Re: why Aramaic now lumpers and splitters

From: Curtis Clark (jcclark@mockfont.com)
Date: Wed Dec 24 2003 - 16:00:12 EST

  • Next message: Michael Everson: "Re: why Aramaic now"

    on 2003-12-24 12:29 Elaine Keown wrote:
    > It appears to me that script experts may resemble
    > experts in dialects/languages: there are lumpers and
    > splitters........

    Following up on my post about wariness to unify being correct in first
    principles:

    My day job uses my training as a plant taxonomist, a field in which
    there are also lumpers and splitters. I am a lumper, but, as you say, a
    "thinking lumper". If I have any doubts about whether two species of
    plant are separate, I maintain them as separate, in part as a challenge
    to future taxonomists (or me) to demonstrate that they are truly the
    same. Lumped species are "under the radar"--nonspecialists looking at
    them may never be aware of the disparate elements that make them up, and
    even specialists may not think to revisit them. It is ultimately easier
    to lump than to split (with plants, and I assume with languages and
    scripts as well), so those of us who are lumpers have a greater
    responsibility--it "comes with the territory".

    -- 
    Curtis Clark                  http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/
    Mockingbird Font Works                  http://www.mockfont.com/
    


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