On 30/07/2003 13:46, John Cowan wrote:
Peter Kirk scripsit:
Yes, graphically. The orthographic rules for shifting holam on to a
following alef are identical to those for shifting it on to a following
vav, except that because the alef is wide no one confuses the two
positions, and no one gives a special name to alef plus right side
holam.
Okay. So dalet followed by vav-right-holam is read "do", and the vav is a
mater lectionis, whereas dalet followed by vav-left-holam would be read
"dvo", correct? But presumably the latter case cannot happen with alef,
because dalet-alef can't represent a consonant cluster. Or can it?
No, because consonant clusters always have sheva in the middle, so
notionally there is always an alternation of consonants and vowels in a
regularly spelled Hebrew word. But there are other sequences which are
ambiguous between ending in a consonant or a vowel, notably yod
following hiriq, and vav with dagesh which may be shuruq. This gets us
back into the complex algorithm I looked at before, which can almost but
not quite disambiguate these cases but may need more processing power
than can be put into a font. Then there is Ted's point that we shouldn't
assume that all words which anyone tries to render are regularly spelled
Hebrew, some might be in other languages or have deliberate
irregularities. I guess it is for reasons like that that we have
separate final letter forms in Hebrew script, and in Arabic script
mechanisms like ZWJ to force exceptions to the shaping rules. Well,
let's not get into using ZWJ etc and instead define the additional
characters which we need.
So do we create a problem where there isn't one by adhering to the
principle which the same Jony just enounced, that:
the marks follow the base character
In the case of alef, this can be treated as a pure rendering effect, because
there isn't any contrastive case (I hope) with dalet followed by alef-left-holam.
Well, your hope is justified when there is a preceding dalet. But the
ambiguities in this case are in principle exactly the same as with vav
and holam, you need to know whether what precedes is a consonant or a
vowel. If we do want to distinguish the two positions of holam while
keeping it following the base character, the only way which doesn't land
us in a nasty mess is to define a second variant of holam.
--
Peter Kirk
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/
