suzmccarth wrote:

>
> --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...>
> wrote:
> > suzmccarth wrote:
> > >
> > > Fevrier published in 1959 but it was a second edition - I have not
> > > seen the first edition, 1948, nor have I seen it quoted. He readily
> > > admits that the second edition includes additional material that
> > > was not in the first.
> >
> > I have only the first edition. I once compared pages in the two editions
> > at random and found no differences. Maybe the 2nd corrects typos in the
> > 1st.
>
> As you say, it is Fevrier's word. Of course, I have many times seen
> Fevrier and Cohen referenced as 1959 and 1958 respectively. I am
> now wondering if there is some publishing reason why Fevrier is not
> listed as 1948.

Because scholars normally like to cite the latest editions of things. I
inherited the 1st ed. from Raymond A. Bowman and have never seen the 2nd
on offer. (I did once pass on a $10 Cohen because it was listed as 2
vols., meaning 1 vol. was missing -- except it occurred to me weeks
later that two volumes might have been bound in one.) (Just yesterday I
saw the 2-vol. "3rd ed." of Diringer -- a brand-new copy -- for $100,
which was way beyond my means [I have the 1st; not even the population
figures were updated in the "3rd," even though it was reset with the
pictures moved to a second volume.])

> Here is the preface to Fevrier's 2nd edition. I only give this as a
> bit of editing trivia you may be interested in - it has nothing to
> do with his use of the word neosyllabary which is integral to his
> chapter on Brahmi, etc.

(Which, as he says, depends on Filliozat -- who has an extensive chapter
on Indian paleography in Bloch's big handbook of Indic studies. I didn't
manage to stick it into Salomon's bibliography in WWS so I can't be more
specific just now.)

> "The second edition is not a simple reproduction of the first.
> Archeological discoveries and the progress of science imposed an
> overhaul of the text on many points. We could assuredly have
> resorted to the classic procedure, adding to an unchanged text a few
> dozen pages in which we would have completed, modified and
> contradicted our preceding affirmations. We would have preferred,
> in spite of the material difficulties, to revise the text itself.
>
> The reader will therefore find in this second edition, inserted into
> the very body of the book entirely new developments, for example, on
> the Mycean script, on the Protophoenecian script, on the Latin
> alphabet, on the Libyan and Ibero-Tartessian scripts, etc." (my
> translation)

It was a while ago, but I think the pagination didn't change, meaning
that either they deleted lines here and there to fit the new topics in,
or they inserted pages within the sequence.

> > > Cohen says in his Ecriture (abrege), 1953, that his book "Grande
> > > Invention de l'Ecriture", 1958, in which he uses the word
> > > neosyllabisme, was actually written in 1947 and was then at the
> > > printer (in 1953). He started the book before the war but he
> > > stopped to fight in the resistance.
> >
> > Ditto Gelb's *Study of Writing*. Cohen's "Hamito-Semitic" dictionary
> > (1947) has the same history.
>
> Thank you. It is helpful to know in which decade a book is written.

Just read their prefaces! (Cohen was active in the Resistance. Gelb was
drafted, but not into the OSS or anyplace else his abilities would be
useful -- he was stationed in Washington in what he said was Supplies --
probably a Quartermaster Corps; he may even have dealt with my uncle,
who did something similar in France, having actually already been in the
freight forwarding business.)

> On Fevrier and Cohen's use ofthe terms, quoting a word here and
> there is useless - I don't paraphrase well - but I will post
> quotations some time soon.
>
> > What is "the evolutionary school,"
>
> Taylor, Gelb, Sjoberg ... and the trend in linguistics until the
> 80's to replace earlier writing systems in North America with a
> phonemic alphabet.

Why do you call that "evolutionary" (and I don't know who/which Sjoberg
you mean -- not Åke Sjöberg, the now-retired-back-to-Sweden Penn
Sumerologist?)? And what does the general oppression of all things
Native American (including the most unusual cases of Cherokee and Cree
scripts; how long ago did Syllabics spread? Nichols gives dates only for
Inuit & Greenlandic -- 1850s/60s -- but notes that roman orthographies
preexisted.) have to do with "evolution"?
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...