* 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.
