The "Small Script"
Because this script is better attested, more is known about its
structure. The "small script" has 370 attested symbols, including
logograms, syllabograms, and maybe even single-sound phonograms.
Recall that Khitan was an Altaic language, and so it was highly
polysyllabic (in contrast to Chinese's monosyllabic structure), so
often words are written with more than one sign. Unlike the "large
script", which put equal spacing between signs, the arrangment in
the "small script" was more complex. Component signs are put into
pairs, one pair on top of another, and the extra sign (if the number
of signs that make up the word is odd) is put centered at the bottom.
Sometimes more complex syllables were spelled out using a sequence
of syllabograms, the first one only used for its initial sound, the
next one for its medial sound, and the last one for its final sound.
NOTE: In the transcription of compound signs, the period is used to
separate the sound of one sign from another's.
Logograms can stand in for a syllabogram. (This process is called
rebus and is found through the world's writing systems.) For example,
the word for 'five' is /tau/, and 'hare' is /taula/. The written
form of /taula/ is comprised of a logogram for 'five', /tau/ followed
by two signs (syllabograms?) that represent /l/ and /a/.
The Khitan state fell at 1125 CE, but the two scripts continued to
be used until 1191. Eventually part of the Khitan system was adopted
into the Jurchen script.
Search
Topics
Related Scripts
