Re: Neosyllabaries

suzmccarth wrote:

>
> --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...>
> wrote:
> > suzmccarth wrote:
> >
> > > > In truth, no other kind of writing system has ever developed out of a
> > > > syllabary.
> > >
> > > >
> > > > (Which is why it's so important to recognize that abugidas are not
> > > > syllabaries -- not that anything has developed out of them either
> > > >except
> > >
> > > But in Fevrier and Cohen the alphabet-syllabaire or neosyllabary
> > > develops out of the consoantal alphabet. It is a secondary syllabry.
> >
> > No. Stop thinking of abugidas as syllabaries!
> >
> > They are utterly different from syllabaries, in that they reflect the
> > prior discovery of the "segment" -- that things smaller than syllables,
> > such as consonants and vowels, can be analyzed from the speech stream.
>
> That is exactly what Fevrier and Cohen said about Indic scripts.
> That always was the meaning of neosyllabism or secondary
> syllabaries.

Who, to paraphrase an earlier question of yours, suggested that it
wasn't?

> I cannot agree that Fevrier and Cohen's use of the term neosyllabary
> or alphabet-syllabaire would in any way lead to the notion
> of 'unidirectional' development.

Who suggested that it would?

> That was a direct descendent of Taylor.

As I explain in my IOS 20 article, Taylor did embrace Darwinism as a
model for the history of writing systems, but I don't think you'll find
him embracing "unidirectional development." I don't think it occurred to
him.

> Here is Cohen on Cree. My thinking has been shaped by the
> phrase "systematic graphic combinations" which are an expression of
> alphabeticism. There is no question that these neosyllabaries are
> based on alphabetic knowledge.
>
> "On another track again, an Englishman by the name of John Evans,
> working in Canada around 1841 on other languages of the Algonquin
> group, acted as an inventor in creating from the ground up a
> syllabary. … In this system the isolated vowels have a special sign
> (a triangle in four different positions) the same for the consonants
> without vowels. For the consonants with vowels there is a syllabic
> layout (tracé) the vowel being suggested by the position of the
> consonant. This original system met with a certain success: there
> are still the gospels printed in this manner, in Cree, the first
> langauge which was thus equiped, with many varieties, in Ojibway, in
> Dene, or Slavey and in Eskimo (see below) and no doubt certain other
> languages.
>
> The interest in these experiments which these recent creations
> constitute, of which the history is at least partially known, is
> very great. One can by comparison with them imagine the paths of
> certain ancient creations and evolutions.
>
> Concerning the contacts of civilizations and certain of their
> repercussions, the interest goes beyond the history of scripts and
> can give by analogy indications on the modes of borrowing and the
> remodelling of other techniques.
>
> Especially remarkable are the mental processes of European
> missionaries whose contacts with other populations have inspired
> them to invention, from which a particular neosyllabism which could
> have a future as a practical expression of alphabeticism.
>
> In effect, if the latter does not appear to be able to be surpassed
> as a system in the expression of the analysis of language, one sees
> that
> systematic graphic combinations can be substituted for the
> capricious evolved variety of the inheritied letters of the past."
>
> Page 215 – 219
>
> Marcel Cohen
> Grande Invention de L'Ecriture et son Evolution. 1958

Assuming your translation is accurate, I don't see that his s.c.g.s
refers to alphabets or "alphabetism," but rather to the extreme
systematicity of Syllabics. Presumably he says similar very nice things
about Hangul, too.

The first three words at the beginning of your last paragraph were
better rendered "In fact, even though ...."

I'd say such rapture over Syllabics is unadvised, because it seems to me
the shapes are too similar for quick identification -- the same problem
seen with the shapes of the Shaw Alphabet. (Setting aside the unwisdom
of spelling English surface-phonetically.) In Hangul, while the
derivations of the letters remain evident, the shapes are not devised
mechanically, so they're more different from each other than the
simplest principles would suggest.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...