[Lexicog] variant words

[Mike Maxwell]

David Frank wrote:
> Mike Maxwell, I like the idea of a writing system based on reconstructed
> proto forms, and I like the idea of a writing system based on
> morphophonemics, but so far I have only heard about the intriguing
> possibilities -- especially of the latter -- but don't know of any cases
> where the writing system was consciously and systematically created along
> these lines. I am not a literacy specialist and maybe this is venturing too
> much into the field of literacy. I would be curious to know if anyone has
> done what you suggested, though.

I don't know of anyone who has done based an orthography on proto-fors
either, but I'm certainly not a literacy specialist.  This is one
question where I didn't turn up anything with Google (aside from a claim
that the Olmec of Mexico spoke an African language...no, it's better
than a claim, it's been _proven_ by decipherment of Olmec inscriptions :-!).

If there is any language family where the use of proto-forms in an
orthography might have been proposed recently, I would guess that it's
Quechua.  I believe that SIL's CARLA work used proto-forms as the
inter-lingua, although of course that implies their orthographies did
_not_ (or at least they didn't use as deep proto-forms).  But there may
have been some attempts in Ecuador (by a group at the Pontificia
Universidad Catolica del Ecuador, whose name I unfortunately can't
recall--Consuelo Yanez was one of the leaders) to develop a single
orthography for Quichua (as these languages are called in Ecuador),
possibly (but not necessarily) based on proto-forms.  I'm cc'ing David
Weber, who has worked in Peru SIL, on the chance that he or his wife
might know about this or other attempts to produce orthographies based
on reconstructed forms.  (Causanguichu, Dave!)

I suspect that proto-orthographies (if I may coin that term) have been
proposed for recently written languages somewhere, perhaps with the aim
of unifying of the languages/ dialects and their speakers.  Of course,
if there's anything that has the potential for dividing, it's
orthographies...  But I suspect the best chance of finding out would be
to check on literacy mailing lists, and/or with the International
Literacy Coordinator of SIL, or other such organizations.

As for basing an orthography on morphophonemic forms, in part this is a
question of how one defines phonology--if you have a rule neutralizing
voicing in obstruents in word-final position, is an orthography that
distinguishes voicing there morphophonemic?  I wouldn't call it that,
but in any case there are many recently constructed orthographies which
abstract away from such neutralization.  The Tzeltal orthography (which
I believe was devised back in the '60s) is one.  And in general, I think
the principle of abstracting away from allomorphy is often followed in
orthographies, including recently constructed ones.
--
	Mike Maxwell
	Linguistic Data Consortium
	maxwell at ldc.upenn.edu


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