Introduction
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 inferior place that the study of writing has had in linguistics; reasons why writing should be studied from a linguistic point of view, i.e. in terms of its relation to language, and not just from the historical point of view, i.e. the changes in shape of characters over the centuries; the most compact outline of the spread of writing through the world; the organization of the book and how it differs from other general treatments of writing systems. Each chapter concludes with a section entitled “Details,” which might elsewhere have borne the discouraging label “Further reading,” in which both references are given and additional information bearing obliquely on the topic of the chapter is included.