Jim Allan wrote at 4:16 PM on Sunday, December 28, 2003: >James Kass wrote on using variation selectors for fine glyph variations: > >> So, that approach might meet epigraphers' needs while enabling >> painless cross-variant searching, and still permit scholars to >> get on with encoding their texts as they see fit. > >For an example of what might be needed, see Rochelle I. S. Altman's >discussion "Some Aspects of Older Writing Systems: With Focus on the >DSS" at http://orion.mscc.huji.ac.il/orion/programs/Altman/Altman99.shtml : > >Altman indicates how differences in ligaturing, height, spacing and >glyph variation are used in the unpointed "Phoenician/Hebraic Writing >Systems" to indicate emphasis, pause, stress and even the difference >between shin and sin. > >Encoding these texts with reasonable fullness would require a "stressed >variant" variation selector, vowel phone variation selectors, a sin/shin >variation selector as well as ZWJ and variant spaces already encoded.
I would be extremely reticent about using this article as an authority in determining Northwest Semitic script system features. Just a few of the caution signs in this Altman article: * "The outer framework of Western writing systems consists of two horizontal lines ... The main purpose of a bilinear limit system is to confine and constrain the written word. Such limit systems intentionally "freeze" the words into an unchanging form to preserve the magical power of the word and to control people and things. ... Bilinear limit systems are preferred by magical-mystical oriented societies." * "Unlike the mystical-magical "frozen" bilinear limit system, the North- West Semitic pragmatic-practical writing systems use the "flexible" trilinear limit system." * In her treatment of the Phoenician Kilamu inscription Altman claims glyph modification based on stress and duration, but gives not one character of phonemically or morphonemically analyzed text to support her assertions! * She makes sweeping paleographical judgments based on a HAND DRAWN image of the text, not on photographs or, even better, the original! * In order to support her stress/duration thesis when dealing with some Exodus texts from Murabba'at, Altman conveniently replaces standard "textbook" explanations of Hebrew stress by her own very subjective, arbitrary, and unsubstantiated theory: "The textbooks tell us that stress is grammatically determined in Hebrew, and this is true. What the textbooks do not tell us is that what is true in theory is not always true in practice. Stress is very flexible and a specific syllable may receive none, secondary (medial), or primary stress - even in Hebrew. Stress can either be intrinsic, that is, the normal (textbook) pronunciation of the word, or extrinsic, that is, impressed by musical, poetic, or rhetorical requirements -- of which emphasis is the most common. In other words, any document that records quoted statements may or may not follow the intrinsic (normal) rules for pronunciation. This is an important point to remember when examining these two fragments from Murabba'at" * Altman - "Ductus (the direction of a pen or brush stroke) cannot be used to isolate scribal hands in [formal] scripts and fonts." In addition to incorrectly defining ductus, she makes the unsubstantiated statement that one cannot distinguish scribal hands in formal scripts (except by detecting her "ideographs", which can be as minimal as one character in a word!) * "Ancient writing systems also have a hierarchy of sizes: the largest documents are always 'The Law'." * "scripts do NOT develop, they mutate" [footnote 33] 33 "The concept that scripts 'develop' is quite erroneous and stems from the conflation of a scribe with a calligrapher. Development implies that a letter change here, another there, until, finally, we have a new script. Scripts, however, are closed systems, carefully designed to work within the complex unity we call a writing system. Script families consist of a script, the class, and numerous mutations, fonts, descendants of the class. All modern "scripts," for example, are descendants, mutations, of precisely four script classes. All uppercase serifed fonts are descendants, mutations, of Roman Capitals and all lowercase serifed fonts are mutations of North African half-uncials; all modern sans-serif uppercase fonts are mutations of Roman Rustic Capitals and all lowercase fonts are mutations of Roman half-uncials. There are only two script classes for Hebrew, Paleo-Hebraic and Square Aramaic: The fonts used in the documents from, for instance, Gezer, are mutations of Paleo-Hebraic and the fonts used for the majority of the documents found in the Judean Desert and still used today are mutations of the Square Aramaic. Likewise, there are only two script classes for Greek, Attic Capitals and Constantine's ethnic-blend "Uncial." There are very few script classes in any writing system, no matter the language for which that script system is intended. 'New' script designs are extremely rare and occur under special -- and very predictable -- circumstances. There is no such thing as a "proto-typic" script; there must be a script class for a font to mutate from." ---------------------------------- I haven't had time to look into her assertion that SIN and SHIN are glyphically differentiated in one manuscript (her serech.jpg image is of too low resolution to check this out), but her verbal descriptions of the differences strike me as the sorts of glyphic variations one expects as normal in any author's handwriting. Respectfully, Dean A. Snyder Scholarly Technology Specialist Library Digital Programs, Sheridan Libraries Garrett Room, MSE Library, 3400 N. Charles St. Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, Maryland, USA 21218 office: 410 516-6850 fax: 410-516-6229 Manager, Digital Hammurabi Project: www.jhu.edu/digitalhammurabi
