Methods
In producing a signlist and analysing its contents, it is
obviously very important to consider the question of what
actually constitutes a "sign". Much has changed
since the traditional Assyriological signlists were first
produced, both in Assyriology and in the description and analysis
of writing and writing systems in general. The minimal unit
of written language - and this applies equally to logo-syllabic
scripts such as cuneiform as it does to alphabetic scripts
- is the grapheme. One might describe this as the smallest
contrastive unit of writing. By substituting one such unit
for another, a significant change in meaning (using the term
in its broad sense) occurs.
Grapheme is not an unproblematic term (notice, for instance,
that there is no one-to-one relationship between graphemes
and phonemes) but it is both defensible and useful, as far
as the present study of cuneiform is concerned, at least.
There are many and various indications of what ancient scribes
considered units in cuneiform; in light of these, a set of
criteria is being drawn up to allow the identification of
signs. The CDP project will catalogue and analyse these units,
these graphemes. Thus for the signlist, the sign is a grapheme.
There are two further levels at which cuneiform signs can
be described. Graphemes may appear in several different, yet
equally valid, forms; these are labelled allographs. Each
instance - the actual mark or set of marks one sees in the
clay - is an example of an allograph of a grapheme; these
are labelled graphs.
To illustrate the difference between graph, allograph and
grapheme, consider alphabetic writing. Readers of alphabetic
writing, as they look at what they are reading, see a long
string of graphs. Effortlessly they identify each graph as
a valid instance of a particular letter or mark of punctuation,
that is, as a depiction of a grapheme. Even in the highly
controlled graphic environment of print there is still a lot
of allographic variation: the grapheme /a/, for instance,
may be a roman 'a' or an italic 'a', (in most typefaces
a completely different form). All of these are recognised
without hesitation by skilled readers as being different versions
of the same thing, allographs of the grapheme /a/, and therefore,
in our alphabetic script, inviting the same range of phonological
realisation. We see those different graphic shapes, and in
our head appears the noise ‘a’ or ‘ay’
or whatever else the context dictates. For a more detailed
discussion, see the terminology
section.
In the study of cuneiform, work has been concentrated at
the graphemic level. Great efforts have been made to identify
the cuneiform signs, and there are standard lists that name
and illustrate them. But little work has been done at the
allographic level, which is the level of a truly useful sign
list, nor at the graphic level, the level at which the identifying
characteristics of individual scribes are to be found. The
reasons for this are partly technological.
back to top
|
