)Bá$)B³á)Bá$)B¤á)B á$)B«á)Báᥠ(Daniel Yacob) scripsit:
> I've often wondered, how did the two case system get started? What
> was the original problem that lowercase letters were devised for (I
> assume upper came first)? And when? I expect that the original
> premise has been lost to the ages, I'd be grateful if anyone could
> share the leading theory here.
It's fairly straightforward: upper-case forms (the original ones)
were first carved into stone, lower-case forms evolved from them as
easier to write with a pen. At first manuscripts were either one or
the other; the mixed use we have today appeared around the 8th-9th century
C.E. in the Latin script, and spread to the Greek, Cyrillic, Armenian,
Georgian, and Coptic scripts later. Georgian has now abandoned
the two-case system in favor of a monocase one; the exact details of
the relationship between the three forms have been lost.
> Was there ever a period where other cases (beyond two) were created
> but then died off as a failed branch in the evolutionary tree?
There probably never was any significant use of three-case documents.
Two cases is difficult enough to learn. :-)
(The term "case" itself refers to the wooden boxes or drawers used to
store lead type; the capital letters were quite literally in the upper
case.)
--
Winter: MIT, John Cowan
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