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Phonetic Complement
A phonetic complement is a phonetic symbol used to disambiguate word characters (logograms) that have multiple readings, in mixed logographic-phonetic scripts such as Egyptian hieroglyphs, Akkadian cuneiform, Linear B, Japanese, and Mayan. Often they disambiguate an ideogram by spelling out the first or last syllable of the word; occasionally (as in Linear B) they may instead abbreviate an adjective that modifies the logogram. Written English has few logograms, primarily numerals, and therefore few phonetic complements. An example is the ''nd'' of ''2nd'' 'second', which avoids ambiguity with 2 standing for the word 'two'. In addition to numerals, other examples include Xmas, Xianity, and Xing for Christmas, Christianity, and Crossing – note the separate readings ''Christ'' and ''Cross''. In cuneiform In Sumerian, the single word ''kur'' ( 𒆳) had two main meanings: 'hill' and 'country'. Akkadian, however, had separate words for these two meanings: '' šadú'' 'hil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Logogram
In a written language, a logogram (from Ancient Greek 'word', and 'that which is drawn or written'), also logograph or lexigraph, is a written character that represents a semantic component of a language, such as a word or morpheme. Chinese characters as used in Chinese as well as other languages are logograms, as are Egyptian hieroglyphs and characters in cuneiform script. A writing system that primarily uses logograms is called a ''logography''. Non-logographic writing systems, such as alphabets and syllabaries, are ''phonemic'': their individual symbols represent sounds directly and lack any inherent meaning. However, all known logographies have some phonetic component, generally based on the rebus principle, and the addition of a phonetic component to pure ideographs is considered to be a key innovation in enabling the writing system to adequately encode human language. Types of logographic systems Some of the earliest recorded writing systems are logographic; th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gods
A deity or god is a supernatural being considered to be sacred and worthy of worship due to having authority over some aspect of the universe and/or life. The ''Oxford Dictionary of English'' defines ''deity'' as a God (male deity), god or goddess, or anything revered as divine. C. Scott Littleton defines a deity as "a being with powers greater than those of ordinary humans, but who interacts with humans, positively or negatively, in ways that carry humans to new Higher consciousness, levels of consciousness, beyond the grounded preoccupations of ordinary life". Religions can be categorized by how many deities they worship. Monotheism, Monotheistic religions accept only one deity (predominantly referred to as "God"), whereas Polytheism, polytheistic religions accept multiple deities. Henotheism, Henotheistic religions accept one God, supreme deity without denying other deities, considering them as aspects of the same divine principle. Nontheistic religions deny any supreme eter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ð’€
''Dingir'' ⟨⟩, usually transliteration of cuneiform, transliterated DIĜIR, () is a Sumerian language, Sumerian word for 'god' or 'goddess'. Its Cuneiform script, cuneiform sign is most commonly employed as the determinative for religious names and related concepts, in which case it is not pronounced and is conventionally transliterated as a superscript ⟨d⟩, e.g. The Sumerian cuneiform sign by itself was originally an ideogram for the Sumerian word ''an'' ('sky' or 'heaven');Hayes, 2000 its use was then extended to a logogram for the word ('god' or 'goddess')Edzard, 2003 and the supreme deity of the Sumerian pantheon Anu, and a Phonogram (linguistics), phonogram for the syllable . Akkadian cuneiform took over all these uses and added to them a logographic reading for the native ''El (deity), ilum'' and from that a syllabic reading of . In Hittite language, Hittite orthography, the syllabic value of the sign was again only Hittite cuneiform#VC, ''an''. The concept of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dingir
''Dingir'' ⟨⟩, usually transliterated DIĜIR, () is a Sumerian word for 'god' or 'goddess'. Its cuneiform sign is most commonly employed as the determinative for religious names and related concepts, in which case it is not pronounced and is conventionally transliterated as a superscript ⟨d⟩, e.g. The Sumerian cuneiform sign by itself was originally an ideogram for the Sumerian word ''an'' ('sky' or 'heaven');Hayes, 2000 its use was then extended to a logogram for the word ('god' or 'goddess')Edzard, 2003 and the supreme deity of the Sumerian pantheon Anu, and a phonogram for the syllable . Akkadian cuneiform took over all these uses and added to them a logographic reading for the native '' ilum'' and from that a syllabic reading of . In Hittite orthography, the syllabic value of the sign was again only ''an''. The concept of divinity in Sumerian is closely associated with the heavens, as is evident from the fact that the cuneiform sign doubles as the ideogram f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Syntactic Category
A syntactic category is a syntactic unit that theories of syntax assume. Word classes, largely corresponding to traditional parts of speech (e.g. noun, verb, preposition, etc.), are syntactic categories. In phrase structure grammars, the ''phrasal categories'' (e.g. noun phrase, verb phrase, prepositional phrase, etc.) are also syntactic categories. Dependency grammars, however, do not acknowledge phrasal categories (at least not in the traditional sense). Word classes considered as syntactic categories may be called ''lexical categories'', as distinct from phrasal categories. The terminology is somewhat inconsistent between the theoretical models of different linguists. However, many grammars also draw a distinction between ''lexical categories'' (which tend to consist of content words, or phrases headed by them) and ''functional categories'' (which tend to consist of function words or abstract functional elements, or phrases headed by them). The term ''lexical category'' the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Determinative
A determinative, also known as a taxogram or semagram, is an ideogram used to mark semantic categories of words in logographic scripts which helps to disambiguate interpretation. They have no direct counterpart in spoken language, though they may derive historically from glyphs for real words, and functionally they resemble classifiers in East Asian and sign languages. For example, Egyptian hieroglyphic determinatives include symbols for divinities, people, parts of the body, animals, plants, and books/abstract ideas, which helped in reading but were not pronounced. Cuneiform In cuneiform texts of Sumerian, Akkadian and Hittite languages, many nouns are preceded or followed by a Sumerian word acting as a determinative; this specifies that the associated word belongs to a particular semantic group.Edzard, 2003 These determinatives were not pronounced. In transliterations of Sumerian, the determinatives are written in superscript in upper case. Whether a given sign is a m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sumerogram
A Sumerogram is the use of a Sumerian cuneiform character or group of characters as an ideogram or logogram rather than a syllabogram in the graphic representation of a language other than Sumerian, such as Akkadian, Eblaite, or Hittite. This type of logogram characterized, to a greater or lesser extent, every adaptation of the original Mesopotamian cuneiform system to a language other than Sumerian. The frequency and intensity of their use varied depending on period, style, and genre. In the same way, a written Akkadian word that is used ideographically to represent a language other than Akkadian (such as Hittite) is known as an ''Akkadogram''. In the transliteration of ancient texts Sumerograms are normally represented by majuscule letters. Most signs have a number of possible Sumerian sound values. The scribes and readers of texts using these Sumerograms would not necessarily have been aware of the Sumerian language, with the ''Sumerograms'' functioning as ideograms or lo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Case Endings
A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and numerals) that corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In various languages, nominal groups consisting of a noun and its modifiers belong to one of a few such categories. For instance, in English, one says ''I see them'' and ''they see me'': the nominative pronouns ''I/they'' represent the perceiver, and the accusative pronouns ''me/them'' represent the phenomenon perceived. Here, nominative and accusative are cases, that is, categories of pronouns corresponding to the functions they have in representation. English has largely lost its inflected case system but personal pronouns still have three cases, which are simplified forms of the nominative, accusative (including functions formerly handled by the dative) and genitive cases. They are used with personal pronouns: subjective case (I, you, he, she, it, we, they, who ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hittite Cuneiform
Hittite cuneiform is the implementation of cuneiform script used in writing the Hittite language. The surviving corpus of Hittite texts is preserved in cuneiform on clay tablets dating to the 2nd millennium BC (roughly spanning the 17th to 12th centuries BC). Hittite orthography was directly adapted from Old Babylonian cuneiform. As Harry A. Hoffner and Craig Melchert point out: "It is therefore generally assumed that Ḫattušili I (ca. 1650–1600), during his military campaigns in North Syria, captured scribes who were using a form of the late Old Babylonian syllabary, and these captives formed the nucleus of the first scribal academy at Ḫattuša." Alwin Kloekhorst, on the other hand, while affirming that Hittite cuneiform derives from Old Babylonian, casts doubt on the role of Ḫattušili I in its adoption, claiming that "the transfer of Syro-Babylonian scribal tradition into Asia Minor may have been a more gradual process that predates the Hittites occupation of Ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Genitive Case
In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can also serve purposes indicating other relationships. For example, some verbs may feature arguments in the genitive case; and the genitive case may also have adverbial uses (see adverbial genitive). The genitive construction includes the genitive case, but is a broader category. Placing a modifying noun in the genitive case is one way of indicating that it is related to a head noun, in a genitive construction. However, there are other ways to indicate a genitive construction. For example, many Afroasiatic languages place the head noun (rather than the modifying noun) in the construct state. Possessive grammatical constructions, including the possessive case, may be regarded as subsets of the genitive construction. For example, t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
