engleski

Internal Reconstruction of the Glagolitic Line System

Summary Glagolitic paleographers, with the exception of Thorvi Eckhardt, agree that the two-line system is not the oldest writing system in Glagolitic script. The inadequacy of the one- or two-line system when applied to the four oldest Glagolitic sources became obvious after laying Eckhardt's lines over her own drawings. Yonchev's five-line model has allowed for exact deductive analyses with clear definitions, instead of the expressions: "floating", "hanging", "untidy" and "rustic". The similarity between sources and the model is expressed in percentages for each of the different parameters. While the 96%-98% similarity of KF with the model is on the level of character size, the 91%, 99% and 97% similarity of BP to the model is on the level of maximum and minimum number of strokes and number of lines in the line system respectively. The fragmented ductus in the model justifies the unusual ductus in BP, otherwise an inexplicable phenomenon. The model also explains the hanging position of the shorter characters in KF. The scribe did not change the size of the characters but merely their position by shifting the shorter characters to the upper line. Therefore, while the character position here is not the oldest among Glagolitic writing systems, the character size is. The five-line system helped design the computer font for title characters and perfectly describes the title characters in SP. It proves that the scribes were aware of the possibility of making the characters equal in size yet still decided to keep the two-line writing system only in the titles of the oldest sources, reminding us that different character positions and sizes are not the result of scribal negligence or ignorance but a deliberate choice. Uneven character size and seemingly uncoordinated character positions have sometimes been called "untidy" and "rustic". The position of characters in the five-line writing system perfectly explains the apparent lack of coordination found in PF and KI. Thus an internal reconstruction of the Glagolitic line system was made possible by different relics of the original five-line system emerging from the rosette. The presence of these relics in the sources mentioned provides evidence for the first type of Glagolitic script to come out of the rosette. The line system has thus helped solve the puzzle concerning the oldest Slavic alphabet in an elegant fashion.

Internal reconstruction; Glagolitic; paleography; line system

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