Our website is made possible by displaying online advertisements to our visitors.
Please consider supporting us by disabling your ad blocker.

Responsive image

Determinative

This article is about the kind of written symbol. For the kind of word, see Determiner.
Not to be confused with Deterministic.

A determinative, also known as a taxogram or semagram, is an ideogram used to mark semantic categories of words in logographic 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 resemble classifiers 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.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference DOE was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Rude, Noel, "Graphemic classifiers in Egyptian hieroglyphics and Mesopotamian cuneiform", in Noun Classes and Categorization, edited by Colette G. Craig, pp. 133-138. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1986.

Previous Page Next Page






Determinativ ALS رسم معنوي Arabic Determinativo AST Дэтэрмінатыў BE Детерминатив Bulgarian Determinatiu Catalan Determinativ German Determinativo Spanish Determinatiiv ET Sémagramme French

Responsive image

Responsive image