Markedness Effects in the Semiotactics of the Hieratic Markers of the Stone Tablets in the Christian Sacrosphere

Abstract

The present article inscribes itself in the realm of the investigation of visual hieratic textuality. In the article, I use semiotactics as the methodology developed on the basis of contemporary phonology (in particular, (mor)phonotactics, e. g. Dressler and Dziubalska-Kołaczyk 2006 inter alia) to examine salient asymmetries as markedness phenomena operating on a hieratic marker active both in the Judaic denomination and in Christianity ‒ the Stone Tablets. In particular, I focus on the semiotactic reflection of the markedness effects related to the presence of the analysed marker in Catholic churches. I establish several implicational cooccurrence restrictions and arrive at establishing several primes in the nano-structure of a hieratic sign. The basis for the analysis is the digital documentation of the representation of the Stone Tablets in Christian churches which I collected in various European countries in the years 2010‒2022. The supplementary illustrative materials are available here in the form of a recorded presentation.