Determinative

A determinative, also known as a taxogram or semagram, is an ideogram used to mark semantic categories of words in logographic scripts. They have no direct counterpart in spoken language, though they may derive historically from glyphs for real words, and functionally they resemble classifiers in East Asian and sign languages. For example, Egyptian hieroglyphic determinatives include symbols for divinities, people, parts of the body, animals, plants, and books/abstract ideas, which helped in reading but none of which were pronounced.

Cuneiform

In cuneiform texts written in the Akkadian and Hittite languages, most nouns are preceded by a Sumerian word acting as a determinative. The word clarified the concept of the noun but was not itself pronounced. In transliterations, the determinatives are commonly written in superscript capitals. It is not always clear whether a given sign is a mere determinative (not pronounced) or a Sumerogram (a logographic spelling of a word intended to be pronounced). The decision of the editor to set the transliteration of the sign in superscript is thus an interpretation that may be open to criticism.

Some examples are:

• 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
• ^LÚ.MEŠ for ethnicities or multiple people
• ^LUGAL for kings
• 𒀭 ^DINGIR or ^D for gods
• 𒂍 ^É for buildings and temples

Egyptian hieroglyphs

In Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, determinatives came at the end of a word and before any suffixes. Nearly every word — nouns, verbs, and adjectives — features a determinative, some of which become rather specific: "Upper Egyptian barley" or "excreted things".

Determinatives are generally not transcribed, but when they are, they are transcribed by their number in Gardiner's Sign List.

• Determinative Signs In Egyptian

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.