Original scientific paper

Alphabetic Suspension in Glagolitic and Cyrillic Manuscripts

Catherine Mary Macrobert

Abstract

This article deals with a type of abbreviation, here termed ‘alphabetic suspension’, which relies on the fact that the names of letters in the Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabets were meaningful words, which could therefore be shortened, when they occurred in continuous text, to their initials. It reviews the evidence for alphabetic suspension in the sources available to the author, and concludes that it would be useful if the temporal and local distribution of alphabetic suspension in the Glagolitic and Cyrillic traditions could be established in more detail, because its use serves to distinguish individual scribes and could help to date manuscripts, to identify scribal schools and to cast light on their activities.

Keywords

abbreviation; suspension; Glagolitic; Cyrillic; dating of manuscripts; scribal schools

Hrčak ID:

22367

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/22367

Publication date:

29.3.2008.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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