* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| PREDECESSOR SUCCESSOR PRED. TYPE SUCC. TYPE
| ========================================================================
| Classical syriac Modern syriac Abjad Alphabet
* Peter T. Daniels
|
| Not really; the pointings merely changed from optional to
| obligatory.
They did, and to me that means that it became an alphabet. If a script
consistently denotes the vowels, how can be it said to be an abjad? I
realize that the vowels are written with diacritical marks, but even
so.
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| Linear A Cypriote syllabary Logosyllabary Syllabary
* Peter T. Daniels
|
| Do you mean Linear B? or what? Why do you say Cypriote "succeeded"
| LinB?
I think I did mean Linear A, actually, since AncientScripts.com claims
that. I now see that Bennett's article in WWS seems to say that it was
derived from Linear B via "Cypro-Minoan scripts", though what he means
by that I am not sure of.
What's your opinion?
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| Arabic script Thaana Abjad Alphabet
* Peter T. Daniels
|
| Hardly an adaptation; a reuse of symbols, not unlike (if it's what
| happened) the reuse of some hieroglyphs for consonant signs on the
| road to the Semitic abjad.
I agree. I was too eager there.
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| Mongolian clear script Buryat Abjad Alphabet
* Peter T. Daniels
|
| To what extent is Mongolian not already alphabetic?
Hmmm. I've made mistakes here as well, I admit. Both the clear script
and Mongolian appear to be alphabetic. Uighur seems to be more of a
borderline case.
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| Pahlavi Avestan Abjad Alphabet
* Peter T. Daniels
|
| No -- Avestan didn't develop out of Pahlavi; some Av. letters come
| from Phl., some come from other sources. Skjaervo sent me his
| suggestions after I discovered Hofmann's(?) (in EncIran
| s.v. Avestan) suggestions; they should have been in the WWS article.
I see. Would it be fair to say that the main influences are Pahlavi
and the Psalter script?
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| Aramaic script Kharoshthi Abjad Abugida
| Sabean/Minean script Amharic script Abjad Abugida
* Peter T. Daniels
|
| These are the parade examples -- but why don't you include Brahmi?
Because from WWS there didn't seem to be any clear candidate for
Brahmi's predecessor. (I didn't create this table manually, so scripts
that don't have a defined predecessor in the database are not
included.)
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| Orkhon Hungarian runes Abjad Alphabet
See <URL:
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/hungarian_runes.htm >.
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| Chinese script Man'yoogana Logosyllabary Syllabary
* Peter T. Daniels
|
| Why not the kana generally?
I decided to model this as Hanzi -> Man'yoogana -> Kana.
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| Proto-Elamite Old Elamite Logosyllabary Syllabary
* Peter T. Daniels
|
| OEl is in cuneiform syllabary; since we can't read "PEl" we have no
| idea what language it represents, and there's no reason to suppose
| that Sumerian cuneiform, adapted for Elamite, developed from PEl!
You lost me here, I'm afraid. I didn't mention Sumerian cuneiform, I
said that PEl developed into OEl. Do you disagree with that, or are
you saying something else?
| (I think you've slipped from examples of script adaptation to
| examples of [supposed] earlier and later stages of a language that
| are written with different scripts.)
You are right. I just queried for cases where a script developed into
another and changed type on the way, forgetting that in the discussion
I was using this in we were talking about only the cases where a
script was adapted for a new language.
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| The clearest example of a language -> script influence I see in this
| list is a tendency for non-semitic languages to abandon the abjad in
| favour of script types that denote vowels. (Though this could hardly
| be called a scientific conclusion.)
* Peter T. Daniels
|
| Except, of course, that Iranian didn't.
Yeah, there are other exceptions as well, but as a rule it appears to
hold.
| You'll be wanting to look at my article in *Studies in the
| Linguistic Sciences* 30/1 (2000), the King Sejong anniverary
| symposium at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; it's
| also summed up in the Blackwell *Handbook of Linguistics* chapter.
I definitely would, but in practice I doubt I'll be able to. If it
were available electronically I would, but time is too limited for me
to track down such things on paper.
In any case, thanks very much for the corrections. If I run the query
again I get the following result, parts of which are still disputed:
PREDECESSOR SUCCESSOR PRED. TYPE SUCC. TYPE
===============================================================================
Proto-Elamite Old Elamite Logosyllabary Syllabary
Aramaic script Kharoshthi Abjad Abugida
Chinese script Man'yoogana Logosyllabary Syllabary
Uighur Mongolian script Abjad Alphabet
Sabean/Minean script Amharic script Abjad Abugida
Phoenician script Greek Abjad Alphabet
Lanna script Tai Lue script Abugida Alphabet
Mongolian script Manchu Alphabet Abjad
Linear B Cypriote syllabary Logosyllabary Syllabary
Orkhon Hungarian runes Abjad Alphabet
Classical syriac Modern syriac Abjad Alphabet
I've removed these two cases, since I'm not sure of the classifiations
here:
Egyptian hieratic Meroitic Logosyllabary Script
Sumero-akkadian cuneiform Elamite cuneiform Logosyllabary Script
Meroitic *seems* alphabetic, but I'm not sure. Elamite I'm having
difficulty understanding how works.
--
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian <URL:
http://www.ontopia.net >
GSM: +47 98 21 55 50 <URL:
http://www.garshol.priv.no >