Terminology: Morphology?
I may be a bit vague here, but I’m searching for a word to describe a particular concept: The abstract idea about how a grapheme is formed, i.e., the conception about what elements of a grapheme are essential to its identity. A direct graphical representation of this “idea” shows the grapheme in its most basic, neutral form. (This is something that may very well change over time, which frequently leads to the birth of allographs, or even new alphabets.)
An example: The modern grapheme “P” can be described as a vertical line, to which a closed semicircle is attached at the top, to the right. This is, I think you all agree, the natural, most neutral form. However, this was not always so: originally, the P is related to the Greek Π, with the difference that the Italic (pre-classical) Π had a shorter descender to the right (i.e. a form half way between Π and Γ. This was frequently rounded, but almost always with a large opening at the bottom:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Polla_via_popilia_da_reggio_a_ca...
Over time, this opening gradually became smaller and smaller:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Sol_Serapis.jpg
And today, the normal form (ask any child) is with a closed semi-circle. The open form is still a perfectly valid glyph-variant, no question about that, but the closed form is what is regarded as the “essential” P.
Now, what is it that has changed? The P-grapheme’s “morphology”? Its “topology”? Is there a standard term for this concept?
26.Sep.2008 7.12am
I believe “morphology” applies best here.
Peace,
JT
26.Sep.2008 10.26am
Thank you. But, is that an established term for this concept? I just more or less made it up, you see. Might there be another word I haven’t heard about that would be better?
26.Sep.2008 12.09pm
You didn’t mention the Etruscan language (ca. 650 B.C.) ; morphological changes in ’P’ could be coherent to its bi[p]olarity in the languages, from “[p]ous-[p]ed-[p]es” to “su[p]erior-u[p]-loo[p].” Sure if it was a stylistic variation it was visible in its form.
26.Sep.2008 2.03pm
> The abstract idea about how a grapheme is formed, i.e., the conception about what elements of a grapheme are essential to its identity.
Sounds like ontology. And the “what has changed” part sounds like phylogeny or cladistics.
29.Sep.2008 6.55pm
’Morphology’ refers to the form of things. In linguistics, morphology refers to the forms that meaning-units (“morphemes”) take, for instance.
Other terms might overlap, I guess, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with using the word ’morphology’ here.
Peace,
JT
29.Sep.2008 10.04pm
Thomas Milo has spent a lot of time thinking about this sort of question, and using his background in linguistics to provide analytical and terminological tools to systematically describe writing systems (particularly Arabic). I’ll alert him to this thread.
Morphology or morphography seem like a good candidates to me. Ontology is concerned with existence in a metaphysical sense, not with form or structure, so doesn’t seem appropriate in this context.