Re: And what do we learn from this?

John Cowan wrote:

>
> Peter T. Daniels scripsit:
>
> > I have said more than once that Cree isn't really a candidate for this
> > typology at all, because it's a "sophisticated grammatogeny" -- the
> > result of familiarity with phonological theory (such as it was in those
> > days, scil. phonetics) and a range of script possibilities.
>
> In that case, Hangul should be excluded as well and on exactly the
> same grounds.

"Featural" applies only to such "sophisticated" scripts, since you need
to know phonetics in order to represent phonetic features!

> So what do we learn from all this typologizing?
>
> There have been several independent morphemic-syllabic systems (some
> may be a result of stimulus diffusion, but surely not all), from one of

Three fer shure, probably at least one other (Indus)

> which developed the abjad. The abjad has had three branches leading
> to alphabets (the Greek one, the Yiddish one, and the Manchu one, to

Manchu an alphabet?

> speak loosely but conveniently -- unless indeed Manchu also counts as
> sophisticated grammatogeny), and either one or two branches leading to
> abugidas (the Ethiopic one and the Indic one). Unrelated systems, created
> either independently or by stimulus diffusion, are invariably syllabaries.

One. If only Friedrich had said what he meant by "similarities" in
Ethiopian and Indian liturgies, which would strongly confirm the Indic
influence on Ethiopic.

> In short, there was only one truly radical break with the past in writing
> systems, and that was the creation of the abjad bottleneck, wherein all
> the symbols representing different syllables or morpheme-syllables with
> the same initial consonant were scrapped except for one. From this
> rock-bottom minimum, the bulk of the world's writing systems were
> reconstituted by a process of refinement and expansion.

Decent summary of my account.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...