Expressing necessity in Sahidic Coptic

The present paper deals with the syntactic sub-patterns of a Sahidic Coptic syntactic construction that marks necessity. It consists of an initial element haps, followed in the majority of attested cases by a prepositional phrase comprising the preposition e- plus a verbal pattern called the ‘inflected infinitive’ in Coptological linguistics. In a number of cases, a verbal form called the ‘conjunctive’ or even an independent sentence can be found following the initial element. However, a sub-pattern with subject element pe can be contrasted with one lacking this element. Based on the diachronic distribution of the patterns, the author proposes a development from a syntactic loan strategy copying a similar Greek pattern—syntactically ‘ungrammatical’ in Coptic—to a pattern amending this situation by inserting the subject element pe.