Brief Notice of Rogers Re: Moraic writing system

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

>
> Here it is, Copy/Pasted from a Word document, so if there are any
> diacritics or special characters, they'll go away.
>
> Writing systems: A linguistic approach. By HENRY ROGERS.

(Blackwell

> Textbooks in Linguistics 18.) Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing,

2005.

> Pp. xviii, 322. ISBN 0-631-23463-2 (hardcover). $74.95. / 0-631-

23464-0

> (paperback). $39.95.

Thank you very much for this. It sounds like it is the first full
treatment of abjad and abugida in a major textbook. I am also glad
you criticized the use of Moraic - it is nonsensical for Cree.

I assume from Rogers' website that he credits Sproat with the two
dimensional taxonomy for writing systems. Sproat published in 2000.
However, I published the same two dimensional taxonomy in 1995
(Taylor and Olson) The chapter authors were as follows. Intro, A.
Gaur, H. Rogers, J. DeFrancis, S. McCarthy. In Rogers' chapter, he
presented Sampson's typology, then DeFrancis contributed a chapter
which was written pre Visible Speech,(although published after) then
my chapter was the new taxonomy in a two dimensional table.

The two dimensional taxonomy took off. But I have only been credited
by TIC Talk. I met with Rogers in 1990 and he obviously has the book
(Taylor and Olson 1995) with my chpater in it, so I am less than
happy that he credits Sproat with this. Actually there are *many*
significant similarities, if also some important differences,between
what SProat wrote in 2000 and what I wrote in 1995.

I am much more faithful to DeFrancis than Sproat has been. I haven't
quite figured out where he is going with his "types of phonology."

Overall I fell it is unjust that Sproat has claimed this as a 'new
proposal' and Rogers reinforces this. Rogers has had Taylor and
Olson in his office for a full 10 years!

I just realized all this when I went through Sproat's book and
Rogers classnotes this summer.

Suzanne


In his own classification, R

> commendably uses the terms abjad (consonantary) and abugida
> (Indic-style, where the basic letter denotes Ca and other vowels

are

> denoted by added marks) introduced by this reviewer (J. Am.

Orient. Soc.

> 110 [1990]: 727–31)—but claims abugida as his own contribution

(274) and

> fails to describe the clarifications of the history of writing

that the

> distinctions embodied by the two terms made possible.
> Two recurrent annoyances mar the book. One is the mere

idiosyncrasy of

> naming the calendar eras `OLD' and `NEW' (xvii) instead of BCE and

CE

> (or BC and AD). This is especially confusing the first time it

appears

> (21), anent the periodization of Chinese, adjacent to `Old

Chinese'! The

> other is quite serious. On the basis of a now mythic talk at the

1992

> LSA by William Poser, never published and (pers.comm.) never even

to be

> written down, R claims that all scripts (except Yi) traditionally

called

> syllabaries, including Japanese kana, Greek Linear B, and

Mesopotamian

> cuneiform, are in fact moraic scripts. A moraic analysis of

Japanese

> phonology is legitimate, but no phonological analysis of any

Semitic

> language has justified the claim that e.g. Akkadian is written

with a

> cuneiform moraography.
> The book is rounded out with appendixes containing an introduction

to

> linguistic concepts (280–84), the IPA (285–86), English

transcription

> (287–88), and a glossary (289–99); bibliography (300–9); and index
> (310–22). Great care has not been exercised in matters

bibliographic:

> the Koreanist Ho-Min Sohn is consistently misspelled, Edward

Chiera's

> They Wrote on Clay (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938) is
> repeatedly mentioned as … in Clay and dated 1966, and even I. J.

Gelb's

> seminal A Study of Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1952,

> 2nd ed. 1963) is attributed to 1964 (275). [Peter T. Daniels,

Jersey

> City, NJ]
>
> --
> Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...