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Manuscript Studies
Palaeography ( UK) or paleography ( US) (ultimately from , , 'old', and , , 'to write') is the study and academic discipline of historical writing systems. It encompasses the historicity of manuscripts and texts, subsuming deciphering and dating of historical manuscripts, as well as the analysis of historic penmanship, handwriting script, signification, and printed media. It is primarily concerned with the forms, processes and relationships of writing and printing systems as evident in a text, document or manuscript; and analysis of the substantive textual content of documents is a secondary function. Included in the discipline is the practice of deciphering, reading, and dating manuscripts, and the cultural context of writing, including the methods with which texts such as manuscripts, books, codices, tracts, and monographs were produced, and the history of scriptoria. This discipline is important for understanding, authenticating, and dating historical texts. However, in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semioticians
Semiotics ( ) is the systematic study of sign processes and the communication of meaning. In semiotics, a sign is defined as anything that communicates intentional and unintentional meaning or feelings to the sign's interpreter. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs. Signs often are communicated by verbal language, but also by gestures, or by other forms of language, e.g. artistic ones (music, painting, sculpture, etc.). Contemporary semiotics is a branch of science that generally studies meaning-making (whether communicated or not) and various types of knowledge. Unlike linguistics, semiotics also studies non-linguistic sign systems. Semiotics includes the study of indication, designation, likeness, analogy, allegory, metonymy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication. Semiotics is frequently seen as having important anthropological and sociological dimensions. Some semioticians regard every cultural phenomenon as being able to be stud ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Syntagm
In semiotics, syntagmatic analysis is analysis of syntax or surface structure (syntagmatic structure) as opposed to paradigms ( paradigmatic analysis). This is often achieved using commutation tests. "Syntagmatic" means that one element selects the other element either to precede it or to follow it. For example, the definitive article "the" selects a noun and not a verb. Of particular use in semiotic study, a syntagm is a chain which leads, through syntagmatic analysis, to an understanding of how a sequence of events forms a narrative. Alternatively, syntagmatic analysis can describe the spatial relationship of a visual text such as posters, photographs or a particular setting of a filmed scene. Roland Barthes Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 25 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popu ... was able to use m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Punctuation
Punctuation marks are marks indicating how a piece of writing, written text should be read (silently or aloud) and, consequently, understood. The oldest known examples of punctuation marks were found in the Mesha Stele from the 9th century BC, consisting of points between the words and horizontal strokes between sections. The alphabet-based writing began with no spaces, no capitalization, no vowels (see abjad), and with only a few punctuation marks, as it was mostly aimed at recording business transactions. Only with the Greek playwrights (such as Euripides and Aristophanes) did the ends of sentences begin to be marked to help actors know when to make a pause during performances. Punctuation includes Space (punctuation), space between words and both obsolete and modern signs. By the 19th century, the punctuation marks were used hierarchically, according to their weight. Six marks, proposed in 1966 by the French author Hervé Bazin, could be seen as predecessors of emoticons and e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hieroglyphics
Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs ( ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined ideographic, logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with more than 1,000 distinct characters.In total, there were about 1,000 graphemes in use during the Old Kingdom period; this number decreased to 750–850 during the Middle Kingdom, but rose instead to around 5,000 signs during the Ptolemaic period. Antonio Loprieno, ''Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction'' (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995), p. 12. Cursive hieroglyphs were used for religious literature on papyrus and wood. The later hieratic and demotic Egyptian scripts were derived from hieroglyphic writing, as was the Proto-Sinaitic script that later evolved into the Phoenician alphabet. Egyptian hieroglyphs are the ultimate ancestor of the Phoenician alphabet, the first widely adopted phonetic writing system. Moreover, owing in large part to the Greek and Aramaic scripts ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fonts
In movable type, metal typesetting, a font is a particular #Characteristics, size, weight and style of a ''typeface'', defined as the set of fonts that share an overall design. For instance, the typeface Bauer Bodoni (shown in the figure) includes fonts "Roman (typeface), Roman" (or "regular"), "" and ""; each of these exists in a variety of Font size, sizes. In the digital description of fonts (computer fonts), the terms "font" and "typeface" are often used interchangeably. For example, when used in computers, each style is stored in a separate digital font file. In both traditional typesetting and computing, the word "font" refers to the delivery mechanism of an instance of the typeface. In traditional typesetting, the font would be made from metal or wood type: to compose a page may require multiple fonts from the typeface or even multiple typefaces. Spelling and etymology The word ''font'' (US) or ''fount'' (traditional UK, CAN; in any case pronounced ) derives from Mid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Linguistic Typology
Linguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the common properties of the world's languages. Its subdisciplines include, but are not limited to phonological typology, which deals with sound features; syntactic typology, which deals with word order and form; lexical typology, which deals with language vocabulary; and theoretical typology, which aims to explain the universal tendencies. Linguistic typology is contrasted with Genealogical (linguistics), genealogical linguistics on the grounds that typology groups languages or their grammatical features based on formal similarities rather than historic descendence. The issue of genealogical relation is however relevant to typology because modern data sets aim to be representative and unbiased. Samples are collected evenly from different Langua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Typographic Ligature
In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes or letters are joined to form a single glyph. Examples are the characters and used in English and French, in which the letters and are joined for the first ligature and the letters and are joined for the second ligature. For stylistic and legibility reasons, and are often merged to create (where the tittle on the merges with the hood of the ); the same is true of and to create . The common ampersand, , developed from a ligature in which the handwritten Latin letters and (spelling , Latin for 'and') were combined. History The earliest known script Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieratic both include many cases of character combinations that gradually evolve from ligatures into separately recognizable characters. Other notable ligatures, such as the Brahmic abugidas and the Germanic bind rune, figure prominently throughout ancient manuscripts. These new glyphs emerge alongside the p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Letterforms
A letterform, letter-form or letter form is a term used especially in typography, palaeography, calligraphy and epigraphy to mean a letter's shape. A letterform is a type of glyph, which is a specific, concrete way of writing an abstract character or grapheme. For example, medieval scholars may discuss the particular handwritten letterforms that distinguish one script from another. The history of letterforms is discussed in fields of study relating to materials used in writing. Epigraphy includes the study of letterforms carved in stone or other permanent materials. Palaeography is the study of writing in ancient and medieval manuscripts. Calligraphy treats the letterforms of decorative writing, usually in ink. In the field of typography, type design is the process of designing typefaces that consist of sets of letterforms for use with metal print or computer. More broadly letterforms may be discussed wherever letters appear stylistically—in graffiti for example. In context ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scribal Abbreviation
Scribal abbreviations, or sigla (grammatical number, singular: siglum), are abbreviations used by ancient and medieval scribes writing in various languages, including Latin, Greek language, Greek, Old English and Old Norse. In modern Textual criticism, manuscript editing (substantive and mechanical) sigla are the symbols used to indicate the source manuscript (e.g. variations in text between different such manuscripts). History Abbreviated writing, using sigla, arose partly from the limitations of the workable nature of the materials (rock (geology), stone, metal, parchment, etc.) employed in record-making and partly from their availability. Thus, lapidary, lapidaries, engravers, and copyists made the most of the available writing space. Scribal abbreviations were infrequent when writing materials were plentiful, but by the 3rd and 4th centuries AD, writing materials were scarce and costly. During the Roman Republic, several abbreviations, known as sigla (plural of ''siglum ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scribe
A scribe is a person who serves as a professional copyist, especially one who made copies of manuscripts before the invention of Printing press, automatic printing. The work of scribes can involve copying manuscripts and other texts as well as secretarial and administrative duties such as the taking of dictation and keeping of business, judicial, and historical records for kings, nobility, nobles, temples, and City, cities. The profession of scribe first appears in Mesopotamia. Scribes contributed in fundamental ways to ancient and medieval cultures, including Ancient Egyptian literature, Egypt, Chinese culture#Calligraphy, China, Sanskrit#Writing system, India, Persian literature, Persia, the Roman Empire#Literacy, books, and education, Roman Empire, and Illuminated manuscript, medieval Europe. #Judaism, Judaism, Buddhism, and Islamic manuscripts, Islam have important scribal traditions. Scribes have been essential in these cultures for the preservation of legal codes, religiou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sign System
A sign system is a key concept in semiotics and is used to refer to any system of signs and relations between signs. The term ''language'' is frequently used as a synonym for a sign-system. However, the term ''sign-system'' is considered preferable to the term ''language'' for a number of reasons. First, the use of the term ''language'' tends to carry with it connotations of human language, particularly human spoken language. Human spoken language is only one example of a sign-system, albeit probably one of the most complex sign-systems known. In traditional forms of face-to-face communication, humans communicate through non-verbal as well as verbal sign-systems; colloquially, this can be referred to as body language. Hence, humans communicate a great deal by way of facial movements and other forms of bodily expression. Such expressions are also signs and an organised collection of such signs would be considered a sign system. Tone of voice in spoken communication, conveys mean ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
