Re: NATLANG: Chinese parts of speech (or lack thereof)

I really like this overview on the history of writing, brilliant in brevity!

However, I don't think that in the time it was developed, the first abjads
appeared to be as revolutionary as you've said, since the method was already
used in Egyptian hieroglyphs, and furthermore, it wasn't much different from
a simplified syllabary "in which all syllables starting with the same
consonant are written with a single symbol" as you've said.

From our point of view, though, I think it's justified to call it a "radical
new invention".



On Mon, 9 Aug 2004 13:59:43 -0400, John Cowan <jcowan@...> wrote:

>Philippe Caquant scripsit:
>
>> I can't help
>> thinking that there is an essential difference between
>> Chinese and Westerner ways of writing, though I can't really explain
>> which one. It just seems obvious, and it's something about concepts
>> (meaning).
>
>No, it's about meaningful-syllable writing vs. writing with consonants
>and vowels.  Here is a reduction (in the culinary sense) of the history
>of writing:
>
>The oldest known writing systems are based on meaningful-syllables;
>this has been invented three or four times independently (Sumerian,
>Chinese, Mayan for sure; Egyptian possibly).  This system has repeatedly
>been simplified, especially when applied to new languages, to a purely
>syllabic system (one symbol for each syllable).
>
>Then, a radical new invention was created, just once: the abjad, in
>which all syllables starting with the same consonant are written with
>a single symbol.  Phoenician is a pure example of this.  The abjad
>developed in three directions:
>
>a) adding optional vowel points to distinguish the vowels (Hebrew,
>Arabic, Syriac); sometimes the vowel points become required (Yiddish).
>
>b) adding marks to each symbol to cover all vowels except one; these
>systems are called "abugidas", and include Ethiopic and all the various
>Indic and Southeast Asian systems.
>
>c) reusing some of the consonant symbols to represent vowels: this led to
>the Greek alphabet and the descendant alphabets Latin, Gothic, Armenian,
>Georgian, Coptic, Cyrillic.
>
>In the meantime, various other systems have been devised more or less
>independently: these turn out to always be syllabic.
>
>--
>John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  www.reutershealth.com
www.ccil.org/~cowan
>[R]eversing the apostolic precept to be all things to all men, I usually
[before
>Darwin] defended the tenability of the received doctrines, when I had to do
>with the [evolution]ists; and stood up for the possibility of [evolution] among
>the orthodox -- thereby, no doubt, increasing an already current, but quite
>undeserved, reputation for needless combativeness.  --T. H. Huxley