Semantic classifiers (determinatives) and categorization in the ancient Egyptian writing system: Rules, list of classifiers, and studies by iClassifier on the Story of Sinuhe

Orly Goldwasser*, Susana Soler

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

In the last two decades, we have extensively explored the semantic classifiers in ancient Egyptian scripts, showing how they encode the world from two complementary perspectives: universal cognitive tendencies of classification along with Egyptian society's categorization of the world. Our central hypothesis is that each graphemic classifier in the Egyptian writing system heads a conceptual category. The assemblage of words classified by a particular classifier presents us with a dynamic map of an emic category in the mind of a culture. Classifiers in the Egyptian script allow us to trace central and marginal members of conceptual categories, spot interrelations and overlaps between categories, observe diachronic developments and changes, and discover incompatibility of categories. The number of classifier occurrences in complex script systems amounts to millions (i.e., big data).

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)34-58
Number of pages25
JournalJournal of Chinese Writing Systems
Volume8
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Author(s).

Keywords

  • ancient Egyptian
  • categorization
  • Graphemic classifiers
  • network maps
  • Sinuhe

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