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Adeterminative, also known as ataxogram orsemagram, is anideogram used to marksemantic categories of words inlogographic scripts which helps to disambiguate interpretation. They have no direct counterpart in spoken language, though they may derive historically from glyphs for real words, and functionally they resembleclassifiers in East Asian and sign languages.[1][2] For example, Egyptian hieroglyphic determinatives include symbols for divinities, people, parts of the body, animals, plants, and books/abstract ideas, which helped in reading but were not pronounced.
Incuneiform texts ofSumerian,Akkadian andHittite languages, manynouns are preceded or followed by aSumerian word acting as a determinative; this specifies that the associated word belongs to a particular semantic group.[1] These determinatives were not pronounced. Intransliterations of Sumerian, the determinatives are written in superscript in upper case. Whether a given sign is a mere determinative (not pronounced) or aSumerogram (a logographic spelling of a word intended to be pronounced) cannot always be determined unambiguously since their use is not always consistent.
Examples of determinatives (with transliteration superscripts in parentheses):[1][3]
InAncient Egyptianhieroglyphs, determinatives came at the end of a word. Nearly every word – nouns,verbs, andadjectives – features a determinative, some of which become very specific: "Upper Egyptianbarley" or "excreted things". It is believed that they were used as much asword dividers as forsemantic disambiguation. Examples include 𓀀 (man), 𓁐 (woman) and 𓀭 (god/king).
Determinatives are generally not transcribed, but when they are, they are transcribed by their number inGardiner's Sign List.
Some 90%[citation needed] ofChinese characters aredeterminative-phonetic compounds; the phonetic element and the determinative (called aradical) are combined to form a single glyph. Both the meaning and pronunciation of the characters have shifted over the millennia, to the point that the determinatives and phonetic elements are not always reliable guides; nevertheless, radicals are still important for indexing of characters such as in a dictionary.
Edzard, Dietz Otto (2003).Sumerian Grammar. Handbook of Oriental Studies. Vol. 71. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.ISBN 1-58983-252-3.
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