Fluxus Editions

Abstract. Written Hebrew uses two systems of diacritics: vowel marks (niqqud}) and cantillation marks ( ea). In the Hebrew Bible these marks carry syntactic, accentual, and musical information, and a single accent can decide the meaning of a verse, as the long-disputed reading of Isaiah 40:3 shows. Setting them in type is hard: dozens of sub- and supralinear marks must combine on one line while the base letters keep their normal spacing, each mark stays centered on its letter’s vertical axes, and nothing collides with descenders or ascenders. In this paper we first describe the Masoretic writing system as a stack of graphemic layers, define the notion of a graphemic cluster and the graphotactic rules that govern it, and locate the otiyyot meshunot}} (“altered letters”) in a twilight zone between graphemes and allographs. Tracing one common word across twenty-six printed Bibles from 1517 to 2021, we show that even the finest typography has only partially solved the alignment problem. We then present Tiqwah v2, a corpus-driven system that generates an optimal Masoretic font from a given corpus: diacritic positions are computed by linear-constraint minimization, and the glyph set is kept minimal by a graph-coloring procedure that merges clusters indistinguishable below the perceptual threshold. The method is demonstrated on three fonts of very different character—SBL Hebrew, Monotype Peninim, and the deliberately informal Yarden.

References References in BIB How to cite How to cite in BIB

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@BOOK{arme,
   AUTHOR = {At`ayan, \.{R}obert and Nersessian, Vrej N.},
   TITLE = {{Armenian Neume System of Notation}},
   PUBLISHER = {Routledge},
   YEAR = {1999},
}

@ARTICLE{bauer,
   AUTHOR = {Hans Bauer},
   TITLE = {Über die Anordnung der Suren und über die geheimnisvollen Buchstaben im Qoran},
   JOURNAL = {Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft},
   YEAR = {1921},
   VOLUME = {75},
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}

@BOOK{futato,
   AUTHOR = {Futato, Mark D.},
   TITLE = {Basics of {H}ebrew Accents},
   PUBLISHER = {Zondervan Academic},
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}

@BOOK{ginsburg,
   AUTHOR = {Christian D. Ginsburg},
   TITLE = {Introduction to the Massoretico-Critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible},
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}

@UNPUBLISHED{luatex,
   AUTHOR = {Hagen, Hans and Henkel, Harmut and Hoekwater, Taco and Scarso, Luigi},
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   AUTHOR = {Haralambous, Yannis},
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@BOOK{yh07book,
   AUTHOR = {Haralambous, Yannis},
   TITLE = {Fonts \& Encodings. {F}rom Advanced Typography to {U}nicode and Everything in Between},
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   ADDRESS = {Sebastopol, CA},
   YEAR = {2007},
   PAGES = {xx+1018},
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@PHDTHESIS{hedanek,
   AUTHOR = {Hedánek, Jiří},
   TITLE = {{Phonology of Masoretic Hebrew II. Accents as Prosody}},
   SCHOOL = {Charles University, Czech Republic},
   YEAR = {2017},
}

@ARTICLE{dehoop,
   AUTHOR = {de Hoop, Raymond},
   TITLE = {Stress and Syntax; Music and Meaning: The Purpose and Function of the Masoretic Accentuation System},
   JOURNAL = {Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages},
   YEAR = {2008},
   VOLUME = {34},
   PAGES = {99--121},
}

@ARTICLE{jacobson,
   AUTHOR = {Jacobson, Joshua R.},
   TITLE = {{The Cantillation of the Decalogue}},
   JOURNAL = {The Journal of Synagogue Music},
   YEAR = {1995},
   VOLUME = {24},
   NUMBER = {1},
   PAGES = {12--30},
}

@BOOK{kelley,
   AUTHOR = {Kelley, Page H. and Mynatt, Daniel S. and Crawford, Timothy G.},
   TITLE = {{The Masorah of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia}},
   PUBLISHER = {William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company},
   ADDRESS = {Grand Rapids, MI \& Cambridge, UK},
   YEAR = {1998},
}

@UNPUBLISHED{teckit,
   AUTHOR = {Kew, Jonathan},
   TITLE = {The TECkit Language. Mapping byte encodings to Unicode},
   YEAR = {2021},
   NOTE = {\url{https://software.sil.org/downloads/r/teckit/TECkit_Language.pdf}},
}

@BOOK{levine,
   AUTHOR = {Levine, Joseph A.},
   TITLE = {{Synagogue Song in America}},
   PUBLISHER = {White Cliffs Media Company},
   ADDRESS = {Crown Point, IN},
   YEAR = {1989},
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{mcclintock,
   AUTHOR = {McClintock, John and Strong, James},
   TITLE = {Hebrew Version of the New Testament},
   BOOKTITLE = {Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature},
   PUBLISHER = {Harper \& Brothers},
   ADDRESS = {New York},
   YEAR = {1870},
}

@UNPUBLISHED{mitchell,
   AUTHOR = {David C. Mitchell},
   TITLE = {The Origins of the Masoretic Cantillation},
   YEAR = {2017},
   NOTE = {A paper read at the Society of Old Testament Studies Centenary Conference, Nottingham University},
   URL = {https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/51712224/The_Origins_of_the_Masoretic_teamim-libre.pdf},
}

@ARTICLE{nguyen,
   AUTHOR = {Martin Nguyen},
   TITLE = {Exegesis of the ḥurūf al-muqaṭṭa{\ayn}a: Polyvalency in Sunnī Traditions of Qur{\hamza}ānic Interpretation},
   JOURNAL = {Journal of Qur{\hamza}anic Studies},
   YEAR = {2012},
   VOLUME = {14/2},
   PAGES = {1--28},
}

@BOOK{osborne,
   AUTHOR = {Osborn, J.R.},
   TITLE = {Letters of Light. Arabic Script in Calligraphy, Print, and Digital Design},
   PUBLISHER = {Princeton University Press},
   YEAR = {2017},
}

@BOOK{park,
   AUTHOR = {Park, Sung Jin},
   TITLE = {{The Fundamentals of Hebrew Accents: Divisions and Exegetical Roles beyond Syntax}},
   PUBLISHER = {Cambridge University Press},
   ADDRESS = {Cambridge},
   YEAR = {2020},
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{tov,
   AUTHOR = {Emanuel Tov},
   EDITOR = {Bernd Kollmann and Wolfgang Reinbold and Annette Steudel},
   TITLE = {Paratextual Elements in the Masoretic Manuscripts of the Bible Compared with the Qumran Evidence},
   BOOKTITLE = {Antikes Judentum und frühes Christentum: Festschrift für Hartmut Stegemann zum 65. Geburtstag},
   SERIES = {Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft},
   PUBLISHER = {De Gruyter},
   YEAR = {1999},
   VOLUME = {97},
   PAGES = {73--83},
}

@BOOK{troels,
   AUTHOR = {Christian Troelsgard},
   TITLE = {{Byzantine Neumes: A New Introduction to the Middle Byzantine Musical Notation}},
   PUBLISHER = {Museum Tusculanum Press},
   YEAR = {2011},
}

@BOOK{turkenich,
   AUTHOR = {Turkenich, Liron Lavi},
   TITLE = {From Frank Rühl to Peninim. A story of people, type and technology},
   YEAR = {2013},
   NOTE = {Master of Arts Thesis, University of Reading},
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{westheimer,
   AUTHOR = {Westheimer, Gerald},
   EDITOR = {Autrum, Hansjochem and others},
   TITLE = {Visual hyperacuity},
   SERIES = {Progress in Sensory Physiology},
   PUBLISHER = {Springer},
   YEAR = {1981},
   VOLUME = {1},
   PAGES = {1--30},
}

@BOOK{wickes1,
   AUTHOR = {Wickes, Wiliam},
   TITLE = {{A Treatise on the Accentuation of the Three So-Called Poetical Books of the Old Testament}},
   PUBLISHER = {Clarendon Press},
   ADDRESS = {Oxford},
   YEAR = {1881},
}

@BOOK{wickes2,
   AUTHOR = {Wickes, Wiliam},
   TITLE = {{A Treatise on the Accentuation of the Twenty-One So-Called Prose Books of the Old Testament}},
   PUBLISHER = {Clarendon Press},
   ADDRESS = {Oxford},
   YEAR = {1887},
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{wu,
   AUTHOR = {Wu, Andi and Lowery, Kirk},
   EDITOR = {Calzolari, Nicoletta and Choukri, Khalid and Gangemi, Aldo and Maegaard, Bente and Mariani, Joseph and Odijk, Jan and Tapias, Daniel},
   TITLE = {A {H}ebrew Tree Bank Based on Cantillation Marks},
   BOOKTITLE = {Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation ({LREC}{'}06)},
   YEAR = {2006},
   URL = {http://www.lrec-conf.org/proceedings/lrec2006/pdf/6_pdf.pdf},
}

@BOOK{byza,
   AUTHOR = {Ἀθανασόπουλος, {Γεώργιος Δ. [Athanassopoulos, Georgios D.]}},
   TITLE = {{Θεωρία τῆς βυζαντινῆς μουσικῆς [Theory of Byzantine Music]}},
   PUBLISHER = {Τούλας-Μαυρίκιος [Toulas-Mavrikios]},
   ADDRESS = {Πάτραι [Patras]},
   YEAR = {1950},
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{khazdan,
   AUTHOR = {Хаздан, {Евгения В. [Khazdan, Evgeniya V.]}},
   TITLE = {{От масоретских помет к знакам кантилляции: динамика восприятия [From Masoretic Notes to Cantillation Marks: The Dynamics of Perception]}},
   BOOKTITLE = {{Богослужебные практики и культовые искусства в современном мире [Liturgical Practices and Sacred Arts in the Modern World]}},
   PUBLISHER = {Российский фонд фундаментальных исследований [Russian Foundation for Basic Research]},
   ADDRESS = {Краснодар [Krasnodar]},
   YEAR = {2020},
   VOLUME = {4},
   PAGES = {288--310},
}

Yannis Haralambous (2024), “Masoretic Graphemics and Graphetics: Challenges and Solutions,” in Proceedings of Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century, 2024 (Yannis Haralambous, Ed.), Grapholinguistics and Its Applications, Vol. 11, Brest: Fluxus Editions, 297–326.


@INPROCEEDINGS{gla11-hara,
   AUTHOR = {Yannis Haralambous},
   EDITOR = {Haralambous, Yannis},
   TITLE = {{Masoretic Graphemics and Graphetics: Challenges and Solutions}},
   BOOKTITLE = {{Proceedings of Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century, 2024}},
   SERIES = {{Grapholinguistics and Its Applications}},
   VOLUME = {11},
   PUBLISHER = {Fluxus Editions},
   ADDRESS = {Brest},
   YEAR = {2024},
   PAGES = {297--326},
   DOI = {https://doi.org/10.36824/2024-graf-hara},
}