Frame (font)
A frame (/ freɪm /, English for frame ) is an optically self-contained reading unit in the linguistic sense of writing . In contrast to graphemes , they are the functionally and non-operationally relevant written units. The delimitation of different frames is mostly done by white space, i.e. H. Spaces as horizontal and line spacing as vertical spacing in many writing systems, or through a regular grid into which the characters are fitted.
The term is mainly used in the context of the East Asian characters ( sinograms ), because these always have the same two-dimensional dimensions, in which two or more basic characters, which for the most part can also occur autonomously, are written in a sometimes complex arrangement. Unlike individual letters, the frame can thus already form a meaningful unit. Nevertheless, words are often composed of two or more such frames. It is in this sense that the definition used by the sinologist John DeFrancis should be understood:
"The frame is the dispensable meaningful unit that corresponds to the smallest segment of writing conventionally receiving special status, such as being surrounded by white space and listed in dictionaries. (...) In English (...) the frame is a word (...). (...) in Chinese the syllabic element (...) must be viewed as the grapheme, the indispensable phonetic unit without which the system would not work. Whole characters are frames or lexemes (...). "
These frames are sometimes called tetragrams because of their nearly square shape . However, this also includes some differently structured characters that DeFrancis ignores: Jamo blocks of the Korean Hangul are functionally synthetic syllabograms and the roughly 50 basic characters of the Japanese Kana syllabars ( Hiragana and Katakana ) are analytical syllabaries. Both types have no lexical meaning on their own, since they are pronunciation-related phonograms ; the same is all the more true for full-width letters and numbers, which are also used in East Asian texts.
The semantic units are collected in lexicons , which is why one also speaks of lexemes . The difference between a lexeme and a frame is that the former denotes the logical word root or the word paradigm and the latter denotes the visible word form or word shape . In classical Chinese, however, these terms often coincide because neither the written nor the spoken language inflects, so that DeFrancis equates the terms.
In alphabetic writing a frame designated according to the graphic word and more precisely the graphetische and not the grapheme or orthographic word. Finished frames are not absolutely necessary for functioning systems of writing, the Greek writing was, for example. Originally without Spatien written so that the letters were the readers. It is considered certain that the optical segmentation of words and thus the enlargement of the reading unit makes reading easier.
In addition to these large units, the term frame is sometimes used for smaller units, namely for phonograms, which are composed of (at least) one mandatory base and optional diacritics . In addition to letters with accented or tone characters, this primarily applies to Indian scripts , in which consonant and vowel characters merge into complex ligatures , the individual components of which can hardly be graphically separated from one another.
literature
- John DeFrancis : Visible Speech. The diverse oneness of writing systems . University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu HI 1989, ISBN 0-8248-1207-7 .
- John DeFrancis, James Marshall Unger : Rejoinder to Geoffrey Sampson, "Chinese script and the diversity of writing systems . " In: Linguistics. An Interdisciplinary Journal of the Language Sciences . Volume 32, No. 3 , 1994, ISSN 0024-3949 , pp. 549-554 .
- ↑ “functionally relevant units” in DeFrancis / Unger1994