This is the PARSEME Egyptian research group devoted to the study of Egyptian-Coptic multi-word expressions.
PARSEME is an interdisciplinary scientific network for the study of multi-word expressions (MWEs) in Natural Language Processing. It started as a COST-initiative in 2017 and it contains annotated corpora of over 30 languages, two of them being Egyptian and Ancient Greek. Latin, Hittite and Biblical Hebrew will also be part of the project.

A multi-word expression is a (continuous or discontinuous) sequence of at least two lexicalized words featuring some degree of orthographic, morphological, syntactic and semantic idiosyncrasy (Baldwin and Kim 2010: 269 and Savary et al. 2018: 93), e.g. to take a walk. Efforts to identify and classify multi-word expressions in Old Egyptian have recently been made (see Díaz Hernández 2024a and 2024b). We are currently working on a comparison of multi-word expressions in each stage of Egyptian based on the PARSEME 2.0 guidelines, for example:
- Old Egyptian (ca. 2700-2000 BC):
𓊪𓈙𓈙𓂻𓈖 𓅐𓏏 𓎡 𓏌𓏏𓇯 𓁷𓂋 𓎡 (Pyramid Texts 638a, T)
pšš.n ś(ꞽ) mw.t ⸗k Nw.t ḥr ⸗k
Lit.: “Your mother Nut spread herself over you” i.e. “Your mother Nut protected you.”
- Middle Egyptian (ca. 2000-1550 BC):
𓂞 𓊃 𓌸𓂋𓏏𓅱 𓀀 (pRamesseum MF I, 5, x+3)
č̣i̯ ⸗ś mrw.t ⸗ꞽ
Lit.: “She may give my love” i.e. “She may instil love for me.”
- Late Egyptian (ca. 1550-700 BC):
𓇋𓏲 𓆑 𓁷𓏤 𓁹𓂋𓏏 𓂓𓏏𓏲𓏛𓏥 𓎟𓏏 (BM EA 10682, r. 5,1)
ꞽw ⸗f ḥr ꞽr.t kꜣ.wt nb.(w)t
Lit.: “He makes all works” i.e. “he carries out all the tasks.”.
- Demotic (7th century BC to 5th century AD):
ꞽr ⸗f ꞽr sḫy n nt nb (Mythus, 15/4–5)
Lit.: “He made the power of everything” i.e. “He had control over all”.
- Coptic (4th century to 14th century AD):
ⲁⲓ-ⲣ-ⲛⲟⲃⲉ (Matt 27:4)
Lit.: “I have made a sin” i.e. "I have sinned".
Our goal is to develop a database of multi-word expressions for each stage of Egyptian.