Re: [OT] ANN: Site about scripts

From: Lars Marius Garshol (larsga@garshol.priv.no)
Date: Thu Oct 11 2001 - 18:53:04 EDT


* Kenneth Whistler
|
| By "type" you are classifying scripts based on their functional
| organization.
|
| By "category" you are, loosely, classifying scripts based on their
| historic relationships.

Yes, and yes.
 
| I think you would be more successful if you separated out some of
| the distinct forms of historic relationships:
|
| 1. Script B is an evolutionary descendant of Script A.
|
| 2. Script B is a de novo design influenced strongly by Script A.
|
| 3. Script B borrowed formal and/or functional characteristics of
| Script A.
 
This is good advice. I already have an association type called
'derived from' that corresponds to your 1. I have been deliberating
whether to add an association type for your 2., probably to be called
'influenced by'. (I will probably drop the requirement that the design
be de novo, however.)

I am not sure if it is possible to distinguish 3. from 2., though. Can
you give examples of differences?

| Clumping all this stuff together into a category tree is part of
| what is leading you into these conundrums. It results in
| oversimplifications.

Indeed it does, but if I adopt your suggestions 1., 2., and 3. and
drop the category system, how are people new to this to get any kind
of overview of the scripts? They can look at the types, but those say
little about the historical and geographical development of the
scripts.

I feel that some device is needed to cluster the scripts into groups
in order to explain how they are related to one another historically.
If you can think of a better solution I am certainly open to
suggestion.

Another thing is how oversimplified this really is. I feel that most
of these categories are fairly well founded, although I agree that the
sinitic one is kind of shaky. Some of the distinctions within the
semitic and brahmic categories are also somewhat arbitrary.

The issue is how oversimplification can be avoided without undue
loss of clarity.

* Lars Marius Garshol
|
| Hangul is clearly siniform, and so matching this definition.
 
* Kenneth Whistler
|
| It is siniform in some senses: the Hangul are laid out in square
| boxes, a typographic practice derived from centuries of Han
| typography; many of the individual jamo are based on pieces of Han
| characters or on strokes derived from Han characters (though not
| all), a practice derived from a common tradition of brush-writing.
|
| But in other senses, it is not at all siniform. It is alphabetic in
| concept, and the Hangul syllables bear no relation whatsoever to Han
| ideographs. This is quite different from the more obviously siniform
| script developments, such as Xi Xia, which just lifted the whole
| Gestalt of Han ideographs and invented a completely new set for an
| unrelated language.

I've used "siniform" here in the sense "having deliberate graphic
similarity to Han, though not necessarily any systematic/structural
similarity". This use was adopted from Bright&Daniels (p. 189), and
if there is anything wrong with it I would like to be corrected.

In any case you do not seem to contradict me, but rather to agree. Of
course, whether my definition of sinitic scripts is useful (or even
correct) is another matter. It may well be that the definition should
be tightened.

--Lars M.



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