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Article published In: Written Language & Literacy
Vol. 26:2 (2023) ► pp.155–187

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Handwritten letters and grammatical structures in German

A framework

 | Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache
Published online: 4 October 2024
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https://doi.org/10.1075/wll.00077.rei
Abstract
The German writing system reflects a lot of grammatical structures, such as morphological structures or syllables. Writing shows grammar. This is already true in printed texts, but even more so in handwritten texts, because the potential for variation is greater in those texts. Writers can more easily deviate from the usual shape of a character and use these deviations to mark grammatical patterns. This article presents a suggestion for a methodology for the systematic categorisation of such form deviations in handwritten German texts. Subsequently, it is shown with 〈e〉 and 〈h〉 that form deviations can indeed correlate with linguistic structures.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Graphetic units: Letter, basic shape, graph
  • 3.Letterform categorisation
    • 3.1Handwritten letterform categorisation
      • 3.1.1Existence of a coda
      • 3.1.2Head and coda shapes
      • 3.1.3Closedness, curvature and connections
    • 3.2Example analyses of other letters
    • 3.3Graphetic reduction
  • 4.First results
    • 4.1General results
    • 4.2〈e〉
    • 4.3〈h〉
  • 5.Summary and outlook
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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