Re: Alleged Syllabaries from Alphabets

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

> suzmccarth wrote:
> > >
> > > How did Taylor, <snip> "suppress" literacy? Isaac Taylor was
> > > a Durham (IIRC) cathedral canon and antiquarian.
> >
> > No, Suppress use of syllabics. If you believe that the alphabet
>>is
> > the most advanced then a syllabary must be less advanced.
>
> Does he believe the alphabet is the most advanced?

I haven't seen a copy of Taylor recently to check - there isn't one
in the library. However, Williams seems to thinks so.

>
> BTW (apropos of a different message or thread)
>
> Over the weekend I found a typographic display of the kana called a
> Japanese alphabet (in a book by Stephen Heller, extremely prolific
> writer on design) & colleague on Art Deco typography from ca.

2000); and

> noted that Taylor calls the Indian scripts "alphabets" (not
> "syllabaries" -- but he was _barely_ aware of how vowels were

notated

> and may not have realized even that some vowel symbols appear to

the

> left of, i.e. before, the consonant symbols for the consonants

that the

> vowels follow).

Maybe Fevrier and Cohen were the first by calling them
neosyllabaries. Possibly derivative of their understanding of
Ethiopic.

I'll have to recheck Berger, but he seemed to describe Indic scripts
pretty well including the inherent a.

> I don't think Gelb would have said otherwise, if he'd ever

expressed an

> opinion on literacy.

I suppose many scholars had no opinion on literacy. However, Powell
seemed to think that the alphabet's importance had
been "overestimated"

>
> > > For anyone who needed to produce literacy materials (such as

Bible

> > > translations). There are no Mende typewriters.
> >
> > But there were Syllabics typewriters in Canada, newspapers,

bibles,

> > newsletters, etc.
>
> There are fewer than 86 (or 84 or 88) symbols, no?

http://www.aipainunavik.com/about/e_brief_history.html

Scroll down to the section on syllabaics and technology. This is a
pretty comprehensive article with lots of other links for details on
the golfball typewriter, etc.

BTW you mentioned that Central Algonkian has consonant clusters but
I am not sure what you are refering to.

Suzanne