Re: Standalone Superscript Alef (Item 8)

[Mete Kural <metekural at yahoo dot com>]

Salaam Mohammed,

>   That's exactly why it won't work:
>    "you get the sequence fatha- superscript alif
> anyway"
>   EVERY small Alef in the Qur'an has a fatha
> preceding it.

This is true only, if one flips the order of waw and
superscript alif. Looking at Ottoman and Magribi there
seems to be variation whether to place the superscript
alif on the waw or on the letter before it. In the
King Fuad Quran, superscript alif sits right on top of
waw - one letter away from fatha; in the Rushdi
example it sits on lam of /Salaat/.
 
There still is no case for off-set superscript alif as
a separate character; these are just orthographic
inconsistencies on top of the regular and predictable
shift to the left.
 
>  Mete, what you call an assumption is a fundamental
> Arabic rule.
>  I gave you a proof that the small alef is used
> instead of the alef,
>  you cannot put and Alef on a Waw, Alef is not a
> haraka, it's a
>  _standalone_ letter.
>  And even if you are correct, it's still preceded by
> a fatha
>  (look at any sample and notice the haraka on the
> prev char)

Superscript alif is a recognized element of Arabic
orthography and encoded as such. However, the off-set
positioning that you want to be recognized as
graphemic, is in fact contextually conditioned
behaviour that belongs in the domain of rendering.
Comparison with other Qurans shows that superscript
alif is not always preceded by fatha; and that in
these cases it defaults to the normal position on top
of the associated rasm letter. Here are scans from the
Fuad, Maghribi, and Rushdi Qurans respectively for you
to visually detect this phenomenon:

http://69.55.224.165/Supesrcript%20Alif%20-%20Fuad.jpg
http://69.55.224.165/Supesrcript%20Alif%20-%20Maghribi.jpg
http://69.55.224.165/Supesrcript%20Alif%20low-rez-%20Rushdi.jpg


To determine whether minimal differences in script
behaviour are orthographic (graphemic or encodable) or
calligraphic/typographic (and therefore rendering
issues), one needs a minimal pair that proves that it
is a meaningful contrast to distinguish these two such
words. For instance, the word /la aayä/ as spelled in
the modern Arabic Qur'an and /la ayyä/ provide a
minimal pair in contrastive opposition:
http://69.55.224.165/laaya.jpg

In order to be able further to discuss the graphemic
status of the off-set superscript alif, we need to see
a minimal pair in contrastive, i.e., meaningful
opposition.

Kind regards,
Mete