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+--- Thread: Thinking about anomalous gallows... (/thread-3156.html)
RE: Thinking about anomalous gallows... - -JKP- - 14-04-2020
Now this might not be a ligature in the strictest sense of the word since the two seeming-gallows overarch another char.
I've dubbed these "straddle" gallows, when they reach over other glyphs (I guess "straddle-ligatures" would work too).
But... nothing is completely black and white with the VMS. There are many places where a c-shape has been tucked in underneath a bench, so... perhaps the glyph that is straddled is some entity unto itself.
The simplest explanation is that it's two gallows creatively written with fewer lines (semi-ligatured) but... I don't know.
RE: Thinking about anomalous gallows... - Aga Tentakulus - 14-04-2020
Also possible.
Now it would be good if I knew what that meant. So I could incorporate it into my work.
RE: Thinking about anomalous gallows... - -JKP- - 14-04-2020
This one I strongly suspect is just an embellishment. There are some that look like gallows combined, they are shape-mates for two different gallows ligatured, but this doesn't have another gallows shape, it has conventional medieval loops so... for now... I'm considering this an embellished gallows:
(14-04-2020, 12:42 AM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Also possible.
Now it would be good if I knew what that meant. So I could incorporate it into my work.
Aga, sometimes those shapes in post #10 have meaning, they are sometimes abbreviation symbols, ligatured to letters. But in the example I posted, the multiple loops on the vertical ascenders are just embellishments. The letters they are embellishing are long-ess and eff.
RE: Thinking about anomalous gallows... - ReneZ - 14-04-2020
The 'Frogguy' alphabet, defined in the 1990's by Jacques Guy, transliterated the standard gallows characters by two symbols each, namely:
t = qp
k = lp
p = qj
f = lj
With this, it became possible to properly transliterate the so-called 'split gallows', which one may also call straddled gallows. In Eva, these parts of the straddled gallows have been assigned high-Ascii codes, and the ZL file has about 10 of the most common types. I'll make a list, to see to what extent they occur on top lines of pages or on top lines of paragraphs only.
For the 'embellished' ones the same question (preferable location) can be asked, but it is perhaps interesting to point out that one of them occurs five times on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. of which four are in the 4 x 17 repeating sequence and one in another ring, and here it is a stand-alone symbol, not at the start of a paragraph. This suggest (to me at least) that this is not just a playful beautification.
(more later).
RE: Thinking about anomalous gallows... - Aga Tentakulus - 14-04-2020
The arrangement could certainly be possible.
But I'm thinking of "im, in" or " sp, st "rather than the "Frogguy" alphabet. Since it referred to a ( known ) language,
the "qp" cannot be pronounced like that. Apart from the fact that it also occurs in the word.
RE: Thinking about anomalous gallows... - Koen G - 14-04-2020
It is important to specify what we are talking about exactly, because they might be separate things. Some embellishments look so frivolous and similar to what we see in other MSS that I think the best explanation is just that. But some cases look like merged gallows. In which case they are probably ligatures.
RE: Thinking about anomalous gallows... - ReneZ - 14-04-2020
I checked the ZL transliteration for all recorded cases of split (straddled) gallows and found 18 of them.
Following is a list (with reference to the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. )
Interestingly:
- the only ones that are not at the top of a paragraph are labels (3 of them)
- about half of those at the top of a paragraph are at the top of the page
- only one has nothing in between
- only two are on a B-language page (one Bio-B, one herbal-B) but the handwriting is much less cramped and slanted than Currier's hand 2 as it is found on most of 'herbal-B'. Here, of course, the verdict is with Lisa.
My impression has always been (FWIW) that the most common and simple form are a decorated way to connect to instances of Sh with each other. However, I say that without any form of confidence.
RE: Thinking about anomalous gallows... - -JKP- - 14-04-2020
(14-04-2020, 06:56 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
...
For the 'embellished' ones the same question (preferable location) can be asked, but it is perhaps interesting to point out that one of them occurs five times on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. of which four are in the 4 x 17 repeating sequence and one in another ring, and here it is a stand-alone symbol, not at the start of a paragraph. This suggest (to me at least) that this is not just a playful beautification.
..
I've wondered about that one also. If there are ligatures in the VMS, especially if the two sides of a gallows char are ligatured components (as they usually are in Latin when one sees those shapes), then the character on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. might also be a ligature (for example EVA-p + EVA-m, or EVA-k + EVA-ch + tail or something along those lines).
RE: Thinking about anomalous gallows... - -JKP- - 14-04-2020
Ever since I created my first transcript I have suspected that ch was a ligature. Whether it's a ligature in the meaning sense (two or more meaning units) or simply in the shape sense, I don't know.
There are a several places on the first folio where the c and h and sh are disconnected.
When I work my way through medieval manuscripts, I often notice that the calligraphy is slightly more careful on the first few folios and then becomes more connected (and sometimes more looped and sometimes slightly messier) as the script continues. This is very common when people start projects. Slow and careful at first and then when you get into the swing of it the process becomes more fluid. Or, the task becomes more boring and is done a little faster to get through it.
I noticed this same pattern in the VMS. The first page is different. It's not only the place where it is bound and the extra wear and the red weirdos and other signs (a possible Ex Lib) but also a number of disconnections in ligature-like letters (like eh).
I don't like piling too many assumptions on top of each other but, if we assume for the sake of discussion that ch is a ligature... then it's also important to note the instance of eph on folio You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that has a gap between the cp and the h. It's not as big as the gaps between tokens, so it's probably not a word-boundary and probably not a half-space, but it's unquestionably there.
But, there is a vertical chew-trail at exactly this spot that complicates the picture. Did the chew-trail create the space or simply cross it by coincidence? The chew-trail did take out the top of the p. But... if you look at eh two lines below, there is a shallower chew trail that doesn't appear to have damaged the surface as much, and it does look like the e and h are disconnected. So... if the gap in cp ho is a pen-gap, it suggests that benched gallows might also be ligatures.
This is only one example. I don't have time to peel out other examples. By itself, this wouldn't be enough evidence (especially considering the chew-trail), but there are quite a few places where other chars are attached to "gallows" chars, so there is some flexibility in the system. It doesn't always have to be ch. The benched gallows might be ligatures in more than one way.
The statistical behavior of these chars sometimes seems to speak in the opposite direction (that these are combination shapes representing one glyph rather than being ligatures), but is that because the shape variations are unmeaningful? Or is it because the research is mostly based on transcripts that don't record the variations?
I don't know the answer to this either. My "feeling" based on the way that the gallows and benched gallows are positioned with a certain amount of consistency within tokens is that gallows may NOT be ligatures in the meaning sense. It's quite possible to combine traditional ligatures simply to make a new shape that functions as a single unit. But maybe the benches that cross the gallows are ligatures—they are more varied than one would expect if they were merely part of the gallows, not only in terms of the shapes of the two parts, but in the way they are sometimes combined 3-at a time and sometimes with an extra character tucked UNDER the bench.
RE: Thinking about anomalous gallows... - -JKP- - 14-04-2020
One thing I've never had time to do is enumerate exactly where the straight gallows/triple gallows, etc., begin and end. They are identified in my last two transcripts (I have four), but I've never peeled out the folio numbers and my schedule is so overfull right now I simply can't add one more task.
I started to look at one aspect of it, the classification of basic forms of gallows, and produced this draft chart three years ago, but I never had time to double-check it or add the other data I intended to add. So much time has gone by I don't even remember if this is a complete first phase or if this is a really ROUGH draft (it doesn't include embellished variants, which I apparently intended to describe separately):
--------------------------------------
But apropos Lisa's research, it might be useful to have a chart of folio numbers for occurrences of the straight, covered, and triple benches (which is a related, but slightly different topic from the above chart) because now they could be compared to Lisa's assessment of the different hands.
Did a particular scribe introduce the variant benches?
Do specific scribes use them?