Lars Marius Garshol wrote:

>
> * 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:
>
> 1 Armenian, 2 Asomtavruli, 3 Avestan, 4 Buryat, 5 Carian, 6 Cirth, 7 Coptic
> script, 8 Cyrillic, 9 Deseret, 10 Etruscan script, 11 Georgian script,
> 12 Geyinzi, 13 Glagolithic, 14 Gothic script, 15 Greek, 16 Hangul, 17 Latin script,
> 18 Lycian, 19 Lydian, 20 Manchu, 21 Mandaic script, 22 Meroitic, 23 Modern syriac,
> 24 Mongolian clear script, 25 Mongolian script, 26 N'ko, 27 Nusxa-xucuri, 28 Ogham,
> 29 Old Persian Cuneiform, 30 Orkhon, 31 Osmanya, 32 Punic script, 33 Runic,
> 34 Shavian, 35 Sidetic, 36 Tai Lue script, 37 Thaana, 38 Utopian.

I put in the number to save typing.

Not alphabets: 16, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 29, 30, 32

Never heard of: 6, 12, 26, 27, 36

No idea: 9, 38

Doubtful: 34 (featural); 23 and 37 (both the same; would Bill call them
alphasyllabaries?)

> | 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.

But the whole paragraph is a refutation of the traditional view!

> * 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?

They are, historically, two: Indic and Ethiopic.

> * 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?

I doubt it. Why bother?

> * 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.

But -- what's the point of all this "classifying"?
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...