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THE
LEVANTINE IBERIAN WRITING
��� The
Levantine Iberian writing system is a semisyllabary, that is, some of
its signs are alphabetic, mono-phonemics, but some are pluri-phonemics.
Alphabetic are those which transcribe vowels and non occlusive
consonants: a, e, i,o,u,m'
(accented m), l, n, m,r,r'
(accented r), s and s' (accented s);
whereas the signs for occlusive phonemes imply always one of the
vowels: ba, be, bi,bo,bu,ka,ke,ki,ko,ku,ta,te,ti,to,
and tu.
��� Transcription is a concept that mustn't be
mistaken for phonemic representation. Transcription is traditional
and hence a convention. Accented m (m') represents a
nasal or nasalized vowel by progressive assimilation. The sign m
doesn't represent an /m/, but an allophone of /n/, and I believe it
shows the nasalization of the previous vowel by regressive
assimilation. Among trills, accented r (r') is the
usual /r/, whereas r may be a retroflex or a uvular
trill (other possibilities aren't discounted). The accented s (s')
is the more usual /s/, whereas s probably was a dental
affricated sibilant (palatalized or not) or a palatalized sibilant. As
showed by Greek-Iberian and Latin inscriptions (but inside Levantine
only indicated - always or sometimes? - in the Catalan variant), there
were two kinds of velar and dental occlusives (k/g
and t/d); difference not indicated in
most Levantine inscriptions.
��� The Catalan Levantine Iberian system is a slight variant of the common Levantine, maybe the earliest one, in which some syllabic signs have been duplicated in order to distinguish the voiceless ones. The way for doing this is very simple: an additional stroke. This duplication is attested for te, ti,to,tu,ka,ke,ki and ko, but unexpectedly nor for ta neither for ku (maybe in order to not to be mistaken for the forms of bo and te). Also unexpectedly, as there is no /p/ phoneme in Iberian, it do is duplicated the sign bo. This Catalan variant was used north to the Ebro in the IV and III centuries b.C. and given up after the Second Punic War. It's unclear whether in this time and area it was always consistently and completely used or whether in some inscriptions is defectively used. This point requires further study.
MAIN SIGNS VALUES OF LEVANTINE IBERIAN SCRIPT
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