--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@...> wrote:

> suzmccarth wrote:
>
> > Is any of this supposed to precede the spread of Sanskrit to

China

> > and Japan?
>
> Would you _please_ READ something about the history of

writing????

I understand that Chinese/Sanskrit biliteracy preceded fanqie
rhyming dictionaries, manyoshu poetry, idu, and hiragana and I
have read several articles that attribute the development of a full
phonetic system to the knowledge of Sanskrit. I did not expect
this to be controversial.

From what I read, I undersand that writing did not become a
systematized, cenemic system in Japan that could be
manipulated without regard to meaning until after the study of
Sanskrit.

However, I did read an article which referred to the "revolution" in
writing which came about because of knowledge of Sanskrit. I
would call it a paradigm shift, from pleremic to cenemic. After
knowledge of Sanskrit, an unambiguous system of writing to
represent and visually manipulate phonetic information was
developed.

Somewhat like zero this is endlessly debatable. However, i think
that the consistent and systematic visual representation of any
concept in isolation is an important cognitive shift.

Suzanne

PS i now find that Kharosthi (no independent vowels), Ashokan
Brahmi (inherent a and independent vowels) and Tamil-Brahmi
(no inherent vowel) are all attributed to the 3rd centrury BCE,
some have "discovered" that Kharosthi is a couple of decades
earlier than the others, etc. i find that R. Salomon is not
categorical on the evolution of these scripts. There may be a
textus receptus somewhere, your book, i assume, but others
allow freedom to question.

i think i will do better in future to disregard all information
encoded in upper case.

>
> Seeley's History of Writing in Japan, one of the most turgid

books ever

> written, has been reprinted inexpensively by U Hawaii Pr and

will answer

> _all_ your questions about the development of Japanese

writing.

> --
> Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...