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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
 

No Separate Character Codes for Sequences of Signs Which Do Not Themselves Function as Atoms; How to Avoid Cutting Signs into Artificial Parts

There are a number of ways in which we might cut signs into pieces. Some sign lists include combinations of signs, not merely atomic signs. We don't want to encode both the atoms and the combinations, as that would lead to multiple different encodings for the same text, and more failures in searching text for what users wish to find.

On the other hand, we also don't want to cut signs into artificial components which have no independent existence. Unlike Chinese characters, which all have the same size and fit in a square box, Cuneiform signs are of varying widths, and thus the task of deciding what is a single sign is considerably harder. Received traditions of course have mostly enshrined the decisions for us. We should be wary of radical deviations from that, unless we are certain of what we are doing.

Unless there is evidence that other factors distort this measure, it appears simplest to consider single signs to be those units which are not normally split into fragments across line breaks. (Assyriological specialists have said that almost any large sign can exceptionally be split in this way, but such would not be normal usage. We are here referring to normal usage.)

I make here the empirically testable claim that the majority of the single signs we wish to encode are at the same time those which permit line breaks after them in normal usage, and those which are productive elements in the writing system. We can explore productivity from a number of perspectives. Some are addressed here. Keeping our efforts closely attuned to how the writing system was used will produce an encoding which serves everyone best in the long run.

 

SIGN OVER SIGN and SIGN CROSSING SIGN
For a comprehensive list of productive parts of such signs, please click here. At least it is intended to be comprehensive.
 
Complex Container Signs
Some such signs are best not divided into left and right portions, with the infix appearing inside only the right-hand portion, because the result yields a large number of artificial units which do not occur as independent signs. The productive units are rather the entire container (both left and right portions together) vs. the infixed part. Examples of such signs include SHILAM, which is appropriately understood to be structured as TUR3 x SAL, that is as (NUN+LAGAR) x SAL, not the other way as NUN.(LAGAR x SAL). LAGAR x SAL is not a functioning productive unit, while TUR3 is. (LAGAR x SAL) is not a unit which occurs in the sign-over-sign structure, but TUR3 is, and TUR3 x SAL is. There are a large number of such signs referring to insects and to cattle, using an elaborate container sign (etymologically, one may conceivably infer a reference to body-with-antennae or body-with-horns), for which the "body" alone does not occur with the infixes, it is only the total container which takes those infixes. An exhaustive listing will come later.
 

Container Signs with Internal Parts Which Are Not Infixed;
Container Signs Which Do Not Surround their Infixed Signs
There are a number of special cases which make it clear that naming and categorizing signs is not usefully done on the basis of superficial appearance, but on the basis of an understanding of the functional productivity which gives rise to their structure.

Thus some container signs (universally so recognized) already contain internal parts, which are nevertheless correctly not considered infixed when naming the signs, because they function as part of the container not the infixed portion. For a small list, please click here.

Other container signs do not actually surround the infixed portions, so some might be especially tempted to dissolve these complete signs into a left-right linear sequence. This would again be counter-productive. For a small list, click here.
 

Container Signs with Infixation as a Highly Productive Category
A survey of productivity for such signs suggests that we could gain much by either encoding such signs as Container x Infix, or else by defining sorting tables for them as if they were encoded in that way. In either case, we provide for the largest portion of signs which have been discovered and need to be added as we pass beyond the more basic and limited sign lists. For a first statistical overview of this, please click here.
 

Signs Which Originally Had the Covering or Vault of the Sky on Top
(Signs U = SHU4, and SHU2) These are an interesting group, because an etymological meaning for the one-wedge or two-wedge part of the sign is often accessible, at least with some effort. But the fact that there was an identifiable element of the conceptual drawing does not mean these "coverings" were separate signs after the drawings became cuneiform signs in a system distinctive oppositions of signs. Some bits of evidence for the unitary nature of signs containing these two elements are the irregularity of development through time of the sets of wedges which comprise the remainder (as well as the split from a single "cover" drawing to two different wedge representations, based on the width of the configuration of wedges in the base sign which they occured adjacent to). Breaking such signs into fragments entails greater difficulties for implementation, since particular combinations of supposedly independent signs will then require irregular transformations of shape, far more than if the functionally unitary signs are encoded as atoms. This list includes such as the following (preliminry list, will be improved. For SHU4, Labat numbers at least 413 through 419, 428-430, 441-443, 447-448, 469. For SHU2, Labat numbers at least 546-548, 550, 553.