From: Dean Snyder (dean.snyder@jhu.edu)
Date: Thu Apr 29 2004 - 10:42:07 EDT
Peter Constable wrote at 6:54 AM on Thursday, April 29, 2004:
>I think a close historical relationship and behavioural equivalence are
>minimally necessary requirements for unification.
All Ancient West Semitic scripts exhibit "close historical relationship
and behavioural equivalence" (if by "behavioral" you mean the kinds of
things specified by Unicode properties). They do however exhibit
sometimes more, sometimes less independent paleographic development over
the centuries, along with sometimes more, sometimes less independent
orthographic innovations.
>Another possible criterion is conventionally distinct identities. E.g.
>today we look at Cyrillic text, and we all say it's Cyrillic, and not
>Greek, not Latin, not anything else. 3000 (or however many years ago),
>would people have looked at Phoenician text and said unequivocably,
>that's Phoenician, not paleo-Hebrew?
No. They are the same script, even very close paleographically; they do
often, but not always, differ orthographically (Phoenician not using, as
does Old Hebrew at times, some of the consonants as vowel indicators, the
so-called "matres lectionis").
Respectfully,
Dean A. Snyder
Assistant Research Scholar
Manager, Digital Hammurabi Project
Computer Science Department
Whiting School of Engineering
218C New Engineering Building
3400 North Charles Street
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland, USA 21218
office: 410 516-6850
cell: 717 817-4897
www.jhu.edu/digitalhammurabi
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