• Potential Old Nubian Cognates for Meroitic 'aleqese'

    Author(s):
    Gilda Ferrandino, Vincent van Gerven Oei (see profile)
    Date:
    2020
    Group(s):
    Union for Nubian Studies
    Subject(s):
    Linguistics, Philology, Nubians
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    Meroitic, Old Nubian, Decipherment, Nubian studies
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/d012-y712
    Abstract:
    In this article we will analyse three potential Old Nubian cognates of the Meroitic word aleqese, taking up a prior suggestion of Claude Rilly. After providing an overview of the linguistic relationship between Meroitic and Old Nubian and the extant analyses of aleqese in the extant literature, we will inspect the Old Nubian conditional clause marker ⲁⲗⲉⲥⲛ̄, as well as the words ⲁⲗⲕⲁⲥⲛ̄ and ⲁⲗⲓⲕⲟⲧⲛ̄, both with an unknown, but seemingly adverbial function. It will be our claim that ⲁⲗⲉⲥⲛ̄, which is frequently used in Old Nubian literary texts, is a true cognate, a word supposedly deriving from the same potentially reconstructable root. The existence of this cognate relationship, which follows the sound correspondences that have so far been proposed by Claude Rilly, further substantiates the claim that Meroitic is a Nilo-Saharan, and, more precisely, a Northern East Sudanic language. We will suggest that, by contrast, ⲁⲗⲕⲁⲥⲛ̄ and ⲁⲗⲓⲕⲟⲧⲛ̄ are loanwords from Meroitic, which give us further evidence concerning the pronunciation, phonetic variation, and orthography of Meroitic.
    Metadata:
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    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Pub. Date:
    2020
    Journal:
    Sudan & Nubia
    Volume:
    24
    Page Range:
    292 - 300
    ISSN:
    1369-5770
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    3 years ago
    License:
    Attribution
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