11.1 Definitions

Lessons 7 and 10 introduced us to three kinds of Egyptian sentence: those in which the predicate is adjectival, nominal, or adverbial. In each of these sentence-types the predicate is not a verb, although English forces us to translate them with one, usually a form of the verb be. Because of this common feature Egyptologists group the three kinds of sentence together under the heading of “non-verbal sentences,” which is short for the more accurate designation “sentences with a non-verbal predicate” (see § 7.1). In this lesson we will look at the three kinds of non-verbal sentences together, and at some further features of them.

11.2 Basic patterns and meanings

As we have seen, each of the three kinds of non-verbal sentence can have many different forms, depending on what is used as the subject and predicate. In general, however, each type has a basic pattern and meaning.

Adjectival sentences have the pattern ADJECTIVE–SUBJECT, where the predicate is an adjective (masculine singular or masculine dual). They express a quality of their subject: for example, nfr sw“He is good,” where the predicate nfr describes a quality of the subject, sw“he”—namely, that he is “good.”