From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Sun Dec 28 2003 - 18:34:12 EST
On 28/12/2003 13:16, Jim Allan wrote:
> ...
> 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.
>
> Jim Allan
>
Thank you, Jim, for this interesting reference, which I am copying to
the Hebrew list.
I note that the author refers inconsistently, even within the same
paragraph, to "the Phoenician/Hebraic writing systems" and "the
Phoenician/Hebraic writing system". When he uses more careful
terminology, he writes: "one symbol-set system,
<http://orion.mscc.huji.ac.il/orion/programs/Altman/Altman99.shtml#ftnt2>
but two different script systems: Paleo-Hebraic and Square Aramaic"
(i.e. in Unicode terms, Phoenician and Hebrew). See also footnote 33
which explains the terminology further and makes analogies with Latin
and Greek.
But I think that this document should also be taken with a big pinch of
salt. The author assert that "In trilinear limit systems, the symbols
move up and down according to the stress rhythms of the languages. //
Durational notation, that is, the length of time a sound should be held,
is recorded by the amount of movement from side-to-side, that is,
expansions and contractions of the space between graphic forms." But
this is simply untrue as a generalisation across many script systems,
even if it is true of some examples of some scripts. There is of course
an obvious tendency for some writers of any language to write important
words, those stressed when spoken, with larger or more carefully shaped
and spaced glyphs, and to write secondary material, whichis likely to be
spoken hurriedly, with small and indistinct glyphs. But this kind of
variation is surely beyond the scope of Unicode.
It is very interesting to me that there does seem to have been a glyph
distinction (though a very subtle one) between sin and shin, in the
"serech" example
(http://orion.mscc.huji.ac.il/orion/programs/Altman/serech.jpg) of what
is undoubtedly (in Unicode terms) Hebrew script. If this distinction can
be verified a case can be made for encoding a separate HEBREW LETTER
SIN, equivalent to shin with sin dot. But it is difficult to verify this
when three scribes within the same document make the distinction in
three different ways.
-- Peter Kirk peter@qaya.org (personal) peterkirk@qaya.org (work) http://www.qaya.org/
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