Salaam Mohammed, > That's exactly why it won't work: > "you get the sequence fatha- superscript alif > anyway" > EVERY small Alef in the Qur'an has a fatha > preceding it.
This is true only, if one flips the order of waw and superscript alif. Looking at Ottoman and Magribi there seems to be variation whether to place the superscript alif on the waw or on the letter before it. In the King Fuad Quran, superscript alif sits right on top of waw - one letter away from fatha; in the Rushdi example it sits on lam of /Salaat/. There still is no case for off-set superscript alif as a separate character; these are just orthographic inconsistencies on top of the regular and predictable shift to the left. > Mete, what you call an assumption is a fundamental > Arabic rule. > I gave you a proof that the small alef is used > instead of the alef, > you cannot put and Alef on a Waw, Alef is not a > haraka, it's a > _standalone_ letter. > And even if you are correct, it's still preceded by > a fatha > (look at any sample and notice the haraka on the > prev char) Superscript alif is a recognized element of Arabic orthography and encoded as such. However, the off-set positioning that you want to be recognized as graphemic, is in fact contextually conditioned behaviour that belongs in the domain of rendering. Comparison with other Qurans shows that superscript alif is not always preceded by fatha; and that in these cases it defaults to the normal position on top of the associated rasm letter. Here are scans from the Fuad, Maghribi, and Rushdi Qurans respectively for you to visually detect this phenomenon: http://69.55.224.165/Supesrcript%20Alif%20-%20Fuad.jpg http://69.55.224.165/Supesrcript%20Alif%20-%20Maghribi.jpg http://69.55.224.165/Supesrcript%20Alif%20low-rez-%20Rushdi.jpg To determine whether minimal differences in script behaviour are orthographic (graphemic or encodable) or calligraphic/typographic (and therefore rendering issues), one needs a minimal pair that proves that it is a meaningful contrast to distinguish these two such words. For instance, the word /la aay�/ as spelled in the modern Arabic Qur'an and /la ayy�/ provide a minimal pair in contrastive opposition: http://69.55.224.165/laaya.jpg In order to be able further to discuss the graphemic status of the off-set superscript alif, we need to see a minimal pair in contrastive, i.e., meaningful opposition. Kind regards, Mete _______________________________________________ General mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.arabeyes.org/mailman/listinfo/general
