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Peter T. DANIELS – William BRIGHT (Eds.), the World's Writing Systems, New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. X COMPTES RENDUS 331 Peter T. DANIELS – William BRIGHT (eds.), The World’s Writing Systems, New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. xlv-922. £ 97.50. This book fills a major gap in the list of standard works in linguistics. As a matter of fact, although there are a number of valuable (and a much larger number of popularizing) works on writing systems, there was no work offering a comprehensive survey of the nature, status and func- tioning, the history, the diffusion and adaptation of the writing systems of the world. The book edited by DANIELS and BRIGHT provides all this information, and in addition to that it contains chapters on the decipher- ment of scripts, on the sociolinguistic embedding of writing systems, on secondary notation systems, and finally on imprinting and printing. All sections are followed by a bibliography, which constitutes a reference checklist for interested readers. The status of the work as a major refer- ence tool is enhanced by the inclusion of hundreds of tables and figures, and samples of the scripts, illustrated with a brief text (given in the par- ticular script, with transcription/transliteration, and translation). Some 80 specialists of writing systems and their history have con- tributed to this huge work, which is divided into 74 sections, with sev- eral sections being subdivided into small chapters (as noted above, bib- liographical references are grouped together at the end of sections). The overall organization of the book is into thirteen parts, following the dis- tinction into writing system (or scriptural type) and its respective chronology. The structure of the volume is as follows: Part I, “Grammatology”, contains Section 1: “The Study of Writing Systems” (definition of the term “grammatology”; history of the study of writing; concise typology of writing systems). Part II, “Ancient Near Eastern Writing Systems”, contains the following sec- tions: — section 2: “The First Civilizations” (the “forerunners” of writing; the importance of the alphabet; the undeciphered scripts from the Aegean and Cyprus, the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions, and the pseudo-hieroglyphic signs of Byblos); — section 3: “Mesopotamian Cuneiform” (the origins of cuneiform writing; Sumerian and Akkadian cuneiform writing; the cuneiform writing used for Elamite, Hurrian, Urartian and Hittite); — section 4 groups “Egyptian Writing” and “The Meroitic Script”; — section 5 groups “Epigraphic Semitic Scripts” (Bronze Age, Iron Age, and later times), “The Iberian Scripts”, and “The Berber Scripts”; 332 REVIEWS — section 6: “Anatolian Hieroglyphs”; — section 7: “Aegean Scripts” (Linear B, Scripts from Cyprus, Minoan Linear A, Cretan hieroglyphic script, the Phaistos Disk); — section 8: “Old Persian Cuneiform”. Part III deals with “Decipherment”, and contains five sections: — section 9: “Methods of Decipherment” (a typology of decipherment proced- ures, and accounts of decipherments for Palmyrene, cuneiform, Egyptian, Him- yaritic, Brahmi, Cypriote, Turkic runes, Meroitic, Luvian, Ugaritic, Linear B, and Maya); — section 10: “the Proto-Elamite Script”; — section 11: “The Indus script”; — section 12: “Maya and Other Mesoamerican Scripts” (logographic/syllabic scripts and codified pictorial systems); — section 13: “Rongorongo of Easter Island”. In part IV the “East Asian Writing Systems” are dealt with, in the following sections: — section 14: “Early Chinese Writing”; — section 15: “Modern Chinese Writing”; — section 16: “Japanese Writing” (kanji, hiragana and katakana, romaji, other script elements); — section 17: “Korean Writing” (Chinese writing in Korea; Hankul and its relation to other scripts); — section 18: “Siniform Scripts of Inner Asia” (Tangut; Kitan and Jurchin); — section 19: “The Yi Script”; — section 20: “Asian Calligraphy”. Part V deals with “European Writing Systems”; it contains the following sec- tions: — section 21: “Transmission of the Phoenician Script to the West” (geograph- ical and chronological aspects; linguistic aspects; — section 22 groups “The Greek Alphabet”; “The Anatolian Alphabets” (Phrygian, Pamphylian, Sidetic, Lycian, Lydian, Carian, and other languages); “The Coptic Alphabet” and “The Gothic Alphabet”; — section 23: “The Scripts of Italy”; — section 24: “The Roman Alphabet” (this section covers the ancient Roman scripts, the regional hands (minuscules), insular scripts, Carolingian minuscule, Gothic scripts, Humanist scripts, 16th-century cursive writing, print types); — section 25: “The Runic Script”; — section 26: “Ogham”; — section 27: “The Slavic Alphabets”; — section 28: “The Armenian Alphabet”; — section 29: “The Georgian Alphabet”. Part VI, “South Asian Writing Systems”, contains eleven sections: — section 30: “Brahmi and Kharoshthi”; COMPTES RENDUS 333 — section 31: “The Devanagari Script”; — section 32: “Gujarati Writing”; — section 33: “The Gurmukhi Script”; — section 34: “Bengali Writing”; — section 35: “Oriya Writing”; — section 36: “Sinhala Writing”; — section 37: “Kannada and Telugu Writing”; — section 38: “Malayalam Writing”; — section 39: “Tamil Writing”; — section 40: “The Tibetan Script and Derivatives” (symbols and specific fea- tures; the Lepcha script; the ’Phags pa script). Part VII deals with “Southeast Asian Writing Systems”; it includes five sec- tions: — section 41: “The Spread of Brahmi Script into Southeast Asia”; — section 42: “Burmese Writing”; — section 43: “Thai and Lao Writing”; — section 44: “Khmer Writing”; — section 45: “Insular Southeast Asian Scripts” (scripts used in Sumatra, Java, Bali, etc.). Part VIII, “Middle Eastern Writing Systems”, contains: — section 46: “The Jewish Scripts”; — section 47: “Aramaic Scripts for Aramaic Languages”; — section 48: “Aramaic Scripts for Iranian Languages” (developments from Imperial Aramaic: heterograms, book Pahlavi, Avestan, Sogdian; developments from Estrangelo; developments from Nestorian); — section 49: “Aramaic Scripts for Altaic Languages” (Uyghur, Mongolian, Manchu, Buryat); — section 50: “Arabic Writing” and “Dhivehi Writing”; — section 51: “Ethiopic Writing”. Part IX deals with “Scripts Invented in Modern Times”; it contains six sec- tions: — section 52: “The Invention of Writing” (a survey of grammatogenies); — section 53: “Cherokee Writing”; — section 54: “Scripts of West Africa” (N’ko; Vai); — section 55: “The Cree Syllabary” (Algonquian syllabaries; scripts for Inuit languages; syllabaries for Athabaskan languages); — section 56: “Scripts for Munda Languages”; — section 57: “The Pahawh Hmong Script”. In Part X, “Use and Adaptation of Scripts”, we have the following sections: — section 58: “A Functional Classification”; — section 59: “Adaptations of the Roman Alphabet” (Romance languages; Germanic languages; Celtic languages; Languages of Eastern and Southern Europe; African languages; Vietnamese); 334 REVIEWS — section 60: “Adaptations of the Cyrillic Alphabet (to Slavic and non-Slavic languages); — section 61: “Adaptations of Hebrew Script” (Judeo-Arabic; Judeo-Spanish; Yiddish); — section 62: “Adaptations of Arabic Script” (minor adaptations of the Arabic script; scripts of Islamic literary languages). Part XI, “Sociolinguistics and Scripts”, contains five sections: — section 63: “Germany: Script and Politics”; — section 64: “Serbo-Croatian: A Biscriptal Language”; — section 65: “South Asia: Coexistence of scripts”; — section 66: “Christian Missionary Activities”; — section 67: “Script reform in and after the Soviet Union”. Part XII deals with “Secondary Notation Systems”, surveyed in six sections: — section 68: “The Alphabet as a Technology”; — section 69: “Numerical Notation” (in the Ancient Near East, in South and East Asia, in Classical Greece and Rome); — section 70: “Shorthand” (historical survey and typology); — section 71: “Phonetic notation” (the IPA, other alphabetic notations, iconic notation, linear and parametric notations, analphabetic notation); — section 72: “Music Notation”; — section 73: “Movement Notation Systems”. The final part deals with “Imprinting and Printing”, and contains one section (section 74) on “Analog and Digital Writing”. The volume ends with a very comprehensive “Index” (893-919) and a list of “Corrigenda” (921-922). The two editors have succeeded in presenting us with a volume of remarkable homogeneity (both in terms of contents and length of treat- ment), of high informative density, and of admirable clarity; given the number of collaborators, the variety of writing systems, and the diversity of theoretical approaches in the study of writing, this is by no means a small achievement1. 1 There are a few minor points I would like to see corrected in the second edition: (a) in the list of abbreviations, conventions, and definitions, I would correct the definition of “derivation” (not just a process by which a word is derived from another: derivation can also apply to roots or stems; the example “song from sing” is not an example of derivation), of “epigraphy” (in Semitic epigraphy, we also include texts written on papyri, e.g. Aramaic papyri), of “morphophonemic (orthography)” (defined as “spellings that remain constant when a morpheme undergoes changes in pronunciation”), and of “phoneme” (not to be defined as a “minimal sound of speech”!); (b) it seems odd to claim (p. 5) that “the earliest uses of writing seems to be to commu- nicate things that really don’t have oral equivalents”. COMPTES RENDUS 335 The main editor of the book, Peter T. DANIELS — a world-leading spe- cialist on the history of writing systems and on the decipherment of scripts —
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