* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| a) Which of those scripts are not alphabets?
* Peter T. Daniels
|
| Um, you seem to have removed the list.
Here's the latest version of the list:
Armenian, Asomtavruli, Avestan, Buryat, Carian, Cirth, Coptic
script, Cyrillic, Deseret, Etruscan script, Georgian script,
Geyinzi, Glagolithic, Gothic script, Greek, Hangul, Latin script,
Lycian, Lydian, Manchu, Mandaic script, Meroitic, Modern syriac,
Mongolian clear script, Mongolian script, N'ko, Nusxa-xucuri, Ogham,
Old Persian Cuneiform, Orkhon, Osmanya, Punic script, Runic,
Shavian, Sidetic, Tai Lue script, Thaana, Utopian.
| IIRC Mandaic was on it, for one.
It is. On page 512 of WWS is the statement "Mandaic ortography has
usually been regarded as alphabetic". I see nothing on that page, or
elsewhere, to contradict that.
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| b) How do you explain you're claim that the remaining ones are all a
| single script?
* Peter T. Daniels
|
| Historically, of course!
Historically what? Are they historically one script? Or you explain it
historically? I guessed that you meant one of these, but the claim
still makes no sense to me.
I know that the Latin alphabet descends from the Greek one, but that
doesn't make them one script. And, if it does, why are not all the
abugidas one script?
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| Has anyone tried to create a classification of scripts?
* Peter T. Daniels
|
| As I said, it would be trivial. (Historically speaking.) Every
| history of writing from Taylor's on contains a classification or
| historical pedigree/dendrogram.
Well, to me those are completely different things. Are there any
classifications of scripts that are not historically based, but only
based on the properties of the scripts?
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| That's true, but my goal is not to do that, but to modify it to arrive
| at a satisfactory classification of scripts (the judge of what is
| satisfactory being me, of course). It seems that doing away with the
| "featural" class goes wsome way towards achieving this. Some scripts
| remain as problematic, but I don't think adding back the "featural"
| class would have solved anything.
* Peter T. Daniels
|
| Why would modifying something unsuited yield something suited?
| Wouldn't it be better to start afresh? After all, your
| classification *doesn't* seem to want to be historically based, so
| you're not limited to "exaptation," building on what happens to be
| available!
I'm certainly not limited to what already exists, but so far most of
what exists seems to make good sense. Of course, classifying the last
troublesome scripts may require the existing framework to be thrown
away, but so far I've found no reason to do so.