tion of vowels, elision of stem markers in verbs (such as the representation of the digraph
)y, or affixed y of the hiph‘il stem. In cuneiform documents this denotes differences in the
signs chosen by a scribe. This includes the exchange of two signs with one sign (such as
CV-VC with CVC), the use of different signs with the same phonetic value, and the ex-
change of logographic forms with phonetically written forms. In addition, we include un-
der Orthographic Variants differences in the use of phonetic complements, which gener-
ally provide information as to case or number in nouns.
Textual Variants – Orthographic (linguistic)
Also listed as orthographic variants are grammatical phenomena that may be more prop-
erly identified as linguistic. These variants are introduced either intentionally or uncon-
sciously, and typically change the language towards a dialect or grammatical practice bet-
ter known to the copyist, or perceived to be more ‘correct.’ These types of ‘language
variation’ represent differences in the phonetic perspective of the copyist that may be re-
lated to dialect or pronunciation. As such, it is similar to orthographic variation in that it
is almost explicitly concerned with the graphical representation of particular phones. The
important difference, though, is that linguistic variations actually have an effect on mor-
phology. These grammatical changes, although often appearing very much like variations
in spelling, emerge in response to the actual use of the language in a living environment.
However, the lines between what one can fairly call an orthographic or a linguistic varia-
tion become somewhat blurred in certain circumstances. For example, we often find the
spelling )wl in a Qumran biblical text against )l in the parallel section of the MT. Now,