Submission

​Assessment tasks are compulsory and must be submitted on time. All assessment will be submitted via iLearn, including grammar tests, which will be completed on  the unit iLearn page, and the Assignments and Exam, which will be submitted via Turnitin through iLearn.

Extensions 

As a general rule, extensions will not be granted without a valid and documented reason (e.g. medical certificate).  All requests for Special Consideration must go via ask.mq.edu.au and must be supported by appropriate documentation.

Late Submission Penalty 

Unless a Special Consideration request has been submitted and approved, a 5% penalty (of the total possible mark) will be applied each day a written assessment is not submitted, up until the 7th day (including weekends). After the 7th day, a mark of ‘0’ (zero) will be awarded even if the assessment is submitted. Submission time for all written assessments is set at 11.55pm. A 1-hour grace period is provided to students who experience a technical issue.

This late penalty will apply to non-timed sensitive assessment (including essays, reports, posters, portfolios, journals, recordings etc). Late submission of time sensitive tasks (such as tests/exams, performance assessments/presentations, scheduled practical assessments/labs etc) will only be addressed by the unit convenor in a Special consideration application. Special Consideration outcome may result in a new question or topic.

Satisfactory Completion of Unit

In order to complete this unit satisfactorily students must gain a mark of 50% or more, and undertake all assessment tasks.

 

Lectures and Tutorials

The course consists of a one-hour lecture each week, which will present and discuss Coptic grammar. The lecture will be prerecorded and uploaded via Echo360 on the Monday of each week.

An online discussion forum on the iLearn page will allow questions to be asked about that week's exercises. In addition, the convenor will host a consultation hour for online students via zoom every fortnight at a time to be advised.

Technology used and required

The unit has an iLearn page which will host all the content and assessment for the unit, including the recorded lectures (via Echo360), assessment (via the iLearn Quiz function and Turnitin), lecture notes and other resources, and communications with the teaching staff. Internet access and a device (e.g. PC, tablet) are required, as are basic computer skills (e.g. internet browsing, word processing).

Coptic fonts

For the purposes of this course it is essential that you learn to type words in Coptic (and occasionally possibly in Greek). Most ancient language fonts – even if they are of the same language – have a different distribution of characters on the keyboard. So if members of the group use different fonts, this will lead to misunderstandings. We will use unicode fonts which (theoretically) display the same on all systems. I suggest therefore that you download the public domain Unicode font “New Athena Unicode”, which contains Coptic and Greek characters.

New Athena Unicode  is available for both PC and Macintosh computers on the following website:

http://apagreekkeys.org/NAUdownload.html

(See the link to "DOWNLOAD New Athena Unicode version 5.008 in ttf format" under "Latest Version")

For Coptic Unicode input (that is, keyboard layout), follow the directions provided at:

http://ucbclassics.dreamhosters.com/djm/coptic.html

This contains instructions for installing the Keyboard layouts in Windows or Mac systems, and general guidance on entering Coptic on both systems.

Further advice on fonts is available on the iLearn page. If you have any problems using a Coptic font, please contact the teaching staff.

Textbook and other readings

Textbook

The textbook we will use is Lambdin, T. O., Introduction to Sahidic Coptic, Macon 1983 (2nd edition 1992), a copy of which all students must purchase.

Grammars

As scholarly focus since the late 19th century has primarily been on Sahidic, there is a large body of teaching aids available for this dialect. The following list is not exhaustive, but lists the most important grammars. If students wish to purchase a comprehensive grammar, I recommend that of Layton, below, but this is not required.

Layton, B., A Coptic Grammar. Wiesbaden 2000 (2nd ed. 2004, 3rd ed.  2011).

Mallon, A., Grammaire copte: bibliographie, chrestomathie et vocabulaire, 4 éd. revue par Michel Malinine, Beyrouth 1956.

Plisch, U.-K., Einführung in die koptische Sprache (sahidischer Dialekt). Wiesbaden 1999.

Polotsky, H. J., Études de syntaxe copte, Cairo 1944.

Reintges, C., Coptic Egyptian (Sahidic Dialect). A Learner's Grammar. Köln 2004.

Shisha-Halevy, A., Coptic Grammatical Categories. Structural Studies in the Syntax of Shenoutean Sahidic. Roma, 1986.

Stern, L., Koptische Grammatik, Leipzig 1880.

Till, W., Koptische Grammatik, Leipzig 1961.

Till, W., Koptische Dialektgrammatik, München 1961.

Torallas Tovar, S., Gramática de Copto Sahidico. Madrid 2001.

Dictionaries

At this point of learning Coptic it is not necessary to purchase one of the dictionaries listed below, although access to a dictionary will be necessary for the advanced study of Coptic. For the purposes of this unit, the Glossary provided in Lambdin, Introduction to Sahidic Coptic, is quite sufficient. The most important dictionary of those listed below is Crum, W.E. Coptic Dictionary.

There is now a Coptic Dictionary online (edited by the Koptische/Coptic Electronic Language and Literature International Alliance [KELLIA]) online at https://coptic-dictionary.org/ which contains both Coptic and Greek words and links to Crum and other lexical resources. For guidance on using this dictionary see https://coptic-dictionary.org/help.cgi

Černý, J., Coptic Etymological Dictionary, Cambridge 1976.

Crum, W. E., Coptic Dictionary, Oxford 1939 (various reprints since, including Oxford 1999 and Wipf & Stock Publishers 2005).

Kasser, R., Compléments au Dictionnaire copte de Crum, Cairo 1964.

Smith, R., A Concise Coptic-English Lexicon, Grand Rapids 1983.

Westendorf, W., Koptisches Handwörterbuch, Heidelberg 1965-77.

Each week, there will be a 1-hour lecture which will present the course material. This will be reinforced by exercises from the textbook. Listening to the lecture completing the exercises are thus compulsory for students who wish to learn the language properly and thus do well in the unit. For a week-by-week overview of the content we will cover, see the unit iLearn site.