Re: Ugaritic Affiliations

On Sep 8, 6:07 pm, "Richard Wordingham" <jrw0...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 8, 9:17 am, "Richard Wordingham" <jrw0...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 6, 6:55 pm, "Richard Wordingham" <jrw0...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Digging around, it seems that there 31 characters representing 28
consonants - three for the glottal stop - 'a, 'i and 'u, and two for
s^
(s
hacek), namely Unicode U+1038C UGARITIC LETTER SHIN, and a form
'without
serpent' that is interchangeable with it. (I wouldn't bet on
interchangeability.)
How many times have you been warned about using Unicode documents as a
source for any sort of information at all about writing systems?
Unicode documents are a pretty reliable source of ISO 10646 character
names,
which can be useful when there's uncertainty as to which character is
meant.
These names are stable - perhaps too stable, as there are infamous
examples
where names have been transposed compared to normal usage.
(Only to computer engineers and anyone else who might be in the thrall
of Unicode. To linguists, they usually look ridiculous, not least
because they use English values of the vowel-letters.)

Do you know a more convenient standard?  

That rather depends on what you want a "standard" for, doesn't it? For
information on the writing systems of the world, there is any number
of more reliable sources.

Being a character list rather than
a glyph list, it does have the disadvantage that glyph variants are not
covered, so that for neo-Assyrian, for example, one has to use to
supplementary tables, such as the alphabetically-ordered one athttp://www..sumerisches-glossar.de/download/SignListNeoAssyrian.pdf.

??? Who in their right mind would even _think_ of looking in Unicode
for reliable information on cuneiform writing? By what license do you
separate out "Neo-Assyrian" from the whole universe of Akkadian
cuneiform?

There are 30, not 31, letters in the Ugaritic script, and they
represent the 27 letters of "Proto-Canaanite" plus two extra aleph
letters (when aleph is followed by i or by u) and an extra sibilant
not used in Semitic words.
Brian Colless, though prolific, has not attracted any adherents to his
"decipherments" of, inter alia, Byblos hieroglyphs or the Wadi el-Hol
inscriptions.
So, what is the status of this reported 31st letter?  Glyph variant?  I
tried looking through the Unicode archives to see if there was any
discussion of it, but I could find none.  What does this form look like?
Is
the image shown athttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugaritic_scriptwith the
label šinš correct?  I see that the Wiki page has illegitimately assumed
that it has an encoding in Unicode.  There is at present not even a
proposal
to add it.

At first glance the image of the 31st letter does indeed appear to be the
word divider.  That seems to be a mistake, but I am looking for confirmation
based on some understanding of the basis of this 31st letter.

So it's _not_ Colless's illusory added sh? Then why did you bring in
Colless's list?

Just one more reason not to bother with wikipedia!
Did you look, for instance, in WWS? or any Ugaritic grammar -- Gordon,
Segert, Sivan, Tropper magna, Tropper parva? or the Woodard
encyclopedia, or the Hetzron volume?

This 31st letter is described as a 'new discovery by Brian Colless'.  That
renders silence on the part of 20th century texts uninformative.  I don't
know what the ASCII artwork 'o' is meant to represent - normal winkelhaken
on the left plus reversed winkelhaken on the right?  Normal SHIN with the
left-hand wedge omitted?  A pair of oblique wedges meeting at the bottom?

I already mentioned that Colless is not well regarded. Does he provide
evidence -- graphical and etymological -- for this new letter, this
new letter that doesn't happen to be found in any of the nearly dozen
abecedaries that have been excavated at Ugarit?

Peter Daniels wrote of Arabic and Ugaritic, 'Their consonant inventories
are
in fact identical'.  What is the basis for equating SSU with Arabic dad?

I missed this one before. What don't you understand about "the third s
was added for Hurrian (or maybe IE) and is not used in Ugaritic
words"? Who has suggested that it has anything to do with Dad?

Or
is it some other Ugaritic letter that is being equated with dad?
Do we know what Mesopotamian cuneiform syllabograms were used for
Ugaritic
SSU in Hurrian?  Frank Zeeb's report of Tropper's belief as to its
phonetic
significance and the account of Hurrian in WWS suggests that they were
SA,
SI and SU.
Who's Frank Zeeb?

Perhaps he'll tell us.  Otherwise, we can only go by his publications.

You cited him, without saying where you got his name, as an authority
for what Tropper says, rather than quoting Tropper directly. On what
grounds?

Is the use of SA/SI/SU for third-s different from
the cuneiform equivalents of the other s's?

What do you mean by the second-s?  SHIN (š), SADE (ṣ) or even THANNA (ṯ)?

I didn't mention a second s.

Perhaps I need to be more specific and say the Mitanni Hurrian syllabary.
According to WWS, Hurrian had three sibilants, /s/, /ʃ/ and /ts/.  Syllable
initially, /s/ was written using ZA/ZI/ZU as appropriate, /ʃ/ was written
using SHA/SHE/IGI/SHU as appropriate, and /ts/ was written SA/SI/SU as
appropriate.

Now I don't know how Hurrian /s/ and /ʃ/ were written in the Ugaritic
script.  I had naïvely been thinking they would be written using SAMKA and
SHIN, possibly with ZETA for the voiced allophone of /s/.  Is the graphic
correspondence more complicated?

Take 30 seconds to examine the entire corpus of alphabetically written
Hurrian texts, and let us know what you come up with.

In Gene Gragg's comprehensive Hurrian bibliography from 1979, I find
only three articles:

C. G. von Brandenstein, "Zum Churritischen aus den Ras-Samra Texten,"
ZDMG 91 (1935): 555-76

Firedrich, Johannes, "Churritisches-Ugaritisches und Churritisch-
Luvisches," AfO 14 (1944): 329-33

Harris, Z. S., "A Hurrian Affricate or Sibilant in Ras Shamra," JAOS
55 (1935): 95-100

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Ugaritic Affiliations
    ... >> hacek), namely Unicode U+1038C UGARITIC LETTER SHIN, and a form ... Normal SHIN with the left-hand wedge omitted? ... SSU in Hurrian? ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Ugaritic Affiliations
    ... hacek), namely Unicode U+1038C UGARITIC LETTER SHIN, and a form 'without ... For syllabic texts at Ugarit, consult John Huehnergard's dissertation, ...
    (sci.lang)