Determinative
Symbol in a logogram indicating meaning
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Cuneiform
In cuneiform texts of Sumerian, Akkadian and Hittite languages, many nouns are preceded or followed by a Sumerian word acting as a determinative; this specifies that the associated word belongs to a particular semantic group. These determinatives were not pronounced. In transliterations of Sumerian, the determinatives are written in superscript in upper case. Whether a given sign is a mere determinative (not pronounced) or a Sumerogram (a logographic spelling of a word intended to be pronounced) cannot always be determined unambiguously since their use is not always consistent.
Examples of determinatives (with transliteration superscripts in parentheses):
- 𒁹 (1 or m) for male personal names
- 𒊩 (f) for female personal name
- 𒄑 (GIŠ) for trees and all things made of wood
- 𒆳 (KUR) for countries
- 𒌷 (URU) for cities (but also often succeeding KI)
- 𒇽 (LÚ) for people and professions
- 𒇽𒈨𒌍 (LÚ.MEŠ) for ethnicities or multiple people
- 𒀭 (DINGIR or d) for gods and other divinities
- 𒂍 (É) for buildings and temples
- 𒀯 (MUL) for stars and constellations
- 𒀀𒇉 (ÍD) (a ligature of A (watercourse) and ENGUR (deep waters), transliterated: A.ENGUR) before canals or rivers in administrative texts
- 𒄷 (MUŠEN) for birds.
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Egyptian
In Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, determinatives came at the end of a word. Nearly every word – nouns, verbs, and adjectives – features a determinative, some of which become very specific: "Upper Egyptian barley" or "excreted things". It is believed that they were used as much as word dividers as for semantic disambiguation. Examples include 𓀀 (man), 𓁐 (woman) and 𓀭 (god/king).
Determinatives are generally not transcribed, but when they are, they are transcribed by their number in Gardiner's Sign List.
Chinese
Some 90% of Chinese characters are determinative-phonetic compounds; the phonetic element and the determinative (called a radical) are combined to form a single glyph. Both the meaning and pronunciation of the characters have shifted over the millennia, to the point that the determinatives and phonetic elements are not always reliable guides; nevertheless, radicals are still important for indexing of characters such as in a dictionary.