Article published in:
Writing Systems: Past, present (… and future?)Edited by Terry Joyce and Robert Crellin
[Written Language & Literacy 22:2] 2019
► pp. 198–222
Writing vowels in Punic
From morphography to phonography
Robert Crellin | University of Cambridge
This paper traces the employment of original Phoenician-Punic guttural graphemes, <ˀ>, <ˁ>, <h>,
and <ḥ>, to represent vowel phonemes in later Punic. Three typologically distinct treatments are identified: (1)
morphographic, where the grapheme <ˀ> indicates the etymological glottal stop /ˀ/ (its original function) as well as vowel
morphemes without specifying their phonological character; (2) morpho-phonographic, where guttural graphemes continue to indicate
etymological guttural consonants, but now both the presence of a vowel morpheme and (potentially) the vowel quality of that
morpheme; and (3) phonographic, where the same set of guttural graphemes serve to denote vowel phonemes only, and do not any
longer indicate guttural consonants. The threefold division is argued for on the basis of the Late Punic language written in Punic
and Neopunic scripts. Despite the availability of dedicated vowel graphemes, these are not obligatorily written in any period of
written Punic. It is suggested that a typologically significant path of development may be observed across these three uses of
guttural graphemes, with (3) the endpoint of a development from morphography to phonography.
Keywords: orthography, Phoenician-Punic, Neopunic, gutturals, script, morphography, phonography, abjad, alphabet
Published online: 30 March 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/wll.00026.cre
https://doi.org/10.1075/wll.00026.cre
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