Pre-Late Egyptian Reconstruction/The Perfect Active Participle

In Egyptological studies the termed Perfect Active Participle, which apparently mirrored an identical internal frame as most other Afroasiatic languages (emitting a sort of adjectival dimension to the verb) is but a rather thorny issue among scholars. The main form of the perfect active participle is generally reconstructed with the pattern CaCiC. In addition, if the CaCiC form ever truly existed (as a templatic form) it would have collapsed alongside other forms at an early period and all the forms would have been indistinguishable from one another presumably at a point in Egyptian history when not only the vowels of unstressed syllables were no longer distinguishable in speech but also when a relocation of stress due to an augmented affix (or word) caused syncopation of the medial vowel. So, for example:
 * nāfir + af = nǎfraf ...and... nāfar + af = nǎfraf

To add insult to injury, the category of Egyptian adjectives has come into question on numerous occasions by scholars as a grammatical entity within all the phases of the language. Semantically and pragmatically there is also no obvious fine line between an adjective, a noun or a verb (sometimes even an adverb)- noticeably so in the hieroglyphics where attributive roots can most likely be found (in what appears to be an unaltered fashion) in all the aforementioned grammatical categories. Other than a remnant pattern [or two] specific to the defined attributive root, Coptic does not appear to answer many of the unanswered questions of the Egyptian adjective. And any information regarding the adjective is fairly scarce, un-unified and/or speculative leaving enthusiasts and learners to come to our own conclusions. With this being said, I am going to identify some unmentioned developments, with respect to the adjective's templatic patterns and usage, that I noticed while piecing together any information I could find on the adjective which at the least can give me some closure to the subject which I myself have been thrown into circles while trying to understand the ambiguity of the Egyptian adjective. Some of these observations are listed below:


 * Just about any root with a logical underlining descriptive element can function as an attributive modifier, this undoubtedly is the ultimate outcome and intended use of the idea of the adjective utilizing natural language progression into Coptic ... but there does appear to be some limitations in Old and Middle Egyptian where statives and other constructions (i.e., passive formations) were used for the more intricate and highly formal expression. So using comparative linguistics within the Egyptian language as a whole (as well as diving the language between the first phase which is Old/Middle Egyptian and the second phase which is Demotic/Coptic), semantics and pragmatics tell us the adjective went through simplification. However, the vocalic inflections of the adjective as shown in Coptic (including Cuneiform and Greek) relate a rather disconnected signal in relation to a unified pattern and this is while comparing the inflectional forms against the categories of the infinitive or the nisbe, which for example, the pair has unification albeit with a few irregularities, on the other hand an identifiable adjectival category is entirely constructed of irregularities. The only other grammatical and inflectional category composed of irregularities is the patterns of the nominal. One logical resolution here would be that in Coptic, all roots stemming from the adjectival attribute somehow merged into the category of nouns and was treated as such- scholars have already come to this conclusion. The question arises as to why was there more than one pattern given to the adjective if in comparison the infinitive had the overall CaC(a)C pattern? ...


 * Does Coptic eta < Ⲏ > give us some answers? Disregarding the numerous patterns of the Coptic nominal, < Ⲏ > is majorly regularly used in the Qualitative of 2-radical roots, the plural and when re-situating a historical final /-u/ better analyzed as a /w ~ j/ affix in a word (which is quite possibly also used for one of the patterns of the adjective in Coptic). With this being said, if we saw the phrase nfr ḥr (good of face; fair of face) in the hieroglyphics, we are going to assume the vowels inside are nafar ḥar, same is said for this sentence using the attributive construction: sḫr pn bajan (this bad plan). And the Coptic versions with < Ⲏ > stem from a roots ending in /w/ or /j/ (or some kind of coarticulation) categorizing these words as a separate hieroglyphic abstract marked sub-class which are then lexicalized in Coptic consisting of adjectival and nominal tendencies. J. Vergote does unintentionally hint on this hypothesis in his essay but since many of his research was of the pluralic prototype-pattern for the modern day plural approach, the adjectival theories are more-or-less overlooked. This theory does unearth a problem- was there a divide with a hieroglyphic root form, i.e., CVCVC+aw, where in one direction it turned into CVCVC(e) / CVCVC / CVCVCaw [popular with abstract verbs turned into a nominal] and in another it turned into CuCVC / eCjuC(VC) [popular with abstract verbs that turned into some sort of (attributive-)noun]? Or was the difference based upon some kind of sound change? Or a mixture of the two? This kind of morphological/inflectional division also existed with the plural, as shown in Coptic with the broken plural, and it also existed with limitations in the Egyptian nisba - CVCVCaj ~ CVCVCi ~ CVCCe / CVCeC. Technically speaking, an original /-aw/ abstract marker, may have gone through even more changes then previously believed taking all the above into account.

Below are the forms of the Perfect Active Participle:

Templatic Class II: Form 1
The following paradigm equates to Osing and Schenkel's: Subjekts-Nominalisierungen: Nominalbildungsklasse II 1: sā d im/sǎ d m-t.

Templatic Class II: Form 2
There appeared to be variant perfect active participle vocalizations.

There are two major explanations for this type of participle vocalization:


 * One explanation for the following irregularities may have to do with an i-Type Modification (better termed as coarticulation) due to the proximity of specific consonants (i.e., d, š, k, q, m, ect); for example; mǐn - stable, should mechanically be mǎn but 2-rad roots containing unstressed /a/ are going to have an automatic schwa/reduced sound anyway.
 * Another explanation is that the word may have been borrowed from another Afro-asiatic root consisiting of the ppattern CiCVC and was then used as an adjective as well as a noun in Egyptian. This appears to be the case for ϢⲒⲢⲈ and ⲚⲒϢϮ / ⲚⲈϢⲦⲈ.

Oftentimes, more than not, it appears all these forms had an adjectival dimension added to it's internal vocalic structure anyhow, which may have expressed an automatic original adjectival internal vocalic marker no matter how it is looked at.

Form 2: AiBaC (masc)
Note: A shift of stress to the final syllable comprises Form 4 (Osing and Schenkel's Subjekts-Nominalisierungen: Nominalbildungsklasse II 4: si d ǎm/si d āmat)

(3-lit.) pitǎḥ - creator

(4-lit.) jinbǎɜ - mute (person)

Note: An observation to made here [with all of the shifts of stress of the participles] is that this shift may have been:
 * due to the verb originally containing |-aw| or |-uw| where the ending was eventually dropped
 * the original verb had an adjectival element associated with its meaning, where the shift occurred due to additions pre/su-fixed to the word which were later dropped
 * there was some sort of phonological priority including but not limited to vocalic metathesis

Form 2: AiBCat (fem)
Note: A shift of stress (of the fem form) to the middle syllable comprises Form 4 (Osing and Schenkel's Subjekts-Nominalisierungen: Nominalbildungsklasse II 4: si d ǎm/si d āmat)

(3-lit.) jiḥānat - cupped hand

Templatic Class II: Form 3
This form appears to be specialized for adjectives. In the list compiled by Osing, there appears to be only about 17 verbs following this pattern: