(From the UCLA Indo-European Studies Bulletin, Vol. 10, Number 2, June-July 2003. For subscription information to the full hardcopy version, click here.)
(Updated 5 October 2003)
Moderated Discussion of IE Issues Hosted by
JIES
A moderated discussion of Indo-European issues has been set up, hosted by Journal
of Indo-European Studies
on the following webpage:
http://jies.org/Discussion.html. In order to post items for discussion,
send a message (with your name and e-mail address) to: discussion@jies.org.
Submission of material implies permission to post the submission on the
website, but doesn’t guarantee acceptance for posting.
New Features on Achemenet.com: Articles “in press” and ARTA newsletter
The achemenet.com website now has a section “sous presse” on its website which
allows authors to circulate a manuscript amongst colleagues in advance of the
actual publication of a journal or book. Currently eleven articles can be
found at:
http://www.achemenet.com/ressources.htm (click on “sous presse,” then
click on “manuscrits annoncés”). The aim is to speed up access to the results
of new research. Manuscripts on Achaemenid and closely related topics are
invited. Any language is permissible, and manuscripts should be sent either as
a pdf file or a file that can be converted to pdf by the achemenet.com team.
Contact: pierre.briant @college-de-france.
The website now also hosts an electronic newsletter entitled ARTA (Achaemenid
Research on Texts and Archaeology) at
http://www.achemenet.com/ressources/enligne/arta/arta.htm. This
publication is meant to be used to exchange ideas, announce conferences,
publications, and news from excavations. Short (or long) notes on the
Achaemenid world are invited, length is no consideration. For example, a
recent note (2002) which was published in ARTA was “A Stone Jar with
Inscriptions of Darius I in Four Languages” by M. W. Stolper and J. Goodnick
Westenholz. Notes will typically be put online within one to four weeks from
the date of original submission, depending upon the length and if there are
images. It is also possible to sign up for e-mail notification when a new note
is posted. For information and queries, please contact: Wouter Henkelman at
wouter.henkelman@ achemenet.com.
Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru: Preview of revised entries for A–B
The last draft entry for the GPC was completed December 6, 2001 with Zwinglïaidd, ‘characteristic of the doctrine of the theologian Zwingli’, and
the final volume was published in December 2002. Because the letters A–B of
the GPC had been prepared according to a more restricted format than that used
for the later letters, the staff of the GPC have been revising entries in this
early part of the dictionary. A revised second edition will be published
between 2003 and 2008, to be issued in parts (sixty-four page parts every five
months). The first part (a–adwedd) goes on sale August 2, 2003.
Work in progress is possible to view on the dictionary’s website (i.e., http://www.aber.ac.uk/~gpcwww/gpc_pdfs.htm). During the revision to A–B, a concise version of the dictionary will be made available online for free (but won’t include etymologies or illustrative examples, which will appear in the printed edition). The GPC website adds: “Constructive comments will be most welcome, as will corrections and additions such as antedatings, additional information about regional or dialect forms, place-name evidence, etc. Such comments should be e-mailed to: geiriadur@cymru.ac.uk. Your help is very much appreciated.”
Although requests for a CD-ROM version of the Dictionary have been made, the
revisions to A–B has been given priority. After 2008, a CD-ROM may be
considered. The general web address for the GPC is
http://www.cymru.ac.uk/geiriadur/.
“Chronique d’étymologie grecque” Website: Preview of forthcoming entries
The editors of “Chronique d’étymologie grecque” (“CEG”) are now making
available on the Web a preliminary version of the new entries so that scholars
can be kept informed of the forthcoming topics. The CEG is intended to
complement the etymological dictionaries of Frisk and Chantraine. The online
draft version will also enable notice authors to proof their work online. It
is now possible to see CEG 7 and to search the indexes for CEG 1 (1996 [1997])
– CEG 6 (2001 [2002]). The website is:
http://perso.club-internet.fr/flo.blanc/CEG/.
The CEG is published in Revue de Philologie; issues 1–3 constituted the
supplement to the new edition of Chantraine’s Dictionnaire étymologique de la
langue grecque (Paris: Klincksieck 1999).
Repertorio Bibliografico de la Lexicografia Griega (Second Online
Supplement)
The second online supplement to the Repertorio Bibliografico de la
Lexicografia Griega (Bibliographical Repertoire of Greek Lexicography or “RBLG”)
can now be freely accessed from the webpage
http://www.filol.csic.es/dge/blg/blg-s.htm, where it is available either
in HTML or pdf format. The purpose of the RBLG is to make available an
up-to-date listing of recent publications on any given Greek word.
The print version of RBLG (Madrid 1998) contained four sections: (1) a catalog
of indexes, lexica, and concordances to Greek authors and texts; (2) a
bibliography of articles and books relating to Greek lexicography, lexicology,
and semantics, listed by author’s name; (3) a bibliography of Greek
lexicography listed by Greek lemmatized words; and (4) a short thematic index
of the lexicographic studies included in (2).
The online supplement adds new materials and references to the first three
sections of the printed volume. The HTML version offers the catalog of indexes
(lexica, etc., section 1 above), but combines into one window the bibliography
by author’s name and by the Greek lemmatized word (sections 2 and 3, above).
Hence it is possible to look up a Greek word (located in the bottom pane of
the window), click on the author’s name, and the top window will jump to the
bibliographic entry. The online supplement was last updated January 15, 2003.
If readers know of any journal article, book, or paper that might be relevant
to RBLG, please contact Juan Rodríguez Somolinos, Diccionario Griego-Español,
Instituto de Filología, CSIC, Duque de Medinaceli, 6 28014 Madrid, Spain, or
via e-mail at somolinos@filol.csic.es.
This is part of the Diccionario Griego-Español (DGE) project, carried out in
the Department of Classics of the Institute of Philology of the CSIC (Madrid)
under the direction of Francisco R. Adrados and Elvira Gangutia and with
funding from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology. For information
on other publications and projects, see
http://www.filol.csic.es/dge/index2.htm.
Electronic Version of A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic
An online version of Geir T. Zoëga’s 551-page Concise Dictionary of Old
Icelandic, (1910) is now available from
http://www.northvegr.org/zoega/.
The pages from the dictionary can be viewed as scanned images (in GIF format)
or HTML pages. The HTML files will load faster and can be searched. Text files
(in Rich Text Format) are being prepared; some are available now. Volunteers
are sought for proofing and should contact northvegr@yahoo.com. (The
Dictionary is hosted on the Northvegr website, which was organized “for
adherents of Northern European Heathenism,” and is making Zoëga’s dictionary
freely available.)
Note: One of the active participants in this project has been Sean Crist, who
has also scanned other handbooks from Germanic that are out of copyright. He
has put these works up on his website,
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/germanic/language_resources.html, and
provides directions on how others can help him in making these materials
freely accessible over the Web. The books on his website include: Wright’s
Grammar of the Gothic Language (1910), Braune’s Gotische Grammatik (1912), and
Wright’s An Old High German Primer (1888).
Online Version of Kavanagh and Wodtko’s A Lexicon of Old Irish Glosses (for
fee)
An online version of A Lexicon of the Old Irish Glosses in the Würzburg
Manuscript of the Epistles of St. Paul by Séamus Kavanagh† and edited by
Dagmar S. Wodtko (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften, 2001) is now available. This is an easy way to search the
907-page work, which contains a complete listing of all the Old Irish words
attested in the Würzburg glosses, with a detailed morphological, syntactical
and lexical analysis. The online version is identical to the CD-ROM and the
print version. Access to the online version is EUR 19 annually (beginning
2003) and can be purchased separately. Contact the publisher at:
http://verlag.oeaw.ac.at/.
Online Version of Newly Discovered Middle Cornish Text
An interim online version of the newly discovered Middle Cornish play
(National Library of Wales MS. 23,849D) is now available on the University of
Cambridge Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic website at
http://www.asnc.cam.ac.uk/Level2/BewnansKe.htm. Dr. Oliver Padel,
University of Cambridge, maintains this online version.
The manuscript had been discovered amongst the papers of the late J. E.
Carewyn Williams after his death in 1999, though apparently Carewyn Williams
had not mentioned his manuscript to others. This find is especially
remarkable, for only one other Middle Cornish saint’s play survives. The
scribe of this work was probably writing in the second half of the sixteenth
century and it is conjectured that the lost original, from which the scribe
was working, may have been written about 1500. The language represents good
Middle Cornish, as it fails to show any sound changes which reflect Late
Cornish.
Until the printed edition by Graham Thomas and Nicholas Williams appears, this
internet version is being made available with permission from the National
Library of Wales and Graham Thomas.
Online Version of Grimm’s Wörterbuch and MHG Dictionaries
As a new edition of the Deutsches Wörterbuch is underway (with the fascicle
aufpfeifen – aufstützig to appear in 2003), a free, online version of Jacob
and Wilhelm Grimm’s original thirty-three volume Deutsches Wörterbuch is now
accessible on the Internet at:
http://germa83.uni-trier.de/DWB/. (From the homepage, click on “Online-DWB
aufschlagen,” and use the letters on the very left-hand side of the screen to
jump to the desired letter of the alphabet. A list of all the headwords is on
the left column of the screen next to the alphabet, the full dictionary
entries are in the middle of the screen, and the right-hand side reflects the
structure of the articles contained in a volume.)
The online version is still under development: the bibliographic list and some
search capabilities have not yet been hooked up, but will be added later this
year. Note that the Greek is not visible with the Greek script: eventually
this capability will be made possible with a Unicode font. A CD-ROM version,
which will offer additional searching capabilities, will be available in the
future for a price estimated to be under EUR 100. Another feature that will be
added is linking between the Deutsches Wörterbuch and Lexer’s Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch.
The project was begun in 1998 under the direction of Prof. Dr. Kurt Gärtner of the University of Trier, who also supervised the electronic Mittelhoch-deutsche Wörterbücher (MhdWB) project. The MhdWB project includes three works, G..F. Benecke/W. Mueller/F. Zarncke, Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch (1854–1861), M. Lexer, Mittelhoch-deutsches Handwörterbuch (1872–1878), and. K. Gärtner (et al.), Findebuch zum mittelhoch-deutschen Wortschatz (1992). The free online version of this MHG project is at http://www.mwv.uni-trier.de. (Select “Nachschlagen in den Wörterbüchern,” then click on the opened book icons.)
Both projects are supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, under
their program, “Retrospektive Digitalisierung von Bibliotheks-beständen für
eine Verteilte Digitale Forschungs-bibliothek,“ which strives to make
available electronic versions of rare or very important works for scholars.
Note on Munich’s Hethitisches Wörterbuch (HW/2) and Progress Reports on the
Web
Annelies Kammenhuber’s Hethitisches Wörterbuch, planned as the second edition
of Johannes Friedrich’s Hethitisches Wörterbuch, quickly evolved as a work of
its own, based as it was on the edited Hittite texts. In volume 1 [Lieferungen
1–8 A: -a to azuri(u) 1975–1984] Kammenhuber developed her own style, giving
very full and detailed accounts of the attestations of each Hittite word,
including its etymology, when it was clear and undisputed. Following
Friedrich’s example, this dictionary provides very full synchronic grammatical
information but also adds divisions based on distinctions of chronology among
Hittite texts, usually between Old Hittite as opposed to younger Hittite
texts. This dictionary emerged amid the evolution of the dating controversy.
In the course of carrying out this monumental philological undertaking,
Kammenhuber added files of her own to those inherited from Friedrich and, with
the assistance of Inge Hoffmann, Nilüfer Boysan-Dietrich, and Paola
Cotticelli-Kurras in Munich, organized the material into entries that
reflected her philological contributions. By volume 2 [Lieferung 9–10 E: e- to
ezza- 1988], the inside page credits Inge Hoffmann as “Mitarbeiter”, and her
articles there are marked “I. H.” Of volume 3 (H), five parts have now
appeared [Lieferungen 11–15 ha- to (DUG)harsiyalli- 1991–2001], and two since
Professor Kammenhuber’s death have been completed under the direction of Dr.
Inge Hoffmann (Lieferungen 14 and 15 2000, 2001). Lieferung 13 was half
finished at Professor Kammenhuber’s death in December 1998 so that entries
marked “I.H.” or “P.C.-K.” (Paola Cotticelli-Kurras) supplement unmarked
entries written by Kammenhuber herself. Collaborators on Lieferungen 14 and 15
also include Albertine Hagenbuchner-Dresel, Susanne Heinhold-Krahmer
(Salzburg), and Hanna Roszkowska-Mutschler (Dresden) with editorial support
from Dietz Otto Edzard (Munich) and Daisuke Yoshida (Tokyo).
The website of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, under the Zentrum
historische Sprachwissenschaften (http://www.sprachwiss.uni-muenchen.de/), carries progress reports of the Institut für
Assyriologie und Hethitologie (http://www.fak12.uni-muenchen.de/assyr/index.html
), which includes the HW/2 and Reallexikon der Assyriologie und
Vorder-asiatischen Archäologie, the latter edited by Dietz Otto Edzard with
the assistance of Gabriella Frantz-Szabó.
Note: A link from the website of the Kuşaklı-Sarissa excavation site (http://staff-www.uni-marburg.de/~kusakli/)
gives further information on Hittite sites (http://staff-www.uni-marburg.de/~kusakli/sites/frames/frame4.htm),
including a reference to the Japanese excavation at Kaman-Kalehöyük, directed
by S. Omura with Daisuke Yoshida as philologist, and very good online
photographs, also of Boğazköy-Hattusa. [Carol Justus, University of Texas at
Austin, cjustus@mail.utexas.edu]
Hittite Portal Mainz
The website www.hethiter.net offers access to a rich resource of online
materials for Hittitology, which are now collected in one location. (Just
click anywhere on the photo of the King’s Gate at Hattusa that comes up, and
it will take you to the Hittite projects page.)
The website currently hosts a number of projects:
Concordance of Hittite Texts
This concordance by Silvin Košak represents a further development of the
Konkordanz der Keilschrifttafeln I-III (Studien zu den Boğazköy-Texten 34,
39, 42, and 43, 1992–1999). The database includes all the fragments from the
excavations in Boğazköy from 1931 until today. In the near future, text
fragments from unknown findspots will be included. All the texts from Bo 1–Bo
2100 have been entered. The database has been set up with various categories:
find number, join number, publication (KBo etc.), CTH, findspot, description
of findspot, dating (Old Hittite, Middle Hittite, etc.). Additional notes and
bibliographic references are included in some entries.
Photo Archive from Mainz
A selection of the 20,000 photographs is available to view. The goal is to
eventually link these up with the Hittite concordance (described above).
Note: The photos currently won’t display with Internet Explorer. However,
directions are given on how to be able to view the tablets with currently
available browsers.
Hittite State Treaties
A description of this project is provided. Towards the bottom of the page,
under “Textbeispiel,” click on “Pilliya-Vertrages” to see a sample of what the
full project will eventually offer: a transcription, translation, and, in some
cases, a link to a photo of a tablet (but only if “A” appears to the left of
the transcribed line).
Hittite Bibliography / Bibliographia Anatolica
This bibliography currently lists publications on Hittite by author. (Note:
The search capability is case-sensitive, so “Puhvel” returns bibliographic
entry hits, but “puhvel” does not.) At present, items published from
1992–2000+ are included. By mid-2003, entries from 1980–1992 should be
accessible, and by the summer of 2003 items published before 1980 will appear.
(The entries originate from an electronic database by G. Wilhelm and G.G.W.
Müller, with the assistance of J. Souková.) Bibliographic entries relating to
Hittite and hieroglyphic Luwian lexicography will be added in late 2003; those
materials published in 1980–1992 will be accessible first, then those
published from 1992–2000. Please send any corrections to the entries to:
studi.mediterraneo@unisob.na.it or mmarazzi@unisob.na.it.
Images of Clay Tablets in 3-D
The “Tontafeln 3 D” page includes a description of the project and makes
available three 3-D clay tablet examples (accessible from the bottom of the
“Tontafeln 3 D” page, under “Hotmedia,” an IBM program) which allows users to
view a tablet, rotate it (using the arrows), and zoom in or out.
Address List of Anatolian Scholars
This list of Hittitologists and Anatolian archeologists is password protected.
The webpage includes a “Registration” link for those Anatolian scholars who
wish to register. For further information, contact: gernot.wilhelm@mail.uni-wuerzburg.de.
Hittite Onomasticon
This list, by Marie-Claude Trémouille, contains an alphabetical listing of
names from the archives of Boğazköy published in KBo 27–43, KUB 51–60, and
IBoT IV, those in Tapikka / Maşat (HKM), Kuşaklı (KuSa I/1, KuT 49 et 50),
and public and private collections.
The Hittite Portal Mainz also provides links to other projects, both
archaeological and textual. Amongst “Wichtige hethitische und anatolische
Materialien” can be found links to J. Tischler’s BoTUC-Projekt (Boğazköy-Texte
in Umschrift), H. Craig Melchert’s Anatolian Databases (Luwian, Lycian,
Lydian), Répertoire Onomastique (a 1996 version by Marie-Claude Trémouille),
Dresdner Beiträge zur Hethitologie, Hittite Index of ASOR, Katalog der
hethitischen Texte (CTH), TITUS, and the Hittite Homepage. It is also possible
to access webpages from museums, excavations, and other universities which are
involved in Hittite projects.
Project Report: “Indogermanisches Nomen/Indo-European Nouns and Adjectives”
This project is located at the Department of Historical Indo-European
Linguistics in Freiburg (Germany), with Prof. E. Tichy as project leader and
PD Dr. D.S. Wodtko and Dr. B. Irslinger as research associates. The project,
which is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft/German Research
Council, started in February 2000 and is scheduled for five years altogether.
It consists of two parts, with an independent publication being planned for
each part:
• “Lexikon der indogermanischen Nomina/Lexicon of the Indo-European Nouns and
Adjectives” (LIN) by D.S. Wodtko and B. Irslinger, which will serve as a
counterpart to the recently published Lexikon der Indogermanischen Verben (ed.
by Helmut Rix, Wiesbaden, second edition 2001);
• “Nominalflexion/Nominal Inflexion” by E. Tichy, to appear as vol. 4 of the
Indogermanische Grammatik (ed. by Manfred Mayrhofer, Heidelberg).
Within the framework of its two parts, the LIN-Project aims to establish a
reliable inventory of IE nouns and adjectives and the rules governing their
formation and inflexion by applying the latest historical comparative method.
The results thereby obtained will be the starting point for the interpretation
of facts and developments within the various IE languages. Naturally, the
collection and interpretation of the material are closely connected with the
revision and refinement of current theories. The coalescence of theory and
material is strongly desirable, as it is no longer possible to handle the
material without referring to one of the competing theories and yet the
theories themselves may only be evaluated on the basis of a thorough
collection of material. Therefore work proceeds simultaneously within the two
sections, which mutually influence each other.
The “Lexikon der indogermanischen Nomina/Lexicon of the Indo-European Nouns
and Adjectives” has the purpose of presenting the PIE nouns and adjectives
that may be securely reconstructed by means of the comparative method. Apart
from the lexical content as such, derivational ablaut, paradigmatic accentual
shifts, and functional properties of inflectional types of nominal forms in
the proto-language will be clarified.
Moreover an attempt will be made to describe the tendencies of development within the various daughter languages. Up-to-date and rather strict criteria will be applied to determine the IE stock of nouns and adjectives by applying a coherent linguistic theory. Attention will be drawn to new formations not immediately recognizable as such within the various daughter languages, as well as to problems remaining amongst established correspondences. The arguments used to support the statements and conclusions will be made clear to the reader, either in notes to a particular lemma or in the form of more general rules within the preface. The LIN will thus serve as a basis for further research within the field of Indo-European studies and diachronic linguistics as a whole.
The LIN is intended to be accompanied by the separate publication within the
Indogermanische Grammatik series, “Nominal Inflexion/ Nominalflexion,” which
will have the character of a handbook and will give a theoretically based
presentation of IE nominal endings and inflectional paradigms as far as they
can be established by means of comparative or internal reconstruction.
Therefore this volume, which itself can only contain a limited amount of
material, has to be based on a collection of data that aims to be complete.
[Britta Irslinger, Britta.Irslinger@mail.uni-freiburg.de, and Dagmar S. Wodtko,
Dagmar.S.Wodtko @mail.uni-freiburg.de]
News from the Indo-European Etymological Dictionary at Leiden
At the moment there are sixteen databases available online at the site of the
Indo-European Etymological Dictionary project (“IED”), which is located at:
http://iiasnt.leidenuniv.nl/ied. New etymological research is represented in
the following databases: “Albanian Inherited Lexicon” by Bardhyl Demiraj,
“Baltic Inherited Lexicon” by Rick Derksen (in progress), “Old Frisian
Etymological Database (the evidence of R1)” by Dirk Boutkan, “A Greek
Etymological Dictionary” by Rob Beekes (in progress), “Indo-Aryan Inherited
Lexicon” by Alexander Lubotsky (in cooperation with Leonid Kulikov) (in
progress), “A Dictionary of the Iranian Verb” by Johnny Cheung (in progress),
“Slavic Inherited Lexicon” by Rick Derksen, and “Het Groot Etymologisch
Woordenboek van het Nederlands” by a team of scholars under general
supervision of M. Philippa (in progress). In preparation are “Hittite
Inherited Lexicon” by A. Kloekhorst, and “Armenian Inherited Lexicon” by H.
Martirosyan. Sergej Starostin is working on a database of external connections
of Indo-European, which will contain a corpus of old borrowings in PIE and
Nostratic etymologies.
At the same time, in co-operation with the “Tower of Babel” project in Moscow
(supervised by S. Starostin, starling@rinet.ru), we are digitizing and
publishing on the Web various dictionaries, etymological and otherwise, which
are indispensable for etymological research. Available now are:
Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch by Julius Pokorny, Griechisches
etymologisches Wörterbuch by Hjalmar Frisk, Ètimologieskij slovar’ russkogo
jazyka by Max Vasmer (the Russian version by O. Trubaev), A Dictionary of
Tocharian B by Douglas Q. Adams, Rigvedic Word Concordance by Alexander Lubotsky,
Vedic Concordance by Maurice Bloomfield, and H. Craig Melchert’s Lycian Lexicon and
Cuneiform Luvian Lexicon. In the near future, we are going
to publish on the IED site the Litauisches etymologisches Wörterbuch by Ernst
Fraenkel. We are also making available online in pdf format a preliminary
version of R.S.P. Beekes’ article, “Pre-Greek: A language reconstructed”
(March 2003).
We are continuously improving our databases and add new features to them. In
order to enhance their usefulness, we shall soon provide automatic links to
the text collection of the TITUS site (http://titus.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de), so that
every passage mentioned in our databases can be consulted online.
[A. Lubotsky, lubotsky@rullet.leidenuniv.nl]
Update on The Linguistics Research Center, UT Austin
The Linguistics Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin (http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/lrc/)
now is hosting a number of projects, of which the following are relevant for
Indo-Europeanists:
Early IE Languages Online
This is a series of lessons intended to teach or to improve the reading of
various early IE languages. To date, Latin, Classical Greek, and New Testament
Greek sections have been created, each with ten lessons. Lessons in other
languages are in preparation. There are different options for viewing, which
depend upon the computer system the user has. The texts are annotated by
Winfred P. Lehmann, with the editing, formatting, and HTML versions by
Jonathan Slocum.
Indo-European Typology Index
The “IE Typology Index” contains a list of keywords and concepts and links
them to the bibliographic references. This project is overseen by Brigitte
Bauer, UT Austin.
Numerals Project
This project, directed by Carol Justus, was established in order to make
available discoveries relating to early counting and numerals. A number of
online papers are available, as are bibliographic references. The project
provides fresh material on the origin of writing and counting that could
impact traditional views of older, well-known numeral systems.
IE Documentation Center
Considerable work has gone into adding information on the IE Documentation
Center website (http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/lrc/iedocctr/ie.html),
including building up webpages on Indo-European languages, linguistics,
lexicon, and IE texts. The site map gives a useful overview of the
organization of the material. The IE Documentation Center still continues to
offer bibliographies and selected online publications of IE scholars (which
have no copyright restrictions), an author and date index of JIES, as well as
an online version of Winfred Lehmann’s A Reader in Nineteenth Century
Historical Indo-European Linguistics.
Font Development for Linear B, Cypriot Syllabary, and Old Italic
Now that the international character encoding standard Unicode has accepted
Linear B, Aegean numbers, and the Cypriot syllabary (in Unicode 4.0), as well
as Gothic and Old Italic (in Unicode 3.1), new fonts that fulfill scholars
needs will be required. Font development for the newly accepted scripts is
ongoing: For Linear B and Cypriot, additional work on ligatures in a font is
needed to be able to produce the full range of needed signs. Specific shapes
for particular locations can be included in separate fonts (i.e., so that
there could be a “Pylos” font and one for “Knossos”). Similarly, “Old Italic,”
which covers the several related alphabets from the Italian peninsula (both
non-Indo-European and IE), will need special language-specific fonts. This is
because the glyphs (the physical shape of the letters) may vary depending upon
the language. Currently, a preliminary free font that includes Linear B and
Cypriot, as well as Gothic and Old Italic, is being developed by James Kass
and can be downloaded from:
http://home.att.net/~jameskass/MODE2001.ZIP.
(Comments on the font and any suggestions on improvements should be directed
to him at jameskass@att.net.) James Kass has also created another free font,
Code2001, which covers Old Italic and Gothic characters, but not Linear B.
James Kass’ Code2001 font can be downloaded from:
http://home.att.net/~jameskass/code2001.htm.
If you are interested in the development of a usable Unicode font (or have a
technical question) for the “Old Italic” set of characters or the early Greek,
please contact Deborah Anderson at
dwanders@socrates.berkeley.edu.
It is important to note that getting Linear B, Cypriot, Gothic, and Old Italic characters to appear on your computer may involve a bit of adjustment at present, because these are located in an area called Plane 1, a “supplementary plane.” This means that some of the characters may be more difficult to access on older computer equipment and software.
Useful guides on how to get Plane 1 characters to work include the following
(though some of the information contained may now be out of date, because of
improvements in the new generations of computers and software): “Using Plane 1
Characters” by David Perry, http://scholarsfonts.net/Plane1.htm; “Unicode
Surrogate Pairs” by Andrew West,
http://uk.geocities.com/BabelStone1357/Unicode/surrogates.html
(includes sample charts); and “Setting up Microsoft Windows NT, 2000 or
Windows XP to support Unicode supplementary characters” by Tex Texin,
http://www.i18nguy.com/surrogates.html (and cf.
http://www.i18nguy.com/unicode-example-plane1.html).
Unicode Etruscan keyboard for the Mac
An Etruscan Unicode keyboard has been developed by Sorin Paliga, University of
Bucharest for the Mac OS 10.2. It can be freely downloaded from
http://versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/19874
or
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/etruscankeyboard.html.
Update for Macintosh Users
The new Macintosh operating system, 10.2 (“Jaguar”), has made considerable
improvements that should aid those Indo-Europeanists using Macs. The new
browser from Apple, Safari, is to be recommended over Internet Explorer. The
Apple text editor that ships with the Mac, “TextEdit,” works well in providing
support for many needed IE letters and symbols, but Microsoft Word X (for Mac)
presently does not.
John Jenkins, an International Software Engineer at Apple Computer, provides
the following update on how to get various ancient IE scripts to work on the
Mac:
There are really three aspects to the problem: (1) to what extent are the
resources (mainly keyboards and fonts) available to handle these scripts; (2)
to what extent can resources be added by the end user to extend the support;
and (3) to what extent do applications utilize these resources?
1. We’ve extended some of our fonts to provide more extensive Latin and Greek
coverage. Lucida Grande, our system font, has been extended to cover most of
the various Latin blocks and all of the Extended Greek block [of Unicode].
We’ve also added a new character pallet, which makes it pretty straightforward
to enter anything from Unicode into an application which supports it. We’ve
also got Indic and Thai fonts in the system now.
2. You can install your own fonts which have even more extensive coverage,
such as Code2000/Code2001, or TITUS Cyberbit. The really good news is that
with 10.2, you can create your own keyboards in XML and install them. There’s
already a polytonic Greek keyboard out there.
3. Things are slowly getting better on this front. None of the major
applications (like Microsoft Word) have been modified yet to take full
advantage of the Unicode support available with the system. As more and more
Cocoa applications are being published, however, Unicode support (which comes
automatically with Cocoa) is getting more pervasive. The e-mail client I use
is the one which comes with the system and supports all of Unicode; OmniWeb is
a popular Web browser which supports all of
Unicode; various text editors and word processors are available.
Basically, in terms of putting stuff up on the Web, you can put up almost any
part of Unicode you want and get proper display thereof.
Recent Developments on Missing IE Scripts in Unicode
Even with the optimistic report by John Jenkins on the Mac’s capabilities
(above), there remain limitations on which scripts can be used easily across
computers, because a given script may not be in the Unicode Standard yet, or,
if approved by the standardizing committees, there may not be a font
available.
Several scripts have recently been proposed for inclusion in the Unicode
Standard, including Avestan (and Pahlavi, both being covered in the same
proposal), Old Persian cuneiform, Glagolitic, and Manichaean. The proposals
need to be reviewed to be sure that they include all the necessary characters.
The Avestan and Pahlavi, OP, and Manichaean proposals were made possible with
the active cooperation and support of Jost Gippert and other members of the
TITUS group, and especially through the work of Michael Everson. For a link to
the proposals, see
http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~dwanders/ScriptsNeedInput.html. A list of questions that should be used to review the
proposals is found at:
http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~dwanders/ProposalQuestions.html.
Proposals for Hittite cuneiform (to be subsumed in a Sumero-Akkadian
proposal), Hieroglyphic Luwian, Lycian, and Lydian, Vedic accents, and the
Alpine scripts are underway. A proposal for those letters and symbols needed
for Latin—but missing from Unicode—is also being worked on.
The effort to write and review the proposals for missing scripts and to
develop fonts that are useful to Indo-Europeanists are components of a project
at UC Berkeley, the Script Encoding Initiative. For further information,
please contact: Deborah Anderson at dwanders@socrates.berkeley.edu or see
www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/~dwanders.
Updated
3 October 2003.