Rome Wasn't Digitized in a Day - Council on Library and Information ...

27
such as a word grammar, and an “Analytical Lexicon” (a data file that conta<strong>in</strong>s previous scholarly
analyses), data sets that are gradually built up from patterns that are registered <strong>in</strong> the Analytical
Lexicon, and active human <strong>in</strong>tervention where researchers must decide to accept or reject proposals (or
add a new analysis) made by an automatic morphology program called Analyse.
The major reason to utilize an encod<strong>in</strong>g procedure rather than a tagg<strong>in</strong>g methodology, accord<strong>in</strong>g to van
Peursen, is that it will guarantee consistent morphological analysis s<strong>in</strong>ce all functional deductions are
automatically produced. “It has the advantage that not only the <strong>in</strong>terpretation of a word, but also the
data which led to a certa<strong>in</strong> <strong>in</strong>terpretation can be retrieved,” van Peursen argued, “whereas the
motivation beh<strong>in</strong>d a tagg<strong>in</strong>g is usually not visible. It also has the advantage that both the surface forms
and the functional analysis are preserved” (van Peursen 2009. In addition, van Peursen stated that by
us<strong>in</strong>g language-specific files such as the Analytical Lexicon, their system was utiliz<strong>in</strong>g exist<strong>in</strong>g
scholarly knowledge regard<strong>in</strong>g Semitic studies. The encod<strong>in</strong>g system ultimately deployed also
supported a first with<strong>in</strong> Semitic studies, van Peursen <strong>in</strong>sisted, the ability to test alternative
<strong>in</strong>terpretations or scholarly assumptions aga<strong>in</strong>st actual data. This ability to represent multiple textual
<strong>in</strong>terpretations was particularly important as the manuscript evidence for Syriac typically <strong>in</strong>cludes a
large number of “orthographic variants.” 85 The encod<strong>in</strong>g system used by TURGAMA thus supports
search<strong>in</strong>g for both “attested surface forms” found <strong>in</strong> actual manuscript witnesses and the abstract
morphemes for these words.
“This way of encod<strong>in</strong>g the verb forms attested <strong>in</strong> multiple textual witnesses provides us with a large
database from which language variation data can be retrieved,” van Peursen expla<strong>in</strong>ed, “In some cases
language development is <strong>in</strong>volved as well, and the data can be used for diachronic analysis” (van
Peursen 2010). All encod<strong>in</strong>gs developed by the TURGAMA Project, van Peursen cautioned, however,
should ultimately be considered as “hypotheses” that can be tested aga<strong>in</strong>st the data they have created.
Cuneiform Texts and Sumerian
Generally considered to be the earliest writ<strong>in</strong>g system known <strong>in</strong> the world, cuneiform script was used
<strong>in</strong> the Ancient Near East from about 3200 BC to about 100 AD. While the largest number of cuneiform
texts represent the Sumerian language, the cuneiform script was adapted for other languages, <strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g
Akkadian, Elamite, and Hittite. Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform is the most common by far and is a
complex “syllabic and ideographic writ<strong>in</strong>g system, with different signs for the various syllables”
(Cohen et al. 2004). There are approximately 1,000 different cuneiform signs that form a complex
script system where most signs are also “polyvalent,” or have multiple phonemic and semantic
realizations. Additional glyphs have also shown great “palaeographic development” over their three
millennia of use (Cohen et al. 2004). Sumerian has also been described as a “language isolate”: one for
which no other related languages have been identified and that therefore lacks resources such as a
“standardized sign list and comprehensive dictionary” (Ebel<strong>in</strong>g 2007). These various factors make
digitiz<strong>in</strong>g, transliterat<strong>in</strong>g, and present<strong>in</strong>g cuneiform onl<strong>in</strong>e a complicated task.
As <strong>in</strong>dicated by the size of the previously described CDLI, there are hundreds of thousands of
cuneiform tablets and other texts around the world <strong>in</strong> both private and public collections. In addition to
the CDLI, there are a number of significant digital collections and corpora of cuneiform texts onl<strong>in</strong>e.
This section describes them, along with relevant literature, briefly.
85 The topic of textual variants found with<strong>in</strong> various witnesses to a text and the need to develop appropriate encod<strong>in</strong>g/markup models to represent them
was also reported <strong>in</strong> the sections on Greek and Sanskrit, and is more fully discussed <strong>in</strong> the section on Digital Editions.