An Exploration of Writing - Peter T. Daniels
Clusters and Abugidas
An Exploration of Writing - Peter T. Daniels
Peter T. Daniels [+]
Independent Scholar
Peter T. Daniels, the world’s leading expert on writing systems, holds degrees in linguistics from Cornell University and the University of Chicago. His first interests were in Comparative Semitic linguistics, which built to the study of writing and decipherment. His challenge to his teacher I. J. Gelb’s influential theories of the evolution of scripts has led to a persistent search for legitimate principles of the nature and development of writing. He is co-editor (with William Bright) of and principal contributor to The World’s Writing Systems (1996) and is hte author of An Exploration of Writing (Equinox, 2018).
Description
The other new concept important to the author's approach is the abugida, denoting a writing system in which each basic element of a script denotes a consonant plus a following a. It was invented in India and still prevails in the Subcontinent, whence it was taken to both Southeast and Inner Asia, and also across the Arabian Sea to Ethiopia.