4. MARCO TEÓRICO
4.7. Amenazas y Vulnerabilidades
§62. Syriac grammarians devised mnemonics (voces memoriales or memoria technica) to help pupils remember various subsets of consonants. The order of the alphabet is known by the mnemonic
ܙܘܗ ܓܒܐ
ܰ ܰ ܰ ܰ ܰ ܰ ܰ ܰ ܰ ܰ ܺ ܰ ܰ
/ʔabgad hawwaz ḥaṭṭī kalaman saʕpaṣ qaršat/22 (note the doubling of <w> in /hawwaz/ and of <ṭ> in /ḥaṭṭī/ even in W. Syr., probably an influence from the Arabic usage of theي طِّ ح ُ وَّزْ ه َ دْ جَ أَبْ
).
17 Arayathinal §2.3.; Costaz §6; Nöldeke §1.C; Uhlemann §1.R.5.
18 Manna, Morceaux choisis de Littérature Araméenne, p. .
19 MS Teaneck, Phanqitho, p.
ܙ ܬ
.20 Merx, p. .
21 Elia of Ṣoba
ܘ
andܙ
.22 Abouna 28; Acurensis
ܒ
,ܚ
; Ambrosio 9v; Amira 10; Bar ʿEbroyo, Ṣemḥe, iv.1.§3, p. 194; David §1; Niʿmat-allahܓ
; Gabriel of St. Joseph§6; al-Kfarnissy §2; Kiraz, Primer 45; A. Hoffmann §7 (p. 80) gives the variant
ܰ ܰ ܰ ܰ ܰ ܽ ܺ ܰ ܙܘܗ ܓܒܐ ܰ ܰ ܰ ܰ
from Abraham Ecchellens, p.5; Manna 7; Makdasi
ܝ
; Risius §171.§127. Consonantal Graphemes 57
words according to rhyme, as is the case in some Arabic lexica (e.g. al-Zubaydī’s tāj al-ʿarūs) is unknown in the Syriac tradition.
§125. The order of the alphabet is realized at the graphemic level, allographs having no affect on the sequence. Ligatures have no affect on the sequence either (not even , unlike Arabic
ال
thathas a slot in the alphabet). Similarly, nonlinear graphemes (e.g.
vowels) have no affect on alphabetization.
§126. In a computational system where ordering strings is useful for indexing and search algorithms, one must make practical choices as to how nonlinear graphemes affect sorting and index-ing. Additional choices, when applicable, need to be made for the sorting order of auxiliary graphemes such as the Old Syriac dot-less
ܖ
. One may choose to have them listed directly after, or ca-nonically equivalent to their respective source forms: Garšūnīܔ
with
ܓ
, Old Syriacܖ
withܕ
orܪ
(it was placed afterܕ
in Unicode, though Unicode does not assume sorting order per se), and Garšūnīܜ
withܛ
.§127. Ancient grammarians such as Bar ʿEbroyo145 justified the order of the alphabet by classifying letters into different types of sounds (q.v. §73):
ܐ ܶ ݁ ̈ ܰ
‘thin’ orܐܶ ̈ ܺ ܰ
‘narrow’,ܐܳ̈ ܒ݂ܰ
‘thick’ or݁ ܰ ݂
ܐܳ̈
‘broad’, andܐܶ ܳ ̈ ܶ
‘in between’. They argued that the alphabet began with ‘thin/narrow’ soundsܐ
toܛ
, followed by‘thick/broad’ sounds
ܝ
toܩ
, and the ‘in-between’ soundsܪ
toܬ
.146 This idea originated with Dionysius Thrax.ܕ ܘ ܘ ܐܬܘܬܐ ̈ ܕ ܗ
ܐ ܒ ܐܬܘܬܐ ̈
܀
145 Bar ʿEbroyo, Ṣemḥe iv.1.§3; Sciadrensis
ܙ
.146 Duval §18.
59
3 3 . . V V o o w w e e l l G G r r a a p p h h e e m m e e s s
Vowel sounds are thick and thin. Again, every word, that is, every member of a clause—where it is thick or broad in vowel sound, there it takes a point above;
where it is fine or thin, it takes a point below. If it is medium, between fine and thick, and there are two other words similar to it in spelling, it takes two points, one above and one below.
Jacob of Edessa (d. 708), On Orthography Now when I was in Rome I saw three Chaldeans [i.e.
Maronites]… I saw them reading their Psalter without points, and asked them, ‘Have you points, or any signs to indicate the vowels?’ and they answered me, ‘No! But we have been conversant with that language from our youth till now, and, therefore know how to read without points’.
Elias Levita (1469–1549), Massoreth ha-massoreth
§128. Syriac grammarians refered to the vowels using different terms:
ܐ ܳ ݂ ܳ̈ ܳ
‘beats’,ܐ ܘܙ ܶ ̈ ܰ
‘movements [of the mouth]’,1 orܬ݁ ݁ ܶ ܐܬ ܳ ܙ
݂ ܽ ܳ ܺ
‘movements’2 (according to Duval, on account that they are considered movements of the auditory system in order to produce sounds). Early grammarians called themܐ ܶ̈ ܳ
,3 not to be confused with the plural sign which has the same name (for which q.v. §158).
1 David §15; Dulabani 1; Duval §42; al-Kfarnissy §3.
2 Jacob bar Šakko (in Merx, 4th question); Segal 7.
3 Acurensis
ܒ
; Amira 34; Duval §75.60 I. The Graphemic Inventory §129.
§129. The earliest system of marking vowels in the Syriac con-sonantally-biased writing system appears in inscriptions, the ear-liest of which is from A.D. 6, and legal parchments dated 240–
243. In this system, originally introduced by Aramaeans in the 9th century B.C.,4 vowels were partially marked by three ‘weak’ let-ters:
ܐ
<ʔ>,ܘ
<w>, andܝ
<y>. The early Aramaic system applied only to vowels at the end of words, but by the time of the Old Syriac inscriptions it had already been extended to apply in the middle of the word as well. By the time of the 411 MS, an ad-ditional system was in place which made use of a single diacriti-cal point to disambiguate homographs. By the time of Jacob of Edessa (d. 708), this system had been extended to use two dia-critical points to disambiguate three-way homographs. Jacob, finding a need for a more comprehensive vocalization system, de-vised special letters to mark vowels, but did not intend for them to be used widely (lest all the MSS of his time become obsolete).Jacob’s system was hardly used, and by the 8th or 9th century a fully developed pointing system had appeared in which each vowel was marked either by two diacritical points, or by a single diacritical point in combination with a mater lectionis. In W. Syr., the pointing system was augmented with a symbolic system where each vowel was marked by a nonlinear symbol (i.e. written above or below letters) derived from Greek letters; hence, ‘Greek’
vocalization. This system, according to a recent study by Coak-ley,5 was developed in the 10th century (traces of these vowel
4 Segert, Altaramäische Grammatik 62–64; Cross and Freedman, Early Hebrew Orthography; Degen, Altaramäische Grammatik der Inschriften des 10.-8. Jh. V. Chr. 25–28.
5 Coakley, ‘When were’.
§131. Vowel Graphemes 61
graphemes can be seen in earlier MSS).6 The timeline of the de-velopment of the various vocalization systems is then as follows:
A.D. Event System used