The Modal System of Earlier Egyptian Complement Clauses ─ A Study in Pragmatics in a Dead Language

Uljas (Trinity College, Cambridge U.) considers how the three verbal "meaning domains" of tense, aspect and modality work within the grammatical organization of the language, focusing on modality. He proposes a new way of thinking about modality in Egyptological linguistics, analyzing it according to semantics and pragmatics and focusing on fully clausal complements. He begins his survey with complementary clauses after governing verbs and moves to other types, explaining how modality and mood made more difference and expressed more emotional range than we had assumed. This is fascinating even if you are not a specialist. Annotation c2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Sami Uljas, Ph.D. (2005) is a Research fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge University. He is author of many articles on Ancient Egyptian, includingCairo Bowl lines 7-8 (GM 201/2004) and hpr.n and the genesis of auxiliaries (in press).