--- "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...>
wrote:

> Richard Wordingham wrote:
> >
> > --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels"
> > <grammatim@...> wrote:
> > > suzmccarth wrote:
> > > >
> > > > --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T.
> > > > Daniels" <grammatim@...> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > That depends, of course, on what the meaning
> > > > > of "diacritic" is.
> > > >
> > > > That is a very good question. Here is the
> > > > Unicode definition. "A mark applied or
> > > > attached to a symbol to create a new symbol
> > > > that represents a modified or new value." I
> > > > sometimes think that the term diacritic is
> > > > used interchangeably with 'combining
> > > > character'.
> > > > Both a pulli and the dependent vowels are
> > > > called combining characters, but are they both
> > > > considered diacritics?
> > >
> > > What a surprise that they came up with something
> > > vague and useless.
> > >
> > > I'd say diacritics do NOT create a new symbol --
> > > that's the point (Turkish dotted and dotless i
> > > don't involve a diacritic) -- but modify a
> > > symbol to give it a modified reading.
> >
> > Well if Turkish dotted and dotted i don't differ
> > by a diacritic, nor within Turkish do the pairs
> > <o> and <ö> and <u> and <ü>.
>
> Correct.
>
> > In German, they are modifications created by a
> > live grammatical process. In French (and Greek)
> > they are modifications like an Arabic hamza. As
> > such differences use identical and identified
> > ('unified') notation within the varieties of the
> > Latin alphabet, the definiiton has to cover such
> > vagueness.
>
> Hamza isn't a diacritic. German umlaut is a
> diacritic; in whichever Scandinavian languages there
> are letters after z, they don't have diacritics.
>
> Vietnamese has tone diacritics -- but the ears that
> make new vowels aren't diacritics any more than an
> i's dot is.
>
> > Does it matter whether <G> is <C> with a
> > diacritic?
>
> It isn't.

It looks like we now need to discuss "etymological
diacritics". Marks which originated as a way to
distinguish two different ways to interpret a single
"letter", but which later solidify into "letters" in
their own right. Such seems to be the case with the
bar which turned <C> into <G> and the two dots which
are a diacritic in German <ö> but not in Swedish <ö>.

So one question becomes when does a mark change from
a diacritic to an integral part of a letter (which
seems to have no generic name)? Was it at the point
that the Swedish orthographical reform rearranged the
alphabet or did usage make it clear before then?

Andrew Dunbar.

> --
> Peter T. Daniels
> grammatim@...
>

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