In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...> wrote:

> suzmccarth wrote:

> >
> > "the type has been called neosyllabary [Fevrier], pseudo-alphabet
> > [Householder], and semisyllabary [Diringer]. But these terms
> > misleadingly suggest that the abugida is a subtype or hybrid of
> > alphabet or syllabary - a notion that has led to unfortunate
> > historic/evolutionary notions about the history of writing."
> >
> > WWS p. 4
> >
> > My question is 'misleadingly suggests to whom'?
>
> To the writers of most introductory linguistics textbooks, who
>have no
> interest in writing systems but now feel obligated to include a
>mention
> of them, and simply copy a reference to Gelb from one to another.
>That
> was written more than a decade ago, you must recall.

And that was when I wrote my little article in 1992 (pub. in 1996,
Taylor and Olson) so that I would have a personal classification for
Cree. It seemed just as bad that theory progressed from the
evoutionary model to the idea that there were only phonographic or
logographic scripts. Therefore syllabaries and alphabets as
phonographic scripts behave in a similar manner. MRI research now
shows they do not.

H. Rogers even said "whatever is true of alphabets is true of
syllabaries" because of Sampson's phonographic/logographic
classification. (I see he now understands the abugida.:)

So why is it hard to believe that Scribner and Cole, 1981, wrote

"Development and use of a phonetic writing system such as the Vai
script requires segmenting the stream of speech into a set of
discrete units (in this case syllables. Skilled readers once they
have mastered their own writing system, often take this sound
analysis for granted. But it is not easily accomplished either by
individuals first learning to read or by entire societies in the
process of developing a writing sytem." p.32

Scribner and Cole write an entire book without acknowledging that
segmenting syllables into segments is different from segmenting
speech into syllables! They don't want to consider the fact that Vai
is a syllabary as a factor.

> > And how could a term for a post-alphabetic syllabary lead to

these

> > unfortunate evolutionary notoions?
>
> Because it's not a friggin' syllabary at all.

An alphabet-syllabaire or syllabaire secondaire. The term
alphasyllabary might give someone the impression that it falls
historically between the syllabary and the alphabet but neosyllabary
sounds like a syllabary which follows an intervening development.

>
> > If someone had read Fevrier they would know that a neosyllabary
> > reflected prior discovery of the segments.
>
> How many American linguists (a) read books on writing systems (b)

in

> French?

Not enough!

> > I honestly don't know the answer and have been trying to ask

this in

> > one way or another since last year - so courteous please.
> >
> > And if someone else has misunderstood a term, does that

disqualify

> > it?
>
> When a non-misunderstandable term was readily available or

coinable,

But some find the term opaque - where is the ka-ki-ku ness of it
all? Maybe they think the abugida does fall between the syllabary
and the alphabet. The neosyllabary is a return to a previous mode
after an intervening development. It more clearly establishes the
historic sequence of a post-alphabetic script.

However, I realize that neosyllabary isn't really an ideal term in
English. It probably does depend somewhat on the ideas of
Giambattista Vico who was translated into French but never into
English (maybe recently - I'm not sure).

All I would like to say is that scripts are syllabic or alphabetic
and phonographic but more or less logographic. These classifications
are important. And syllabic scripts _can_ be composed
systematically by the inventors into more or less opaque units.

> yes.
>
> > >Under what possible definition of "alphasyllabary" does Hangul
> > >qualify? (See WWS p. 4 n.
> >
> > I wouldn't want to classify Hangul, it is just an exercise in
> > sounding silly as far as I can see, but the consonants and

vowels

> > are not in linear order - and I am not too sure denoting vowels

with

> > marks that are not of the same status as consonants is

fundamental

> > to an alphasyllabary although Bright says it is. There are

> no one has found an earlier occurrence outside his own writings),

so he

> can define it however he wishes.

Too close to the alphabet-syllabaire?

BTW I have only been reading Cohen and Fevrier in the library - they
have to get out a special ring of keys and a flashlight to take me
down the naroow staircase to where they store the books that nobody
reads:) And I have to go when the 'keeper of the storage' is on
shift.

No, I don't know what exact chart Taylor is talking about but there
are many different Cree syllable charts also. I did notice though
that the phenomenon of people learning to read outside of school is
in common between Cree and Korean - also Vai but scribner and Cole
don't discuss syllabaries so we don't know what they think about
that.

On another point, I understand that Korean has been taught _both_ as
syllables and as an alphabet and that they merge at some point for
the learners.

Regards,

Suzanne