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Variation among hatchmarks ("curves" and "lines")
- Variation among hatchmarks ("curves" and "lines")
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Variation among hatchmarks ("curves" and "lines")
pfeaster > 27-10-2024, 03:51 PM
(23-10-2024, 11:26 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What's really important is that, in spite of the similarity between the independent transliterations, a visual inspection of the actual handwriting shows that there are different forms of g. One clearly has a c shape to start with, while the other is more similar to m. The same situation as with Eva-r and Eva-s really.
Another way of expressing this observation would be to say that the flourish which [g] and [m] share in common may be found --
(1) attached to a clear "c shape" or "curve," which makes it a clear [g].
(2) attached to a clear "minim" or "line," which makes it a clear [m].
(3) attached to a stroke that appears to fall somewhere between a "curve" and a "line" -- which could be interpreted as "a [g] that is more similar to an [m]" or "an [m] that is more similar to a [g]" or "a glyph that might be either [g] or [m]."
-- and that the same range of possibilities likewise exists for the flourish which [s] and [r] share in common.
But rather than saying there are "different forms of [g]" and so forth for each of the EVA glyph types involved, it might be more efficient to consider the range of different underlying forms of hatchmarks -- which I'm using here as a generic term for "curves" and "lines" and any other strokes that seem to fall functionally into the same category with them.
One page that can be used to illustrate how much variation there is among hatchmark forms is f6v. It features some nicely typical "curves":
And also some nicely typical "lines":
When there's a sequence of hatchmarks (whether "curves" or "lines"), they often look very similar to each other, suggesting that the scribe wrote them in rapid succession using a similar motion, or at least a motion that "evolved" progressively over the course of the sequence. This is typical.
But in some places on this particular page, "curves" and "lines" seem to converge on another form that doesn't fall clearly into one or the other category. In these examples --
-- the two examples on the left are, I think, reasonably clear as far as EVA glyph identifications go, but the "curve" is rotated counterclockwise so that its upper part points more directly upwards, while the "line" has a conspicuous upturn at the bottom (more conspicuous cases like this can be found elsewhere, but I'm limiting myself to this one page for now). The remaining examples are less clear. If they're "curves," they lack the upper part of the curve -- they look more like [L]. But if they're "lines," the first stroke is oddly vertical -- and in the example at the bottom, it certainly looks as though there's a contrast between these forms (two of them in a row) and the preceding "lines." To my eye, these forms look more like each other than they do like either typical "curves" or typical "lines," even though word morphology would suggest the forms must sometimes be one and sometimes the other.
And what about the final curve or line here? -->
On top of this, we also see some tokens of an alternate form of curve that looks more like [<] than [C] -- a phenomenon also found on some other pages (e.g. f1r):
But then is the first glyph here [r], or is it [s] with the [<] form of curve? Those two alternatives would seem to be fiendishly hard to tell apart, unless from context.
More to follow. -
RE: Variation among hatchmarks ("curves" and "lines")
oshfdk > 27-10-2024, 05:02 PM
When studying distance based ciphers I noticed that in many cases in VMS these weird variants appear in pairs. Which would make sense if the encoding/decoding mostly depends on distances between identical shapes, and to a lesser extent on the shapes themselves. -
RE: Variation among hatchmarks ("curves" and "lines")
nablator > 27-10-2024, 05:30 PM
(27-10-2024, 03:51 PM)pfeaster Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.And what about the final curve or line here? -->
I have been wondering if the scribes sometimes started to write l then changed their mind after the first stroke, unlikely as it seems. These are usually transliterated as EVA-r but are clearly not EVA-r. Should there be an extended EVA code for them? V101 doesn't have a specific character.
An other example, curiously placed before a series of sol:
This might be the only ib ("fixed" as in in transliterations!):
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RE: Variation among hatchmarks ("curves" and "lines")
pfeaster > 27-10-2024, 06:22 PM
There are a number of cases in which transcriptions show [r] as line-initial in running text. But curiously, when we look closely at each of these cases, they tend to have the flourish which [s] and [r] share in common attached to an unusually formed hatchmark, or else to be anomalous in some other way. I identified the set of examples I'll be reviewing here by searching You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., and also by looking through the pages myself for anything that looked potentially like a line-initial [r]. If there are other relevant cases I've missed, I'd appreciate someone pointing them out.
On You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. we see this:
Here a line begins with a reasonably unambiguous [r]. But it also belongs to one of those weird passages in which the main text appears to have drifted inward from the left margin and then had "extra" glyphs added at the beginning of the more deeply indented lines, producing unusual words that start [oqo-] and so forth. For convenience, I'll call this phenomenon an [oqo] block. (See further discussion You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..)
On f24r, an [r] seems to appear at the start of a single-vord indented line at the end of the running text:
But notice that the angle of the "line" is much shallower than that of the two "lines" that appear later in the vord. This type of shallow angle appears to be more consistent with "curves" of the [<] type (see my previous post in this thread).
On f54r:
This time the hatchmark appears to be of the ambiguous [L] type (again, see previous post).
On f26r:
The flourish is attached to a longer vertical line more like the one in [q], and not to a typically angled "minim"-type "line" of typical length.
On You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (second line from bottom in excerpt):
This time the line is slightly angled, but it's still less angled than most "minim"-type "lines," and it also belongs to another of those mysterious [oqo] blocks.
The most "normal" case of line-initial [r] I was able to find anywhere appears on f85r:
But here too, the "line" is distinctly longer than usual for a "minim"-type "line," so we might group it together with the examples from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as at least potentially anomalous.
On f45v:
The flourish is attached (sort of) to a stubby vertical line, yet again very unlike the typical "line"; and it's also conspicuously smaller than the "equivalent" flourish on the following [s].
On f105v:
This is another mostly vertical line, and if it's curved, it's in the "wrong" direction, like the odd line-initial glyphs seen on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. -- which belong, notably, to yet another of those mysterious [oqo] blocks:
Some further cases of line-initial [r] reported in ZL look ambiguous to my eye -- they could equally well contain "curves" or "lines." For example, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. --
-- and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (this isn't a comprehensive list).
On f66r, ZL has [saiir], but this looks to me like a similarly ambiguous case:
What I couldn't find anywhere was an unambiguous and completely ordinary case of line-initial [r] in running text. In every case, I believe at least one of the following conditions pertains:
(1) The line of text belongs to an [oqo] block.
(2) The hatchmark is longer/taller than usual, and/or more vertical than usual, and/or curved in an atypical way (e.g., [<] or [L]).
(3) The [r] could just as plausibly be an [s]. -
RE: Variation among hatchmarks ("curves" and "lines")
nablator > 27-10-2024, 08:18 PM
(27-10-2024, 06:22 PM)pfeaster Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The flourish is attached to a longer vertical line more like the one in [q], and not to a typically angled "minim"-type "line" of typical length.
28 "b" in V101, 3 "@206;" in ZL.
Note: this one imitates pretty well the common Latin abbreviation for "ter" (t+connected macron).