The Seba library treats Diacritical Meaning in 7 passages, across 5 authors (including Govinda, Lama Anagarika, Victor Turner, Victor Witter Turner, Evans-Wentz, W. Y.).
represented, therefore, by a diacritical sign in the form of a dot, a drop, or a small circle (Skt.: bindu; Tib.: thig-le), i.c., by the symbol of unity, o totality, of the absolute
Govinda argues that the diacritical mark (bindu) is not merely a phonological modifier but the graphic embodiment of absolute unity, transforming the sounds it qualifies into psychic and mantric vibrations.
, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, 1960thesis
It was over the practical consequences of usus that the ideological component of the split between the Conventuals and the Spirituals first took shape and became eventually a diacritical symbol of their opposition.
Turner employs 'diacritical symbol' to denote the marking gesture by which a community draws a decisive boundary of identity, here the dispute over usus crystallizing the structural opposition between two Franciscan factions.
, The Ritual Process Structure and Anti-Structure, 1966thesis
Nirvāṇa appears in the New English Dictionary bereft of the two diacritical marks (which for the purpose of exact scholarship are indispensable) because it has become anglicized
Evans-Wentz frames diacritical marks as the guardians of precise meaning, whose removal signals cultural assimilation and the consequent loss of semantic exactitude in the transmission of sacred terminology.
, The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, 1954supporting
The writing system reveals a semiotics of the language; thus emerges the difference between a language of the Greek type and a language of the Phoenician type. In Greek, the vowel is essential for determin
Benveniste shows that the decision to mark or not mark vowels constitutes a semiological choice that reveals the deep structural grammar of a culture's orientation toward meaning and difference.
, Last Lectures: Collège de France 1968 and 1969, 2012supporting
Writing is speech converted by the hand into speaking signs. Hand and speech work jointly in the invention of writing. The hand prolongs speech.
Benveniste articulates the secondary semiological system in which graphic distinctions—including diacritical ones—relay and semiotise spoken language, making visible what is structurally implicit in sound.
, Last Lectures: Collège de France 1968 and 1969, 2012supporting
With the help of a few diacritical markings that allow some symbols to stand for more than one syllable, it is possible to represent the entire language with a fairly small, manageable set of symbols.
The passage notes, in a psycholinguistic context, how diacritical marks function as economy devices that expand representational capacity without multiplying the graphic inventory.
, The Principles of Psychology, 1890aside
the problem of meaning is now being attacked from several sides... meaning as distribution. This period is over and the problem of meaning is now being attacked from several sides.
Benveniste situates the renewed study of meaning within a theoretical shift away from behaviorist distribution models, framing the broader semiological inquiry within which diacritical functions acquire significance.
, Last Lectures: Collège de France 1968 and 1969, 2012aside