Changes in the New Kingdom: what the classifiers reorganization tells us about the evolution of cognitive categories
(2015) International Congress for Young Egyptologists, Vienna, 15-19 September 2015 — Location: Vienna (15.September.2015)
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- Abstract
- I hereby propose an innovative approach to the classifiers system in the New kingdom. It aims at highlighting an interesting phenomenon of reorganization taking place in the New Kingdom and, more specifically, in the XXth dynasty. This period constitutes indeed a turning point in the development of classifier usage and classification strategies. At this time, we are faced with a systematic reorganization of the system, consisting of two phenomena: The main one is that, for a given lexeme, the use of a given classifier (or combination of classifiers) tends to become more systematized. In addition, one can also observe a tendency towards a more systematic specification of meaning, appearing in the case of polysemous lexemes, in order to disambiguate the different possible nuances of meaning of the lexeme. In cases where, in Earlier Egyptian, a unique classifier was used with a particular lexeme, in Late Egyptian of the XXth dynasty several are used, one for each sense of the lexeme. The first purpose of my talk is to illustrate these phenomena of linguistic change by means of some case studies and to demonstrate their dynamics by taking into account several factors, such as the genre the texts belong to or the degree of abstraction expressed by the lexemes. Highlighting the dynamics of this reorganization will also permit me to draw interesting conclusions about the evolution of Egyptians cognitive categories in the New Kingdom. Indeed, an increasing importance is given to wide conceptual categories, and to abstract notions (e.g. plays on space and time concepts). Furthermore, lexical approaches enable us to comprehend another side of the language evolution and to have a more in-depth analysis of the composition process of the texts.
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Chantrain, G. (2015). Changes in the New Kingdom: what the classifiers reorganization tells us about the evolution of cognitive categories. International Congress for Young Egyptologists, Vienna, 15-19 September 2015, Vienna. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/99690