Hi Gregg,
<<----- Original Message ----
From: Gregg Reynolds <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Alif maqsura is a concept; dotless yeh is a form. In a sense it is not
a full-fledged character, in that, like teh marbuta, it doesn't have
first-class lexical status. It's more a kind of visual aid to the
reader. I'm referring here to dotless-yeh-as-alif, not
dotless-yeh-as-yeh.>>
In 7th century and earlier Arabic the dotless yeh that represented what is
commonly referred to as alef maqsura indeed gives the impression that a
full-fledged character. After the analysis of age of Arabic grammarians this
yeh was seperately categorized which gave the impression that it does not have
lexical status. The fact is that in 7th century and earlier Arabic when there
were no superscript alefs or hamzas these yehs were just yehs. At that time,
you could think of yeh as a multi-purpose character, sometimes it takes the
roll of a consonant, sometimes an 'i' vowel and sometimes an 'a' vowel.
Actually the same is true for wow in the 7th century. Please take not of the
word Al-Salaat الصلاة this is how we spell the word today. But in the Qur'an it
is spelled الصلوة as we know. Similar to how yeh takes the function of an 'a'
vowel in 'ala, here wow takes the function of an 'a' vowel. Somehow this kind
of usage of wow largely dissappeared in later Arabic, but the function of yeh
as 'a' vowel survived. So the "alef maqsura" situation is actually not unique
to just yeh, also wow. In any case, neither the yeh nor the wow could really be
considered a less-than-full character back then. They were simply multi-purpose
characters. And this is quite usual habit for Arabic since Arabic has several
multi-purpose characters.
<<So we have (at least) four encoding candidates:
1. this funny alif-in-dotless-yeh-clothing (Quranic and contemporary);
2. a dotless-yeh *form* that has no meaning and is used solely as a
seat of hamza/small alef/etc. (Quranic and contemporary)
3. a true yeh that sometimes loses its spots (Quranic and occasionally
contemporary);
4. a true yeh that always keeps its dots (contemporary usage)>>
This is why I think the best approach would be to encode all four of these
cases with the same yeh codepoint.
<<Eureka!! Goodness, it just occurred to me why final dotless yeh is
commonly referred to as alef. Maybe it is because originally (and still
in the Quran) it was always the seat of small alif. Since it always
implied the small alif without exception, people eventually just stopped
writing the small alif but kept calling the dotless yeh "alef". In
other words, what they really mean is "the unwritten small alif implied
by the dotless yeh". In that case, items 1 and 2 above are the same
case: dotless yeh that serves purely as a graphical aid to readers. No
direct phonological semantics; in particular it does not *directly* mean
the sound /a/ under this interpretation, but rather signals indirectly
the presence of an unwritten following alif as well as a (possibly
unwritten) preceding fatha. I don't know if that's what actually
happened, but it works and it sure sounds like good folk etymology. ;)>>
<<As for "maqsur": I was under the impression that this dotless-yeh
"meant" that an alif sound is shortened (maqsur); this is the
explanation given in the standard English language Grammar of Arabic
(Wright), which says al-alif al-maqsura is "the alif that can be
abbreviated". But given the explanation in al-Nahw al-Wafy (which is
much more thorough and subtle than anything in Wright), it makes more
sense to think that the shortening refers not to the alif itself, but to
the cutting-off of the case-ending vowels. It is the entire word that
is shortened, since the case-ending vowels are considered to be there in
some real sense, but are virtual and not pronounced - they get cut off,
in a sense. So the alif is not abbreviated as per Wright, but merely
not extended by other vowels. Wright makes no connection between maqsur
and declension (إعراب), but that's the whole point according to al-Nahw
al-Wafy. BTW, similar considerations apply for "mamduud"; in al-Nahw
al-Wafy it's the *word* that is lengthened by an *extra* alif followed
by hamza, whereas Wright claims it is a matter of "protecting" the
length of the alif with the trailing hamza. It's looking to me like
maybe Wright completely missed the boat on this one.>>
Somehow I have thought that they came up with the name alef maqsura as
originally intended for the superscript alef that goes on top of the yeh seat
and not the seat itself; similar to alef qasiir. But anyways, that was just a
subconcious guess.. I wonder why al-Nahw al-Wafy and Wright say different
things here.. Maybe checking the history of the naming of alef maqsura would
solve the puzzle.
<<The question remains as to why they chose dotless yeh to carry the small
alif, instead of some other graphical convention.>>
Well, actually there was no small alef to begin with as you may know. There was
the dotless yeh and the small alef was later put on it. Maybe a more
interesting question is how Arabic orthography evolved in the 5th and 6th
centuries such that a yeh was used for the 'a' vowel sound. I thought the
choice of yeh was a consequence of Arabic grammar rules but my Arabic grammar
is not strong enough to point to what rule it would be..
Regards,
Mete
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