* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| Maybe. The question is, what does that mean? Do we have a definition
| of the "featural" class that is good enough that we can look at other
| scripts and tell whether or not they too are featural?
* Peter T. Daniels
|
| The term and definition are Sampson's.
They may have originated with him, but individuals don't own
scientific terms. Otherwise "atom" would still have had the meaning
assigned to it by Democritus.
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| In short, what is a featural script?
* Peter T. Daniels
|
| One in which graphic elements correlate with features of pronunciation,
| i.e. notions smaller than the segment.
Now we're getting somewhere. What is a segment?
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| What are they? What is a good place to learn about them?
* Peter T. Daniels
|
| Any textbook on phonology.
Can you recommend a good one for the interested lay-person? Does
anyone know of one that covers both linguistics and phonology, or,
alternatively, one on just linguistics?
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| That's an answer that makes sense, but it does seem that the abugida
| class needs a little stretching to make Cree fit into it. It doesn't
| seem that the designers of Cree thought the characters had any
| inherent vowel, but the "consistent modifications" are there.
* Peter T. Daniels
|
| Perhaps if Mr. Evans had known about my classification, he'd have
| done it differently!
I get the feeling you're not taking this very seriously.
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| It seems to me that this makes Cree fit more naturally, but, of
| course, it may be problematic for some reason.
* Peter T. Daniels
|
| But invented scripts, as opposed to those developed by actual people
| out of actually existinig systems, are a lot less interesting.
To you personally, perhaps, but a typology has to deal with all
scripts. And all scripts are in any case invented, in some sense.
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| So Tengwar has in it elements of the alphabet, the abugida, and the
| featural script. The best match is perhaps to call it an alphabet.
* Peter T. Daniels
|
| Sounds like a Brightian alphasyllabary, where the important thing is
| that vowel signs are subordinate to consonant signs.
That's not the only thing that makes an alphasyllabary an
alphasyllabary, right? Otherwise modern Syriac would have been an
alphasyllabary as well, wouldn't it?
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| What? Is the definition of abugida "Brahmic-like script", or is it as
| given in B&D?
* Peter T. Daniels
|
| What's the difference?
Well, does "abugida" mean "script derived from Brahmic, and following
the same model", or is it based on the properties of abugidic writing
systems, and nothing else?
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| Certainly, but it doesn't mean that a well-designed typology for
| scripts need necessarily include that term, or even use it as it was
| defined by you.
* Peter T. Daniels
|
| That would be a bit disrespectful.
Why? Is this an unwritten rule in linguistics? To someone with a
maths / physics / informatics background it sounds more than a little
strange.
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| To me, a good typology is a set of
| classes such that
|
| a) each class is sufficiently well-defined that one can look at any
| script and unambiguously determine whether or not the script is a
| member of the class,
* Peter T. Daniels
|
| Scripts are not artificial objects, created by scientists, so of
| course there are no "pure" members of any of the classes.
I agree that it may be difficult to find classes that work as
described above, but has anyone proved that it is impossible? Has
anyone even tried to meet the above goal?
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| c) the definition of the classes teaches us something about the
| nature of scripts and their relation to languages.
* Peter T. Daniels
|
| And it was the recognition of the distinction between abugida and
| syllabary that almost instantly led to my understanding of the
| origin of writing. The identification of abjad vs. alphabet was the
| key to my dissatisfaction with Gelb's system.
I agree that these classes meet criterion c), but I am not convinced
that the "featural" class does. Of course, that might be because I
don't understand it.
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| The difficulty here is not coming up with definitions of the
| individual classes that make sense, but coming up with a set of
| classes, a typology, that has the features above. So far I don't
| think anyone has met this goal. Whether anyone has really tried is
| of course another matter.
* Peter T. Daniels
|
| The labels are enormously important. (Does it really take a linguist
| to recognize that? Well, perhaps it does, if you're one of those
| people who dismisses questions of detail with "that's just
| semantics.")
Many computer scientists also worry about terms they consider
misnomers, but I personally don't. Anyone who attempts to use a
technical term without studying the definition of it is asking for
trouble, and removing the misnomers does not change that.
| There have been hundreds of years of confusion over Chinese because
| centuries ago someone came up with the stupid label "ideograph."
I'm not sure using a different term would have made any difference.
In any case, this is not a disagreement that need cause any problem.
If we can find a typology for scripts that works you can call the
individual classes anything you like without protests from me. (Well,
within reason, of course.)
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| Indeed, isn't "abugida" the Amharic term for the Amharic script? And
| isn't Amharic a member of a different class? I don't really care one
| way or the other, but if you consider the term "alphasyllabary"
| objectionable, why is "abugida" acceptable?
* Peter T. Daniels
|
| Yes, it is an Ethiopic word, and no, of course it isn't a member of
| a different class! Why would you think it is?
Mainly because the modifications used to indicate the vowels are not
entirely systematic. There is a system, but it has deviations which
must be learned. Thinking about it I guess I agree that despite them
Ethiopic fits the class "abugida" better than it does "syllabary".