Abstract:

There can be no doubt that of all issues of Coptic pattern grammar, it is the Nominal Sentence that has had the most monographic attention. Whatever the reasons for this special cultivation — the relative familiarity of this pattern set (known in similar forms from Egyptian and Semitic), its (again relative) compactness and transparency as regards internal structure and external relations of its constituents, the urge of typological interest in a verbless prediction pattern — the happy outcome is that today, although many details are still controversial, the patterns have been by and large isolated and their formal (if not always functional) analysis more or less agreed upon […]