Assimilation and Dissimilation at Work in the Late Egyptian Verbal System: The Verb Forms Built by Means of the Auxiliary iri from the Second Part of the Nineteenth Dynasty until Early Demotic

Abstract

This article continues the author's work upon the gradual spread of the use of auxiliary iri in Egyptian. After the loss of the markers .n.- and gemination during the Eighteenth Dynasty, new marked verb forms were derived from the few unmarked Middle Egyptian verb forms which survived. These periphrastic patterns stood in complementary distribution with the simple verb forms inherited from Middle Egyptian which belonged to the same verbal category in ternary distribution (present / past / prospective), or, in the case of the ‘emphatic’ verb forms, in binary opposition (non-model / modal). Subsequently, the employment of the auxiliary iri spread by analogy to almost all the surviving suffixal verb forms.