Workshop for Egyptian Historical Linguistics

As part of an intensive ongoing research project, I am pleased to publicly announce the broadest outlines of a new paradigm, wherein a significant portion of Ancient Egyptian is redescribed as auxiliary verbs: 1) Since Champollion, linguistic analysis of Ancient Egyptian has been misled about a major portion of the verbal system, which now travels under the name “suffix conjugation” (i.e. what are transliterated as sDm-Xr-f , sDm-k3-f , and sDm-n-f / sDm-in-f ): such constructions are not one conglomerate word (i.e. sDm-Xr-f ), but rather two, in the order lexical verb + auxiliary verb (i.e. sDm + Xr-f ). 2) The first form (i.e. what is transliterated as sDm-Xr-f ) can be identified as a “can” auxiliary verb (< rX “know”), evincing a 3,500+ year grammaticalization chain extending into permission and commands and through the habitual and future usage found in Coptic-script forms. 3) The etymologically-misleading transliteration sDm-Xr-f reflects a “soundalike” application of an u