How Written Symbols Change: Toward a Historical Grammatology

William Bright

Abstract for invited paper presented at
Conference on Indic scripts: Past and present
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
December 2003

As descriptive phonologists describe the sounds of a language in terms of a universal set of features, and as historical phonologists work in terms of a universal set of recognized sound changes, so also historical change in written symbols may be described in terms of a universal set of possible graphic changes. Such changes include SIMPLIFICATION, as when A B become a b; and CONNECTION, as when Abba becomes Abba.

This type of analysis is illustrated in particular by the development from the Brahmi script, used in ancient India, to the many scripts used in modern India and southeast Asia. The question is raised whether the Brahmi script itself can be traced to the Aramaic script of the Ancient Near East, and it is suggested that the PLAUSIBILITY of such a hypothesis can be evaluated in terms of a universal set of possible graphic changes, like that proposed above.

William Bright is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and Anthropology at UCLA, Professor Adjoint of Linguistics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and editor of both Written Language and Literacy and Native American Placenames of the United States. He can be reached at William.Bright@Colorado.EDU.

Colorado Research in Linguistics - Volume 17, Issue 1 - June 2004