Sociological Linguistics

[Patrick C. Ryan]

Dear Brian and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Brian M. Scott <BMScott at stratos.net>
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 1999 11:52 PM

[ moderator snip ]

Brian wrote:

> Contra Gelb:

> [W]riting is defined as _a system of more or less permanent
> marks used to represent an utterance in such a way that it
> can be recovered more or less exactly without the intervention
> of the utterer_.  By this definition, writing is bound up with
> language; consequently, the widespread practice of recording
> by means of pictures (_pictograms_) of _ideas_ that are not
> couched in a specific linguistic form is excluded.  Such
> pictograms are often designated _forerunners_ of writing (e.g.
> Gelb 1952), but in fact writing systems (or _scripts_) do not
> develop from them (DeFrancis 1989).

> [Peter T. Daniels in _The World's Writing Systems_, Daniels & Wm. Bright,
> eds.]

Pat responds:

I prefer Gelb's definition.

[ moderator snip ]

Brian wrote:

> That mixed writing system (or perhaps, in light of recent finds, the
> roughly contemporary Egyptian mixed writing system) is the earliest
> _writing_ system of which we have record.  Purely pictorial records that
> precede these systems, not being writing, cannot sensu stricto be read.

Pat responds:

Using Peter's arbitrary distinction. I prefer not to.

[ moderator snip ]

>> Pat commented:

>> Yes, actually alphabets are the most complex system of all --- how clever of
>> you to recognize it! It requires analyzing a morpheme, which has meaning,
>> into meaningless parts.

Brian commented:

> The Sumerians and Egyptians had already performed such analyses with
> their mixed (logosyllabic) systems.  Moreover, you are confusing two
> completely different (and often roughly complementary) things: the
> amount of ingenuity needed to develop a system, and the ease and
> simplicity of its use.

Pat responds:

Well, I am glad that you agree with me that Egyptian was logosyllabic rather
than logoalphabetic. We are in the minority, you know.

Your last comment is, if I may coin a word, alphabetocentric. I have no
doubt that students of the e-dubba were as capable of writing sentences with
cuneiform as alphabetically-trained youngsters at an equivalent age.

Pat

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