--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "suzmccarth" <suzmccarth@...> wrote:

> --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...>
> wrote:
>
> > If you are going to propose a classification, you should explain
> > why your classification would be useful, or more useful than any
> > existing classification.

I have always considered my classification or framework as useful in
understanding history as well. Written language came about in
languages with monosyllabic morphemes in 3 places, Central America,
Middle East ad Asia. This is the first transformation, the meeting
of morphemic writing with the syllable. The second transformation
was the separation of the syllable from the morpheme. Then the
syllable became only phonographic and operated in multisyllabic
languages. The third transformation was from syllable to phoneme
(alphabet). This happened only once. However, there have been many
tranformations from the phoneme back to the syllable. There is no
need to classify the syllabic scripts, the original ones and the
newer ones as of a different type. They are one basic type with two
histories.

I like the fact that syllabic scripts and the alphabet are both
equally phongraphic and don't spread out along the phonographic to
logographic contiuum. That classification was not useful at all.

Suzanne McCarthy