Alan. (1957). Egyptian Grammar: Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs (third edition, revised). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gardner, Iain. (1999). An Old Coptic Ostracon from Ismant el-Kharab? Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 1251: 195–200.
Gardner, Iain. (2006). A letter from the teacher: Some comments on letter-writing and the Manichaean community of IVth century Egypt. In Louis Painchaud & Paul-Hubert Poirier (eds), Coptica – Gnostica – Manichaica: Mélanges offert à Wolf-Peter Funk, 317–323. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval.
Gardner, Iain. (2007). P. Kellis i 67 Revisited. Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 1591: 223–228.
Gardner, Iain, Alcock, Anthony, Funk, Wolf-Peter, Hope, Colin & Bowen, Gillian. (1999). Coptic Documentary Texts from Kellis. Oxford: Oxbow.
Garel, Esther & Nowak, Maria. (2017). Monastic Wills: The Continuation of Late Roman Legal Tradition? In Malcolm Choat & Maria Giorda (eds), Writing and Communication in Early Egyptian Monasticism, 108–28. Leiden: Brill.
Hamers, Josiane & Blanc, Michel. (2000). Bilinguality and Bilingualism (second edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hengeveld, Kees. (2008). Functional Discourse Grammar: A Typologically-Based Theory of Language Structure. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Heselwood, Barry. (2013). Phonetic Transcription in Theory and Practice. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Hickey, Raymond. (2013). Supraregionalisation and Dissociation. In Jack Chambers & Natalie Schilling (eds), The Handbook of Language Variation and Change, 537–554. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.
Hirshorn, Elizabeth & Fiez, Julie. (2014). Using artificial orthographies for studying cross-linguistic differences in the cognitive and neural profiles of reading. Journal of Neurolinguistics 311: 69–85.
Hoffmann, Charlotte. (1991). An Introduction to Bilingualism. London: Longman.
Hoffmann, Friedhelm, Minas-Nerpel, Martina & Pfeiffer, Stefan. (2009). Die dreisprachige Stele des C. Cornelius Gallus: Übersetzung und Kommentar. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.
Hornkohl, Aaron & Khan, Geoffrey (eds). (2020). Studies in Semitic Vocalisation and Reading Traditions (Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures). Cambridge: Open Book Publishers.
Horrocks, Geoffrey (2014). Greek: A History of the Language and Its Speakers (second edition). Chichester: Wiley Blackwell.
Houston, Stephen, Baines, John & Cooper, Jerrold. (2003). Last Writing: Script Obsolescence in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Mesoamerica. Comparative Studies in Society and History 45(3): 430–479.
Jeffery, Lilian. (1990). The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece: A Study of the Origin of the Greek Alphabet and Its Development from the Eighth to the Fifth Centuries B.C. (revised edition). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Johnson, Janet. (2000). Thus Wrote ’Onchsheshonqy – An Introductory Grammar of Demotic. Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.
Jördens, Andrea. (2012). Status and Citizenship. In Christina Riggs (ed), The Oxford Handbook of Roman Egypt, 247–259. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Keenan, James. (2007). Byzantine Egyptian villages. In Roger Bagnall (ed), Egypt in the Byzantine world, 300–700, 226–243. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kiss, Zsolt. (2007). Alexandria in the fourth to seventh centuries. In Roger Bagnall (ed), Egypt in the Byzantine world, 300–700, 187–206. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kraus, Thomas. (2000). (Il)literacy in non-literary papyri from Graeco-Roman Egypt: Further aspects of the educational ideal in ancient literary sources and modern times. Mnemosyne 53(3): 322–342.
Kurzon, Dennis. (2010). Romanisation of Bengali and Other Indian Scripts. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 20(1): 61–74.
Lallier, Marie & Carreiras, Manuel. (2018). Cross-linguistic transfer in bilinguals reading in two alphabetic orthographies: The grain size accommodation hypothesis. Psychon Bulletin Review 251: 386–401.
Lawler, Steph. (2008). Identity: Sociological Perspectives. Cambridge: Polity.
Layton, Bentley (2011). A Coptic Grammar: With Chrestomathy and Glossary: Sahidic Dialect (third edition, revised). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Loprieno, Antonio. (1995). Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mackenzie, Lachlan. (2014). Morphosyntax in functional discourse grammar. In Andrew Carnie, Yosuke Sato & Daniel Siddiqi (eds), The Routledge handbook of syntax, 627–646. Abingdon: Routledge.
Maehler, Herwig. (1983). Die griechische Schule im ptolemäischen Ägypten. In Edmond van’t Dack, Peter van Dessel & Wilfried van Gucht (eds), Egypt and the Hellenistic world: Proceedings of the international colloquium Leuven – 24–26 May 1982, 191–203. Leuven: Peeters.
Matras, Yaron. (2009). Language Contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Matras, Yaron. (2015). Why is the borrowing of inflectional morphology dispreferred? In Francesco Gardani, Peter Arkadiev & Nino Amiridze (eds), Borrowed Morphology, 47–80. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Milroy, James & Milroy, Lesley. (2012). Authority in Language: Investigating Standard English (fourth edition). London: Routledge.
Müller, Matthias. forthcoming. Einführung in die Grammatik des Bohairischen. Basel.
Myers-Scotton, Carol. (2006). Multiple Voices: An Introduction to Bilingualism. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Nolan, Francis. (1990). Who do phoneticians represent?. Journal of Phonetics 181: 453–464.
Ockinga, Boyo. (2012). A Concise Grammar of Middle Egyptian: An Outline of Middle Egyptian Grammar (third edition). Darmstadt: Philipp Von Zabern.
Oréal, Elsa. (1999). Contact linguistique. Le cas du rapport entre le grec at le copte. Lalies 191: 289–306.
Palme, Bernhard. (2007). The imperial presence: government and army. In Roger Bagnall (ed), Egypt in the Byzantine world, 300–700, 244–270. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Palme, Bernhard. (2009). The Range of Documentary Texts: Types and Categories. In Roger Bagnall (ed), The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology, 358–394. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Papadopoulos, John. (2016). The early history of the Greek alphabet: new evidence from Eretria and Methone. Antiquity 90(353): 1238–1254.
Perfetti, Charles & Dunlap, Susan. (2008). Learning to read: General principles and writing system variations. In Keiko Koda & Annette Zehler (eds), Learning to Read Across Languages: Cross-Linguistic Relationships in First- and Second-Language Literacy Development, 13–38. New York: Routledge.
Perfetti, Charles & Verhoeven, Ludo. (2017a). Epilogue: Universals and Particulars in Learning to Read across Seventeen Orthographies. In Charles Perfetti & Ludo Verhoeven (eds), Learning to Read across Languages and Writing Systems, 437–454. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Perfetti, Charles & Verhoeven, Ludo. (2017b). Introduction: Operating Principles in Learning to Read. In Charles Perfetti & Ludo Verhoeven (eds), Learning to Read across Languages and Writing Systems, 1–30. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pestman, Pieter & van Groningen, Bernhard. (1994). The New Papyrological Primer (second edition, revised). Leiden: Brill.
Peust, Carsten. (1999). Egyptian Phonology: An Introduction to the Phonology of a Dead Language. Göttingen: Peust & Gutschmidt.
Pillalamarri, Akhilesh. (2019). The Story of India’s Many Scripts. The Diplomat, Accessed April 13, 2020, <[URL]>.
Quack, Joachim. (2007). Gebrochene Plurale im Ägyptischen? In Rainer Voigt (ed), “From beyond the mediterranean”: Akten des 7. Internationalen Semitohamitistenkongresses (VII. ISHaK), Berlin 13. bis 15. September 2004, 533–572. Aachen: Shaker.
Quack, Joachim. (2017a). How the Coptic script came about. In Eitan Grossman, Peter Dils, Tonio Richter & Wolfgang Schenkel (eds), Greek influence on Egyptian-Coptic: Contact-induced change in an ancient African language, 27–96. Hamburg: Widmaier.
Quack, Joachim. (2017b). On the Regionalization of Roman-Period Egyptian Hands. In Jennifer Cromwell & Eitan Grossman (eds), Scribal Repertoires in Egypt from the New Kingdom to the Early Islamic Period, 184–211. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Richter, Tonio. (2009). Greek, Coptic and the “language of the Hijra”: the rise and decline of the Coptic language in late antique and medieval Egypt. In Hannah Cotton (ed), From Hellenism to Islam: Cultural and Linguistic Change in the Roman Near East, 401–446. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sachau, Eduard. (1911). Aramäische Papyrus und Ostraka aus einer jüdischen Militär-Kolonie zu Elephantine: altorientalische Sprachdenkmäler des 5. Jahrhunderts vor Chr. Leipzig: JCHinrichs.
Sänger, Patrick. (2011). The Administration of Sasanian Egypt: New Masters and Byzantine Continuity. Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 51(4): 653–65.
Shisha-Halevy, Ariel. (2002). An Emerging New Dialect of Coptic. Orientalia 71(3): 298–308.
Stadler, Martin. (2008). On the Demise of Egyptian Writing. Working on a Problematic Source Basis. In John Baines, John Bennett & Stephen Houston (eds), The Disappearance of Writing Systems: Perspectives on literacy and communication, 157–181. London: Equinox.
Sternberg-El Hotabi, Heike. (1994). Der Untergang der Hieroglyphenschrift: Schriftverfall und Schrifttod im Ägypten der griechisch-römischen Zeit. Chronique d’Egypte 69(138): 218–248.
Sternberg-El Hotabi, Heike. (1999). Untersuchungen zur Überlieferungsgeschichte der Horusstelen: ein Beitrag zur Religionsgeschichte Ägyptens im 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr. (
Ägyptologische Abhandlungen, 62.) Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Thomason, Sarah. (2001). Language Contact. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Thompson, Dorothy. (2009). The multilingual environment of Persian and Ptolemaic Egypt: Egyptian, Aramaic, and Greek documentation. In Roger Bagnall (ed), The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology, 395–417. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Till, Walter. (1928). Achmîmisch-koptische Grammatik mit Chrestomathie und Wörterbuch. Leipzig: JCHinrichs.
Tolipov, Farkhod. (2017). Revere or Reverse? Central Asia between Cyrillic and Latin Alphabets, Accessed April 2, 2020, <[URL]>.
Torallas Tovar, Sofia. (2004a). Egyptian lexical interference in the Greek of Byzantine and early Islamic Egypt. In Petra Sijpesteijn & Lennart Sundelin (eds), Papyrology and the history of early Islamic Egypt, 163–198. Leiden: Brill.
Torallas Tovar, Sofia. (2004b). The context of loanwords in Egyptian Greek. In Pedro Bádenas de la Pena, Sofia Torallas Tovar, Eugenio Luján & María Ángeles Gallego (eds), Lenguas en contacto: El testimonio escrito, 57–67. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.
Torallas Tovar, Sofia. (2007). Egyptian loanwords in Septuaginta and the papyri. In Bernhard Palme (ed), Akten des 23. Internationalen Papyrologenkongresses, Wien, 22.-28. Juli 2001, 687–692. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.
Torallas Tovar, Sofia. (2010a). Greek in Egypt. In Egbert Bakker (ed), A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language, 253–66. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons.
Torallas Tovar, Sofia. (2010b). Linguistic Identity in Graeco-Roman Egypt. In Arietta Papaconstantinou (ed), The Multilingual Experience in Egypt, from the Ptolemies to the ’Abbasids, 17–43. Farnham: Ashgate.
Torallas Tovar, Sofia. (2017). The Reverse Case: Egyptian Borrowing in Greek. In Eitan Grossman, Peter Dils, Tonio Richter & Wolfgang Schenkel (eds), Greek Influence on Egyptian Coptic: Contact induced change in an ancient African language, 97–113. Hamburg: Widmaier.
Torallas Tovar, Sofia & Vierros, Marja. (2019). Languages, Scripts, Literature, and Bridges Between Cultures. In Katelijn Vandorpe (ed), A Companion to Greco-Roman and Late Antique Egypt, 483–499. Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell.
Unwin, Lorna, Hughes, Jason & Jewson, Nick. (2007). Communities of Practice: Critical Perspectives. London: Routledge.
van Minnen, Peter. (2007). The other cities in Later Roman Egypt. In Roger Bagnall (ed), Egypt in the Byzantine world, 300–700, 207–225. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
von Lieven, Alexandra. (2009). Script and Pseudo Scripts in Graeco-Roman Egypt. In Non-textual marking systems, writing and pseudo script from prehistory to modern times, 101–111. Göttingen: Widmaier.
von Lieven, Alexandra & Lippert, Sandra. (2016). Egyptian (3000 BCE to ca. 400 CE). In Daniel Bunčić, Sandra Lippert, Achim Rabus & Anastasia Antipova (eds), Biscriptality: a sociolinguistic typology, 256–276. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter.
Wachter, Rudolf. (2001). Non-Attic Greek Vase Inscriptions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Werning, Daniel. (2016). Hypotheses on glides and matres lectionis in earlier Egyptian orthographies. In James Allen, Mark Collier & Andreas Stauder (eds), Coping with obscurity: The Brown workshop on earlier Egyptian grammar, 29–44. Atlanta: Lockwood Press.
Wipszycka, Ewa. (2007). The institutional church. In Roger Bagnall (ed), Egypt in the Byzantine world, 300–700, 331–349. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wright, Roger. (2013). Periodization. In Martin Maiden, John Smith & Adam Ledgeway (eds), The Cambridge History of the Romance Languages, 107–124. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zakrzewska, Ewa. (2015). L⋆ as a Secret Language: Social Functions of Early Coptic. In Gawdat Gabra & Hany Takla (eds), Christianity and Monasticism in Middle Egypt, 185–198. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press.
Ziegler, Johannes & Goswami, Usha. (2005). Reading Acquisition, Developmental Dyslexia, and Skilled Reading Across Languages: A Psycholinguistic Grain Size Theory. Psychological Bulletin 131(1): 3–29.
Cited by (1)
Cited by one other publication
Fendel, Victoria Beatrix
2023.
Support‐Verb Constructions with Objects: Greek‐Coptic Interference in the Documentary Papyri?1.
Transactions of the Philological Society 121:3
► pp. 382 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.