A Socio-morphological Study of Selected Egyptian Place Names with Special Reference to Booij's Construction Morphology

Abstract

Most of the Egyptian place names are derived from various languages that were spoken in Egypt centuries ago. These languages include Ancient Egyptian, Coptic, Greek, etc. The contact between Arabic, after the Islamic Advent, and these languages was essential in shaping the forms of the Egyptian place names. However, other places acquired their names after the Arab conquest of Egypt, which are similarly of interest to the present research. This paper investigates the socio-morphological alterations that some of the Egyptian place names have undergone to reach their currently used forms. For this purpose, the researcher uses the tools of the theory of Construction Morphology (CM), developed by Booij (2005), under the fabric of socio-morphology. CM tackles any linguistic unit as a “pairing of form and meaning” or a function related to that form. Hence, CM is considered one of the adequate means to conduct this analysis; because it deals with the various linguistic levels, i.e. phonology, syntax, morphology, and even pragmatics, on an equal basis. To meet the goals of the study, the selected forms are analyzed in order to detect any significant modifications that they have undergone. The results demonstrate that a large number of these names was subject to various morpho-phonological alterations in order to reach the currently used forms for different reasons. These include socially governed purposes, ease of articulation, and the influence of Coptic, which ceased to generate new forms or schemas. In addition, since schemas in CM are language specific, new ones had to be developed to account for the Arabic place names under analysis.