Title: Proposal to encode the Southern Palaeohispanic script L2/20-048 (original) (raw)
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This work is a preliminary proposal to encode the southern Palaeohispanic scripts in Unicode standard. Several scripts are grouped under the name of southern Palaeohispanic scripts: the south-eastern Iberian script, also known as southern or meridional Iberian script, the south-western script, also known as Tartessian or Sudlusitanian, and the Espanca abecedary. Despite their differences, these scripts show a similar degree of deciphering and the signs with comparable shapes have almost always the same value. The selection of characters for the Unicode standard of this script has been done taking into account an inventory of signs as large as possible, including all dual variants proposed for the south-eastern Iberian script. Nevertheless, the large set of hapax signs, especially in the south-western inscriptions, has not been usually taken into account in this proposal. One of the exceptions to this criterion are the exclusive signs attested in the Espanca abecedary, as their presence in an abecedary clearly justifies their autonomous existence. Following the usual criteria and main objectives of the Unicode standards, the multiple variants of each sign have not been included, but just the signs with different values.
This work is a preliminary attempt at the systematisation of the Palaeohispanic scripts into the Unicode standard, which have the goal to establish the basic set of meaningful signs in a script or a group of closely-related scripts. With regard to the number of character sets needed to encode all the Palaeohispanic scripts, our proposal is to classify them into two groups, the north-eastern Iberian, that includes the north-eastern Iberian script itself and the Celtiberian script, and the southern Palaeohispanic that includes the south-eastern Iberian script, the south-western script and the Espanca script. The basic set of signs for the north-eastern Iberian group is relatively easy to establish, as this script, attested in more than 2,000 inscriptions and nearly a dozen abecedaries, is almost fully deciphered. On the other hand, the selection of a basic set of signs for the southern Palaeohispanic group is a more difficult task, since only less than two hundred southern inscriptions are currently known, no other abecedary than the one from Espanca is attested, and more than a third of the southern signs are identified merely with a conventional code, since scholars disagree about their values, or they are simply unknown.
This chapter presents the main characteristics of each Palaeohispanic script and discuss the current research lines to deepen the comprehension of their origin, development and mutual dependency. All Palaeohispanic scripts are characterised by a similar corpus of signs along with some common structural features, the most notorious being the coexistence of alphabetical and syllabic characters; moreover, most of them present a feature labelled as "the dual system", consisting in the possibility to differentiate some similar signs with close phonetic value by the addition of a stroke to the basic shape of the character. All these common elements suggest that the Palaeohispanic scripts have a common ancestor, which is considered to ultimately arise from the Phoenician alphabet. However, they also present some important differences between them, mainly concerning the different value of the signs in every script; upon this, the scripts can be divided into two separate groups: the northern and the southern scripts, whose decipherment is not at the same stage; whereas the northern scripts can be considered as fully deciphered, the southern ones are today only partially decoded.
This work is a preliminary proposal to encode the north-eastern Iberian script in the UNICODE standard. The selection of signs to be encoded has been done taking into account an inventory of signs as large as possible, including all dual variants confirmed in the attested abecedaries: the usual dualities for dental and velar plosives, attested in Ger, La Tor de Querol and Bolvir's abecedaries, and also the less common dualities of vowels and continuous consonants attested in Tos Pelat and Castellet de Bernabé's abecedaries. Nevertheless, following the criteria and main objectives of the UNICODE standards, multiple variants of a single sign have not been included, but just the signs with different values.
THE SOUTHWESTERN PALAEO-HISPANIC SCRIPT: STATE OF KNOWLEDGE, HYPOTHESES AND CONTROVERSIES
"The Southwestern Paleo-Hispanic script: state of knowledge, hypothesis and controversies" en S. Ferrara y M. Valerio (eds.) Paths into script Formation in the Ancient Mediterranean. SMEA NS Suppl. 1, Roma 2018, 129-144
This contribution focuses on the structure of the Southwestern Palaeo-Hispanic script and its underlying phonographic system, in order to assess whether it was inspired by a pre-existing indigenous model or whether it is the result of a direct transmission from a Phoenician template. In addition, the process of adaptation of this indigenous script, from the first experiments to its general conception, will be investigated in detail. The aim is to shed light on the motivations and purpose behind its creation, as well as its social context, and address the place of the Palaeo-Hispanic scripts in the history of writing.
Some Southwest Iberian Inscriptions
The Southwest Iberian inscriptions are conducted in a variant of the Iberian family of scripts, which originates from the Phoenician alphabet but became subject to a secondary process of partial syllabification. Now, the Southwest Iberian inscriptions presumably date from an earlier period than the Celtiberian ones of the Meseta in northeast central Spain, and hence it is a dangerous procedure tot plug in the values as valid for he later Celtiberian inscriptions. In some instances, namely, signs of the Southwest Iberian script may well render a more original or simply alternative value. Therefore, this study sets out with a scrutiny of the values of the signs before embarking on linguistic interpretation. Having done so, it appears that among the total of ten texts selected for their workable state of preservation there can be distinguished three categories: (1) bilateral dedications, (2) dedications more in general, and (3) funeral inscriptions. Moreover, the language can positively be identified as a local dialectal variant of Celtic, most closely related to Celtiberian and Gaulish. To underline this point of view, the final sections are dedicated to overviews of the relevant linguistic evidence and a provisional grammatical sketch.