Marwan Kilani
Biographic Data
| ID | 4087369 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Marwan Kilani |
| GIVEN NAMES | Marwan |
| FAMILY NAME | Kilani |
| SIGNATURE | KILANI M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Swiss National Science Foundation |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6099-6186 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Language contacts in the development of ancient Egyptian
This article explores the unique linguistic features of early Egyptian, arguing that these characteristics are best explained by a period of intense and unusual linguistic contact in the prehistory of the language. Drawing on both linguistic and archaeological data, the study examines the socio-historical context of these contacts, linking them to the spread of pastoralism and the desertification of the Sahara during the 4th millennium BCE, and t…
Copy-Paste in the Theban Necropolis
On the traces of “apples”, “plums”, and “pears”
Wanderwords are a very common phenomenon among the languages of the world, but they are rarely discussed in detail. Their paths of spreading are often considered hardly reconstructible and their origins beyond reach, and being non-inherited, they are often ignored by the linguists working on the history of the languages involved. The present article questions both these tendencies, as it aims at exploring, as far as possible, the origins and inte…
The Enigma of the Hyksos Volume II, Transforming Egypt into the New Kingdom. The Impact of the Hyksos and Egyptian-Near Eastern Relations
Egyptian words in the Late Bronze Age Levant
Cultural encounters often result in the borrowing of words between the communities involved. This words, in turn, preserve precious clues about the nature and characteristics of the interactions underlying their transfer, and can thus be a precious (but often overlooked) source of socio-historical information. The present paper aims at showing how Egyptian borrowings in Levantine languages can be used as an additional source of evidence to explor…
Phonological change and interdialectal differences between Egyptian and Coptic
The development of the Egyptian palatals ḏ and ṯ has long been a thorny issue in Egyptian linguistics. No convincing phonological rule for it has been identified so far. In the present paper I argue that the distribution of these phonemes is the result of inter-dialectal borrowings between a pre-Coptic dialect (C‐Dialect) in which ḏ , ṯ → c = ϫ and a pre-Coptic dialect (T‐Dialect) in which ḏ , ṯ → t = ⲧ. It is then argued that the attested Coptic…
Final – ww in the Late Egyptian Orthography
Various words in Late Egyptian texts present a final sequence –ww that is absent in earlier attestations and does not have any obvious etymological justification. No systematic discussion of these –ww , and not explanation for their use, has been offered so far. The present paper aims at filling this gap through a systematic reassessment of the phonological characteristics of a comprehensive corpus of words displaying this marker –ww . The result…
Faal
In this article I present FAAL , a new Feature-based Aligning ALgorithm that can be used for the alignment of phonetically transcribed lexical items according to the comparison of phonetic features. The algorithm can be run on any pair of phonetically transcribed words without requiring any specific setting or tuning, although various parameters of its implementation as .jar library can indeed be modified by the user, if needed. The structure and…
The Function of Final w in Nouns and Adjectives in the Autography of Selected Late Egyptian Texts
Late Egyptian texts are often characterized by the presence of a w at the end of words that does not seem to have any etymological justification. This w has often been interpreted as a “space filler”, i.e. a sign without any real function used by the scribe to fill spaces in the text. In the present article I question this hypothesis, and I suggest instead that these w were used to supply some information about the vocalization of the word, as so…
A New Tree Name in Egyptian
Calculating false cognates
This paper presents an extension of Baxter & Manaster-Ramer’s (2000) approach to the problem of false cognates in the determination of relationships between languages. Their approach uses a Monte Carlo simulation to estimate how many lexical similarities we can expect to be due to chance between two lexical lists from different languages, and consequently how many are too many to be all false cognates. Although very efficient, their model has the…
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Calculating false cognates
This paper presents an extension of Baxter & Manaster-Ramer’s (2000) approach to the problem of false cognates in the determination of relationships between languages. Their approach uses a Monte Carlo simulation to estimate how many lexical similarities we can expect to be due to chance between two lexical lists from different languages, and consequently how many are too many to be all false cognates. Although very efficient, their model has the…
A New Tree Name in Egyptian
The Function of Final w in Nouns and Adjectives in the Autography of Selected Late Egyptian Texts
Late Egyptian texts are often characterized by the presence of a w at the end of words that does not seem to have any etymological justification. This w has often been interpreted as a “space filler”, i.e. a sign without any real function used by the scribe to fill spaces in the text. In the present article I question this hypothesis, and I suggest instead that these w were used to supply some information about the vocalization of the word, as so…
Faal
In this article I present FAAL , a new Feature-based Aligning ALgorithm that can be used for the alignment of phonetically transcribed lexical items according to the comparison of phonetic features. The algorithm can be run on any pair of phonetically transcribed words without requiring any specific setting or tuning, although various parameters of its implementation as .jar library can indeed be modified by the user, if needed. The structure and…
Phonological change and interdialectal differences between Egyptian and Coptic
The development of the Egyptian palatals ḏ and ṯ has long been a thorny issue in Egyptian linguistics. No convincing phonological rule for it has been identified so far. In the present paper I argue that the distribution of these phonemes is the result of inter-dialectal borrowings between a pre-Coptic dialect (C‐Dialect) in which ḏ , ṯ → c = ϫ and a pre-Coptic dialect (T‐Dialect) in which ḏ , ṯ → t = ⲧ. It is then argued that the attested Coptic…
Final – ww in the Late Egyptian Orthography
Various words in Late Egyptian texts present a final sequence –ww that is absent in earlier attestations and does not have any obvious etymological justification. No systematic discussion of these –ww , and not explanation for their use, has been offered so far. The present paper aims at filling this gap through a systematic reassessment of the phonological characteristics of a comprehensive corpus of words displaying this marker –ww . The result…
Egyptian words in the Late Bronze Age Levant
Cultural encounters often result in the borrowing of words between the communities involved. This words, in turn, preserve precious clues about the nature and characteristics of the interactions underlying their transfer, and can thus be a precious (but often overlooked) source of socio-historical information. The present paper aims at showing how Egyptian borrowings in Levantine languages can be used as an additional source of evidence to explor…
The Enigma of the Hyksos Volume II, Transforming Egypt into the New Kingdom. The Impact of the Hyksos and Egyptian-Near Eastern Relations
On the traces of “apples”, “plums”, and “pears”
Wanderwords are a very common phenomenon among the languages of the world, but they are rarely discussed in detail. Their paths of spreading are often considered hardly reconstructible and their origins beyond reach, and being non-inherited, they are often ignored by the linguists working on the history of the languages involved. The present article questions both these tendencies, as it aims at exploring, as far as possible, the origins and inte…
Language contacts in the development of ancient Egyptian
This article explores the unique linguistic features of early Egyptian, arguing that these characteristics are best explained by a period of intense and unusual linguistic contact in the prehistory of the language. Drawing on both linguistic and archaeological data, the study examines the socio-historical context of these contacts, linking them to the spread of pastoralism and the desertification of the Sahara during the 4th millennium BCE, and t…
Copy-Paste in the Theban Necropolis
Ancient Egypt and Archaeology (8 works) · History (7 works) · Archaeology and Historical Studies (5 works) · Linguistics (5 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Ancient Near East History (3 works) · Art (3 works) · Language, Linguistics, Cultural Analysis (3 works) · Mathematics (3 works)