Dissertations
- Ancient Egyptian Concepts of Space and Spatial Constellations in Pictorial Representations
The main question of this project is how in ancient Egypt visual perception of objects and spatial constellations could be transferred pictorial representation.
- Comparative aspects of the expression of local configurations in Hittite
The aim of the project was to collect and analyze the spatial expressions – case, deictic verbs, syntax, local particles, adverbs, and place words – of Hittite, an Indo-European language spoken in central Anatolia some 3,500 years ago and analyze them from the point of view of Hittitology, of Cognitive and of Indo-European Linguistics. Its base was a corpus of ca. 2,360 complete sentences from Old and Middle Hittite texts.
- Formen des Ausdrucks von Dimensionalität im Hurritischen
The goal of this project was to achieve a comprehensive view of the systematic interplay between linguistic encodings of spatial relations in the Hurrian language.
- Greek motion verbs. A typological-lexical analysis in the comedies of Aristophanes and Menander
Marianna Spano’s dissertation focuses on the semantic and use of the Greek verbs of motion with the meaning of “to go” and “to come” in order to explicate the conditions under which these verbs are valid. Her corpus analysis is the comedy of Aristophanes and Menander.
- Sahidic-Coptic prepositions in a typological perspective
In this thesis, a set of Sahidic-Coptic prepositions (in particular ⲉ-, ϩⲛ̄-, ϩⲓ-, ⲉϫⲛ̄- and ϩⲓϫⲛ̄-) is studied. Sahidic is a dialect of Coptic, the last stage of the Egyptian language (Afroasiatic language family).
- Studien zur Semantik und Formenbildung der Nisben im Älteren Ägyptischen
The dissertation consists of two different studies regarding the Old Egyptian relational adjectives also called nisbes. The first one deals with the so called reciprocal or reverse nisbes in which the underlying semantic relation between the nisbe and its base word is said to be reversed. The second part deals with the quality of the Old Egyptian nisbe ending.
Research Projects
- On the diachrony of spatial terms in Egyptian and Coptic
Wie ist das System von Ausdrücken zur Bezeichnung spatialer Konfigurationen im Ägyptischen und Koptischen strukturiert, und welcher diachronen Variation sind die Kodierungsverfahren und die Semantik unterworfen?
Hauptgegenstand war das zuvor weitgehend unerforschte System ägyptischer Präpositionen in typologischer und diachroner Perspektive. - Räumliche Ausdrucksmöglichkeiten im Griechischen und Syrischen. Ein lexikalischer Vergleich
Das Forschungsvorhaben untersuchte anhand eines Textbeispiels (Ps.-Aristoteles, De mundo) die spatialen Ausdrucksmöglichkeiten in der griechischen Sprache und verglich diese auf der Basis einer spätantiken Übersetzung mit denen des Syrischen, um im Kontext der sprachtypologischen Forschung eventuelle universale Tendenzen der Codierung des Raumes von einzelsprachlichen Spezifika differenzieren zu können.
- Terms for space and time in the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint and the Vulgate
Im Zentrum des Projekts standen die Fragen, a) welche sprach- und traditionsgeschichtlichen Faktoren für die Interdependenz von Begriffen für Zeit und Raum im israelitisch-jüdischen Schrifttum im 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr. verantwortlich sind, b) wie diese Begriffe im Prozess der Übersetzung aus dem Althebräischen ins Altgriechische und Lateinische transformiert wurden und c) wie unter anderem durch diese Transformation das spätantike und mittelalterliche christliche Zeit- und Raumverständnis mit geprägt wurde.
Third-party Funded Project
- Back(wards) to the Future. The orientation and metaphorical significance of the Egyptian prepositions r-HA.t 'in front/before' and m-xt 'behind/after'
Why are space and time expressed by the same words? Does this indicate that the ancient Egyptians thought about time in terms of space? In fact, many languages, among them, English and German, use spatial words like “before/vor’ to establish relations of both time and space. What strikes us for Egyptian, however, is the sheer number of forms: we have at least 12 ways of saying “before/in front’ and 7 ways of saying “after/behind’. Why so many? Were they used in specific contexts? Or were they popular at different times? The first two questions relate to the functions of the forms, whereas the third addresses the idea of diachronic change. The last research question, which extends from the other two, is whether the use and change of spatio-temporal forms throughout pharaonic history can tell us anything about how the ancient Egyptians thought about space and time. Was it characterised or quantified differently to now? Can we assume that changes in language actually reflect changes in thought? Only a detailed linguistic analysis of these forms in a variety of documents across a time span of over two millennia will help us uncover their changing use and popularity.