Re: Brief Notice of Rogers Re: Moraic writing system

suzmccarth wrote:

>
> --- 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.

Did I mention I met David Olson last month when he was here to
participate in an NYU seminar? A very nice Canadian (which is to say, he
refused to dispute anything I said, even when it directly contradicted
something he'd said) who readily admits he doesn't know anything about
writing systems or linguistics -- his fields are education (and thence
literacy).

> 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 remain unimpressed with Richard Sproat. In Antwerp he spent the first
half of his talk outlining some sort of computational notation system
having to do with the study of writing systems (maybe), and then did not
use it or refer to it in the contentual portion of his talk.

> 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.

He doesn't even have the excuse that he's never seen that particular
volume (which is too expensive to buy and too esoteric for libraries
around here to acquire).
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...