On 24/05/2004 07:47, Curtis Clark wrote:
And the Phoenicians haven't had an army since Hannibal's elephants were defeated. Does that imply that Phoenician is not a separate script? :-)on 2004-05-24 06:37 Dean Snyder wrote:
Diascript is to script as dialect is to language - part of a continuum of
relatively minor variations.
A script is a diascript with an army? (To paraphrase a saying about dialects...)
On 24/05/2004 08:05, Curtis Clark wrote:
I want to start out by saying that, although I personally support encoding Phoenician, I really have no stake in the outcome one way or the other, and I'm only participating in the "thread from Hell" (as I believe James Kass called it) because its dynamics interest me.Well, I see your point, but actually that is not what I see happening. One of the three supporters of the Phoenician proposal is a Semitic scholar. There has been open debate on the issue on the ANE list, see https://listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/ane/2004-May/012945.html and related postings - unfortunately the thread index doesn't work well.
on 2004-05-24 03:08 Peter Kirk wrote:
If so, please give us some evidence for another side.
I have none. I would be astonished if there weren't another side, but far stranger things than that have happened, and I've been wrong before.
But maybe it is something else. For example, if you read evolutionary biologists strongly defending Darwinian evolution against creationist theories, does that imply an internal squabble among evoutionary biologists and therefore that some support creationism? Or does it rather imply a closing of ranks against outsiders who are attacking their discipline, a defence against (what they perceive as) unscientific attacks from those who don't know what they are talking about?
This is a very apt analogy. IMO, it is *precisely* because evolutionary biologists disagree about some fundamental issues in evolutionary biology (such as the relative importance and scope of natural selection) that they "close ranks". As a result, some of the arguments presented against creationism are caricatures. And the "they don't know what they are talking about" rhetoric is common on both sides.
As one who has debated creationists, I know that there are other approaches, that work incrementally better in educating people whose minds are not already made up. But the Semiticists who have posted against the proposal on this group seem to be falling into the same closed-rank pattern that I know so well from my own field.
I note the following from Peter Daniels on the ANE list at https://listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/ane/2004-May/013076.html:
Well, of course anyone can make a proposal to Unicode, and so errors in proposals do not reflect on "the Unicode operation" or the UTC, only on the proposer./ (The comment in the document about unifying Phoenician with/>/ Proto-Sinaitic/ Proto-Canaanite was an error in the document and will />/ be removed in the revised version.) / It was obvious to the subscribers to this list that it was an error, as was clear from the discussion, but that it was circulated as part of an official Unicode proposal cast extremely grave doubts on the Unicode operation.
On 24/05/2004 09:05, Michael Everson wrote:
We have statements from real Semiticists who do not want their names dropped into this fray that they support the encoding of Phoenician as a separate and distinct script from Square Hebrew.
I understand their reluctance. But how many, and how "real"? Are you prepared to provide evidence of their support to the UTC?
-- Peter Kirk [EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) http://www.qaya.org/
