Superscript marks in Church Slavonic and Russian languages. Ancient sign in a line Sign above a line 5 letters crossword clue

We continue to publish excerpts from a manual on the spelling of the Church Slavonic language, which was compiled by Doctor of Philology, Professor of Sretensky Theological Seminary L.I. Marsheva (from a book published by the Sretensky Monastery publishing house).

In addition to the alphabetic spellings found in a line - lowercase signs, the Church Slavonic language has an extensive system of superscript (diacritics) signs, which, although specific, are mandatory elements of spelling.

In liturgical texts one can find three main types diacritics, which are placed exclusively according to tradition, dating mainly back to the ancient Greek language, and are in no way related to the peculiarities of pronunciation.

1. Accent marks

The vast majority of Church Slavonic words are graphically marked with stress.

An accent mark marks a stressed syllable in a word.

In this case, it is necessary to take into account the discrepancies between modern Russian and Church Slavonic accents: deliverer – .

Eat three types stresses, which, intonationally no different from each other, demonstrate the place of the stressed vowel:

1) acute accent () – placed above a stressed vowel at the beginning or middle of a word: .

2) dull (heavy) stress – is placed if the stressed vowel is the very last one in the word: .

To set the accent correctly, you need to remember the following.

1. Letters ( er, er, and with a short) – vowels, which affects the placement of stress: – the stress is acute, because the syllable is considered not the last (as it is in modern Russian), but the penultimate.

Particularly indicative here are words that are monosyllabic in modern Russian: (written with acute accent).

2. In other monosyllabic words (not ending in ) the stress is blunt: .

3. Sometimes after a word ending with a stressed vowel, that is, with blunt stress -, there are particles or short forms of reflexive and personal pronouns. They are combined with the previous unit into one whole, making up a phonetic word, and lose stress. And, consequently, the dull stress of the first word “turns” into an acute one, since it is not the last, but the penultimate syllable that becomes stressed: . Compare: – the pronoun is marked with obtuse stress, since the preceding word has an accent on the penultimate syllable.

4. Function words consisting of one syllable are deprived of stress:

5. In several cases, a dull stress is placed at the beginning of a word, which, as a rule, is associated with the need to graphically distinguish identical sounding forms: (singular T.p. m. and s.r.) – (plural. D .p. of all kinds); (plural of R.p. of all genders) – (plural of V.p. of all genders).

6. There is an example here related to differences in lexical meanings. Wed. “therefore, therefore, therefore” – “since, because, for.”

3) invested stress - is placed in those forms of dual and plural numbers that sound completely identical to the forms of the singular (the same as in the case of letters - see rule 7).

For example: (singular part D.p. – acute accent) – (double part. R.-P.p. – invested stress);? (singular part R.p. zh.r. – acute accent) – (plural part V.p. m.r.; plural part I., V.p. zh.r. – invested emphasis ).


2. Aspiration sign

Aspiration sign - – marks everything, including a one-letter word, starting with a vowel: .


3. Title marks

Title- sign of abbreviation.

The original function of titles as abbreviations is very pragmatic: they were used to save space, and therefore to save writing material (primarily expensive parchment).

Titles in Church Slavonic perform two functions.

Firstly, they indicate that the letter does not represent a sound, but a number: – 2, – 20, – 200.

Secondly, they serve to shorten words. In the Church Slavonic language, the most important and commonly used words characterizing Christian doctrine are subject to truncated spelling.

Exists two types of title :

1) simple title - the word is abbreviated, and a special sign is placed in the place of the gap: - good, - Father, – holy.

2) letter title - the word is abbreviated, and in place of the gap is placed not only a special sign, but also one of the truncated letters (they are called remote ): - apostle

According to established tradition, only six letters are included under the title: . The titles they form are called: word-title, good-title, he-title, verb-title, rtsy-title, worm-title : - Cross, – Mother of God, – Trinity, – Gospel, - name, - conceived.

In many cases, titling plays a symbolic (semiotic) role, which is determined by the lexical meaning of the words: “Christian God” (always written abbreviated) – “pagan god” (written in full); “Theotokos” is “the mother of ordinary people.”

This example deserves special consideration. A noun in the meaning of “angel of the Lord” is always written only with a title and is not read as written, unlike “evil angel, demon” - it is used only in full writing and is read according to general rules. It should be noted that some Church Slavonic words have variant titles: - God-gracious. Sometimes the abbreviated notation gives way to the full one: – prayer.

  • Mikhail Alekseevich Titlov (1913-1998) - polar pilot, participant in the Great Patriotic War, Hero of the Soviet Union (1955).
  • In medieval writing: a superscript above an abbreviated word indicating a number
  • Superscript
  • Old - and Church Slavonic sign for indicating abbreviated spellings of words and for alphabetic recording of numbers
  • Superscript indicating abbreviated spelling
  • Superscript in Old Russian writing
  • Abbreviation sign inherent in ancient writing
  • Diacric
  • Ancient sign above the line
  • Abbreviation sign
  • This ancient Russian symbol turned letters into numbers

    • “Ieroglyph” is the third music album recorded and released by the rock group “Picnic” in 1986. This is the first album with which the Edmund Shklyarsky group gained the greatest popularity.
    • Japanese writing character
    • Chinese writing sign
    • Japanese writing sign
    • A figurative graphic sign denoting a whole word or concept, as well as a separate syllable or sound of speech; trans. Illegible or incomprehensible sign, symbol
    • Figured sign in ideographic writing
    • Figured sign
    • Chinese letter sign
    • A writing sign (Ancient Egypt, writing of China, Japan, Korea), usually denoting a whole word and concept
    • Figured written sign of the East
    • Ancient Egyptian letter

      • Triskelion (also triskele, triskele, triskele, from the Greek τρισκελης - three-legged) is a symbol in the form of three running legs emerging from one point.
      • Ancient sign, three running legs emerging from one point
      • Ancient symbolic sign

        • Shunduk is a village in the Teuchezhsky district of the Republic of Adygea of ​​Russia.
        • Nikolai (born 1920) Russian writer, novels “The Swift-Footed Deer”, “Spring at the Birch Tree”, “In the Blue-Eyed Country”, “White Shaman”, “Ancient Sign”

          • Mace (from the common Slavic bula - cone, nodule, lump, knob) - a bladed weapon of impact-crushing action with a wooden or metal handle (rod) and a spherical head - the striking part, often equipped with spikes.
          • A wooden rod with a metal cone (apple) at the upper end; in ancient times it served as a weapon, but later began to be used as a sign of military power
          • Polish Marshals Insignia

Doctor of Philological Sciences.

All lectures in the series can be viewed .

In the modern Russian language, modern Russian graphics, sometimes there is such a thing as superscripts, or diacritics. We know about two dots that are placed above the “е”, a sign of brevity above the “й”, a special letter is obtained - “and” is short. We have accent marks that help us place logical stress in certain phrases, but basically, of course, the modern Russian system of superscripts is, in general, poorer than the ancient one. When we turn to the ancient Church Slavonic and Old Church Slavonic languages ​​and the later period of the development of Church Slavonic, we observe a fairly developed system of superscripts.
The oldest superscript sign is the title, a sign for abbreviating words. The same idea is represented in modern language: when we want to shorten a word, we either put a hyphen, for example: “state-vo”, “fiz-ra”, “liter-ra”. Thus, we shorten the word by simply removing its middle and adding a hyphen. Historically, instead of a hyphen, there was a special “title” sign - in the Greek tradition it was just a straight line, in the Slavic tradition it had a different form, but was placed above the word. A certain piece was removed from a word, for example, a syllable that they wanted to shorten, and a title was placed on top. But unlike the modern language, it was not commonly common words that were abbreviated, but only words associated with the nomina sacra in the European tradition, i.e. sacred names, words that relate to God, the Church and sacred concepts for Christians. But since in the Church Slavonic tradition capital letters are used only at the beginning of sentences, accordingly, the title, in a sense, also played the role of a capital letter. If now we write the word “God” with a capital letter, then historically it was written with a small letter, but under the title.
Another type of abbreviation is when we do not complete a word, instead of “look” we write “see.” This method of abbreviation also existed in Church Slavonic graphics, when the word was not completed, but one of the letters that followed could be written on top, above the line, and also under the title. This phenomenon is called by the names of the letters. In the Church Slavonic tradition there are six such letter icons under the title: “rtsy”-titla, “verb”-titla, “good”-titla, “he”-titla, “worm”-titla and “word”-titla. Six of these letter title icons, when a letter is placed above the line and a title sign is placed above it.
Titla was also used to indicate numbers. When a letter denoted a number, the title sign was placed on top. In addition, if we now put stress in sentences in order to show some kind of logical stress, let's say: “I know what he will say.” We can put emphasis on “what” and thus emphasize this idea. In ancient times, stress was, firstly, of different types.
Stress in our current understanding is the so-called acute stress, or oxia. It is usually placed in a word unless the stressed vowel is the last letter in the word. In the latter case, the so-called blunt stress is placed, or heavy, in Church Slavonic “varia” from the Greek term “heaviness, pressure”, that is, it simply changes its direction - it is placed in a different direction than the sharp one we are accustomed to. There is also a vested accent, or in the Greek tradition it was the term “mosquito” - a vault, semicircle or arc above a vowel; in the Slavic tradition it was called kamora. The same root in the word "closet" - a very small room with a very low vaulted ceiling. Placing a chamber helps us visually distinguish words that are the same in sound and spelling, but at the same time they have different grammatical forms. The nominative case in the Church Slavonic tradition, for example, “good slave,” is given an acute accent, or oxia. And, let’s say, “from slave” (modern “from slaves”), that is, the genitive plural, the form of the word “slave” is the same as in the nominative case. In order to distinguish them, a clothed accent is placed above the “a”.
In addition to the stress system, which reflected the ancient state of the language, when there was more than one force stress and one stressed syllable was highlighted by exhalation, there was also polytonic stress, that is, there was a rise and fall of tone over each syllable, and this ancient tradition was reflected in Greek and Slavic stress . The aspiration sign, which according to the Greek tradition was automatically placed above any initial vowel, for the Russian tradition became, one might say, decorative.
Sometimes, when so-called reduced vowel letters, denoting modern hard and soft signs - historically “er” and “er”, were omitted, a special icon was placed, similar to a lightning bolt or some kind of comma, which was called erok, or paerok, similar to “er”, then there is a modern solid sign.
When, after the revolution, the solid sign at the end of words was eliminated in Russian graphics, it was also eliminated after prefixes, for example: “entrance”, “congress”, “explain”, etc. Then they put something between the ancient paerk and the apostrophe (we will talk about this concept later). In fact, this is an ancient church sign of skipping a solid sign, in this case between the prefix and the root. Sometimes in some advertisements you can find the words “ad”, “entrance”, when there is an apostrophe, but in fact this is an ancient era that dates back to the Church Slavonic tradition.
Thus, although the number of superscripts has now been reduced and their function has changed, we continue to use them to shorten words and place logical emphasis on a word.