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The definite article in Semitic developed also in Arabic, Aramaic, and Old South Arabian, languages that were not in contact with Egyptian in the relevant period and likely did not borrow their article from Canaanite. We know that either because they weren’t
in contact with Canaanite (Old South Arabian), or because the development of the article is attested (Arabic, Aramaic). Additionally, Semitic had already a nascent article, which only fully developed in Ethiopic (bibliographical details below). This is all
to say that I doubt Egyptian is the catalyst.
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<div class="">Huehnergard, John and Na’ama Pat-El. 2012. Third Person Possessive Suffixes as Definite Articles in Semitic. Journal of Historical Linguistics 2: 25-51.</div>
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<div class="">Na'ama<br class="">
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<div class="">On Jun 17, 2020, at 01:58, Eitan Grossman <<a href="mailto:eitan.grossman@mail.huji.ac.il" class="">eitan.grossman@mail.huji.ac.il</a>> wrote:</div>
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<div dir="ltr" class=""><font face="arial, sans-serif" class="">Right, the idea is that it spreads from Egyptian to Canaanite and from there onwards.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></font>
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<div class=""><font face="arial, sans-serif" class="">As for Ancient Egyptian, the development of the definite article (and later, the indefinite article) is documented extensively and has been written about quite a lot. It's pretty clear that the definite
article emerges relatively late in the history of the language, first in more colloquial texts and then later in higher-register ones. <span style="" class="">Interestingly, there have also been claims that Egyptian got the definite article from Canaanites
who lived in Egypt.</span></font></div>
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<div class=""><font face="arial, sans-serif" class="">Whether within Egyptian it comes from a substrate or adstrate or something else, it's virtually impossible to tell. It's not impossible but also not straightforward -- the contemporary languages, whatever
they were, aren't really documented.</font></div>
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<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 9:26 AM Östen Dahl <<a href="mailto:oesten@ling.su.se" class="">oesten@ling.su.se</a>> wrote:<br class="">
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" class="">Thanks, Frans, for the link to this paper, which I had not seen. (I did read Fehling’s paper, however, quite long ago.) For the record, though: although Peust claims (reasonably, it seems) that Egyptian is the
ultimate source, he doesn’t say that Greek got it straight from there. Instead, he says that it is remarkable that the definite article shows up in Greek in the same time period as the Greeks took over the Phoenician script, thus suggesting Phoenician, a Semitic
language, as the proximate source for the Greek definite article.<u class=""></u><u class=""></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" class="">In light of Peust’s claims, it is maybe Egyptian that is most relevant for Jürgen’s project. Although who knows if they didn’t get the article from somebody else?<u class=""></u><u class=""></u></span></p>
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<span lang="EN-US" class="">Östen<u class=""></u><u class=""></u></span></li></ul>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b class="">Från:</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Uni KN <<a href="mailto:frans.plank@uni-konstanz.de" target="_blank" class="">frans.plank@uni-konstanz.de</a>><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br class="">
<b class="">Skickat:</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>den 17 juni 2020 00:04<br class="">
<b class="">Till:</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Östen Dahl <<a href="mailto:oesten@ling.su.se" target="_blank" class="">oesten@ling.su.se</a>><br class="">
<b class="">Kopia:</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>LINGTYP <<a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank" class="">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>><br class="">
<b class="">Ämne:</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories<u class=""></u><u class=""></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Close, Östen: they got it from Egyptian. Or so argues Carsten Peust, in <span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;" class="">Göttinger Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft 2, 1999, S. 99-120</span><u class=""></u><u class=""></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 17.5pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">Fälle von strukturellem Einfluss des Ägyptischen auf europäische Sprachen</span><u class=""></u><u class=""></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11.5pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">(1) Die Herausbildung des definiten Artikels, (2) Die Entwicklung des grammatischen femininen Genus, (3) Die inklusive Zählweise von Zeitintervallen</span><u class=""></u><u class=""></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdok/2274/1/Peust_Faelle_von_strukturellen_Einfluessen_1999.pdf" target="_blank" class="">https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdok/2274/1/Peust_Faelle_von_strukturellen_Einfluessen_1999.pdf</a><u class=""></u><u class=""></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Similarly<u class=""></u><u class=""></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">LEVIN, Saul 1992: Studies in comparative grammar: I. The definite article, an Egyptian/Semitic/IndoEuropean etymology, in General Linguistics 32:1-15.</span><u class=""></u><u class=""></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">FEHLING, Detlev 1980: The origins of European syntax, in Folia Linguistica Historica 1:353-387.</span><u class=""></u><u class=""></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">On 16. Jun 2020, at 18:25, Östen Dahl <<a href="mailto:oesten@ling.su.se" target="_blank" class="">oesten@ling.su.se</a>> wrote:<u class=""></u><u class=""></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">This topic happened to come up in my recent conversation with Martin Haspelmath on his blog (<a href="https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2361" target="_blank" class="">https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2361</a>). There are also some references there to
earlier literature.<br class="">
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I would not bet on the definite article in Ancient Greek as an independent development. After all, definite articles were around in the neighbouring Semitic languages. If the Greeks got their alphabet from the Semitic-speaking peoples, they could also get the
article from them, I think.<br class="">
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- Östen<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br class="">
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-----Ursprungligt meddelande-----<br class="">
Från: Lingtyp <<a href="mailto:lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank" class="">lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>> För Bohnemeyer, Juergen<br class="">
Skickat: den 16 juni 2020 15:44<br class="">
Till: LINGTYP <<a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank" class="">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>><br class="">
Ämne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories<br class="">
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Dear Christian — Thank you very much for your response! I'll have much more to say about your suggestions, but for now, I’d just like to try a clarification:<br class="">
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<p class="MsoNormal">On Jun 16, 2020, at 6:41 AM, Christian Lehmann <<a href="mailto:christian.lehmann@uni-erfurt.de" target="_blank" class="">christian.lehmann@uni-erfurt.de</a>> wrote:<br class="">
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To the extent that the contribution made by such expressions to the sentence meaning is indeed redundant, it would mean that the respective information is already contained in the context, and to this extent there would be no need for the hearer to employ inferencing.<u class=""></u><u class=""></u></p>
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I’m assuming a view of communication on which it is largely inference-based. The question on this view is not whether but how much inferencing the hearer has to do.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br class="">
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Consider the information added by gender markers to pronouns and agreement morphology. In the vast majority of cases, this information is not needed for identifying the referent. But having it by my hypothesis still facilitates processing by further boosting
the predictability of the referent. As long as the added effort for speaker and hearer in processing the gender information is minimal (that’s where grammaticalization comes in), this may confer a minuscule processing advantage.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br class="">
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Same story with tense or definiteness: in the vast majority of uses, tense markers and articles are not terribly informative (witness all the speech communities that get by happily without them), so that can’t be the reason why we grammaticalize them (that’s
my thinking, anyway).<br class="">
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<span lang="EN-US" class="">(As to Givón, yes, absolutely, I’m well aware that I’m merely trying to retell a story functionalists have been telling since the dawn of functionalism :-))<br class="">
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Best — Juergen<br class="">
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--<br class="">
Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)<br class="">
Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br class="">
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