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Note on the Text

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2023

Nicholas Zair
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023
Creative Commons
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This content is Open Access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/cclicenses/

This book uses the standard conventions of epigraphy, phonology and phonetics, and Indo-European linguistics. Unfortunately, these to some extent overlap so that the same symbols may be used for more than one purpose; in other cases the ‘same’ element may be represented in more than one way. I draw attention to this here, in the hope of avoiding confusion for the reader: which convention applies should in every case be clear from context.

Where inscriptional forms are being represented, [ ] surround missing letters, { } surround letters engraved in error, < > surround letters supplied by the editors to replace those omitted or engraved in error, and ( ) enclose the expansion of an abbreviation.

In quoted editions of literary texts, [ ] surround parts of the text that should be removed and < > a portion of text supplied by the editor.

When individual graphemes are being discussed, they are enclosed within < > (graphemes from the Latin alphabet are not italicised when between angled brackets); on the rare occasions when the actual symbol used for the grapheme is being discussed, this is not enclosed within angled brackets.

Phonemes and sequences of phonemes are enclosed within / / and phones within [ ] (phonetic transcription is as broad as possible). Phonemes and phones are represented according to the conventions of the IPA alphabet, as laid out in the IPA Handbook (The International Phonetic Association 1999). Reconstructed forms are preceded by an asterisk *,Footnote 1 and use the standard orthography of historical linguistic and Indo-Europeanist literature. There are three discrepancies between the two that I flag up here. The first is that the labiovelar and palatal approximants (glides) written /w/ and /j/ ([w] and [j]) respectively in the IPA are written *-u̯- and *-i̯- in reconstructions; as the second element of tautosyllabic diphthongs, these are written /u/ and /i/ in phonemic/phonetic representation (e.g. /ai/ [ai]), but as *-u̯- and *-i̯- in reconstructions (e.g. *-ai̯-). The second is that the vowels of the Latin phoneme system that derive from Proto-Indo-European *e and *o are represented as /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ respectively. The third is that long vowels in Latin words and reconstructions are marked by use of a macron, thus: nōtum; in the IPA they are marked by use of the symbol ː, thus: /nɔːtum/. I mark long (and, where occasionally relevant, short) vowels in Latin words when I am referring to that word as a lexeme; long vowels are not marked when quoting actual forms found in inscriptions or other texts, nor when I am using a Latin word borrowed into English.

Given that much of this book is devoted to counting particular spelling features, I have preferred to use numerals rather than words even in running text, since this makes it easier to quickly identify the key information in the text.

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  • Note on the Text
  • Nicholas Zair, University of Cambridge
  • Book: Orthographic Traditions and the Sub-elite in the Roman Empire
  • Online publication: 25 May 2023
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  • Note on the Text
  • Nicholas Zair, University of Cambridge
  • Book: Orthographic Traditions and the Sub-elite in the Roman Empire
  • Online publication: 25 May 2023
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Note on the Text
  • Nicholas Zair, University of Cambridge
  • Book: Orthographic Traditions and the Sub-elite in the Roman Empire
  • Online publication: 25 May 2023
Available formats
×