The Origin of the Later Egyptian Negative Particle iwn3 ~ in ~ AN as a Minimizer “Piece”: A Jespersen’s Cycle Etymology Also Relevant to Scholars of Arabic and Berber
The following is adapted from a fuller article draft that began peer review in Fall 2023, and is available from the author by request. Rendered in group (syllabic) writing as the sequence transliterated iwn3 , in Demotic script as the sequence transliterated in , and in Coptic script as ⲀⲚ an , the Later Egyptian discontinuous negative particle has proven to be surprisingly, frustratingly opaque in its origin. For over a century (Gardiner 1904), it has been insightfully and properly compared to structures like the French ne… pas , especially through the Coptic-script sequence ( Ⲛ︦ )… ⲀⲚ ( n) … an : as with the French, this negative particle has a later origin than the preceding primary negator, and eventually it even begins appearing as the sole negator. By implication, especially in light of much subsequent cross-linguistic research into what is now known as “Jespersen’s Cycle” (Willis, Lucas, and Breitbarth 2013: 6–7; Breitbarth, Lucas, and Willis 2020: 10, 36–44), it thus s...