Lacuna (philology)

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A lacuna with a charred edge in a neumen manuscript in square notation on parchment above the text "dominum"

As lacuna (Latin, "depression, hole, gap," also lacuna ) is referred to in the scholarly editing and text science an undeveloped actually present or problems of the text gap in the transmission of a text.

It can have various causes, such as the mechanical destruction of part of the text, the loss of individual sheets, a copyist jumping from one word to the next or another occurrence in the text ( saut du même au même [French: “Jump from the same to the same “]) or haplography .

Due to their condition, ancient inscriptions and papyri often show lacunae of individual letters, words as well as larger pieces of text, while manuscripts that were passed on through medieval tradition are less common.

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