Determinative
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A determinative is an ideogram used to mark classes of words in pictographic languages; example categorized classes include "dead people", "lifting", "things made of wood", and "swords". Determinatives are often, but not always, words of their own. Determinatives never played a role in spoken language, where different vowel sounds would have distinguished words that have the same set of consonants.
[edit] Cuneiform
In Mesopotamian cuneiform texts (mainly of the languages Sumerian, Akkadian and Hittite), nouns are preceded by a Sumerian word acting as a determinative. In transliterations, the determinatives are commonly superscript and written in capitals.
- GIŠ for trees and all things made of wood
- KUR for countries
- URU for cities (but also often succeeding KI)
- LU for people and professions
- LU.MEŠ for ethnicities or multiple people
- LUGAL for kings
- DINGIR for gods
- É for buildings and temples
[edit] Egyptian hieroglyphs
In Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, determinatives came at the end of a word and before any suffixes. Nearly every word — nouns, verbs, and adjectives — features a determinative, some of which become rather specific: "Upper Egyptian barley" or "excreted things".
Determinatives are generally not transcribed, but when they are, they are transcribed by their number in Gardiner's Sign List.
 |
This linguistics article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
