| Please choose from the categories below |
Cuneiform Signs |
|
Analysis and reports to support an international standard for computer encoding of the Cuneiform writing system Research on the development of Cuneiform signs |
The "Cover" Container in Cuneiform Signs Chinese characters have a "Roof" radical, which covers but does not literally surround the other component(s) of the characters in which it occurs. In just the same way, Cuneiform signs have a "Cover" component used as a container in signs of the type [container x infixed components]. The origins of this sign component include the range "cover", "vault of the sky" etc. The original sign split into components named "SHU2" (wider, two wedges) and "SHU4" (narrower, one wedge, a Winkelhaken), the split based apparently on the width of the contained components, which were originally below it, and after the 90-degree rotation were to the right of it. The one-wedge form SHU4 merged with the sign U which had another origin, from the small circlar end of a stylus, whether used for the numeral ‘10’ or otherwise. (GE23, a single diagonal wedge, also merged into the sign U.) For clarity of discussion across historical stages, we can retain the name SHU4 for those components which look like SHU4 in older Cuneiform and look like U in later cuneiform. In Cuneiform signs just as in Chinese, the "Cover" container does not fully surround the contained component. But the relation is sufficiently intimate that it may not be possible to draw a vertical line entirely through white space, separating the two. . In Chinese characters, the "roof" radical has small vertical wedges which descend around the upper edges of the contained component(s). In Cuneifom, unlike Chinese, characters do not all fill a square block of constant size. But even in Cuneiform, the spacing is much closer than would be true in most typographic styles if the "Cover" and the contained component were really independent signs. Since both SHU4 and SHU2 are thin, it is hard to imagine any motivation to split them apart from the remaining components of the same sign in order to fill out the end of a line before a line break. So such line breaks in the middle of a this type of sign should be exceedingly rare, if indeed they occur at all. (The occurrence and frequency or absence of such line breaks can of course be determined empirically.) This would simply be a result of cuneiform users considered these to be single signs, not sequences of two signs. Encoding them for computer use as single signs gets us just the results we expect and want. Encoding them as a sequence of components would give us undesired results, putting line breaks through the middle of these single signs just as readily as in the spaces between signs. It would require that we then fix the problem elsewhere, by interposing a ligaturing code in every occurrence of every sign of this type, or something else keeping the parts together. Borger has assigned single sign numbers to many signs of this type, but by no means all, perhaps simply because the criterion used included frequency, and the goal is to represent glyphs rather than all signs as distinctive characters. Labat listed a higher proportiion of these small lists under SHU2 than SHU4. I argue that all signs in the lists below are single signs, not sequences of two signs. The NAMES for these signs of course reflect a dynamic *componential* analysis even though our analysis shows these are single *signs*. There are quite a number of additional signs which are of the form SHU2 x (component) or SHU4 x (component) which should for similar reasons be encoded as single signs. Can we distinguish cases in which we have really a simple sequence of a sign SHU4 (or U) and some other sign, perhaps with a separate reading as a text element, but not a single sign? Can we tell in the best typography through spacing of the signs, with more space between individual signs than between components of a single sign? (See separate discussion of that question). Here follow lists of some signs including the two "Cover"
components: |
SHU2, the wide "Cover" container Borger signs in the range B870 to B880 |
SHU4, the narrow "Cover" container, Borger signs in the ranges B663 to B671 and B698 to B700, B710, B745
to B746 |
Other signs which had a convex curve or peak in their original more
iconic form also later had a single Winkelhaken or a pair of angled
wedges. Examples of this are |
|