William Poser's Typology

Bridget Samuels has forwarded a pdf file of her talk on Phonological representation in Akkadian Orthography, April 23, 2005, Harvard University. It is a very clear argumentation for a richer typlogy of phonological writing than just segment and syllable - a very welcome addition to my blog.

She refers to Bill Poser's (UPenn) writing system typology which is best described on the internet in this abstract of his talk at Harvard, Dec.10, 2004.

William Poser. Phonological Writing and Phonological Representation

"Received opinion holds that phonological writing systems are of two types: segmental and syllabic, and that syllabic systems are more basic, and, when the spread of the Greek alphabet and its descendants is discounted, far more common. A careful review of the evidence calls for a radical revision of this view. First, a richer typology is required, one that includes systems based on the mora and on the division of the sylalble into onset and rhyme. Second, the predominance of syllabaries has been vastly over-estimated. When the improved typology is taken into account and other erroneous analysesare corrected, syllabaries turn out to be so rare as to be virtually non-existant.

Like many false ideas, the received view contains a kernel of truth. Syllables are more salient than segments to the "folk phonologist", as evidenced by the fact that while virtually all children become spontaneously aware of syllables by the age of four, most do not spontaneously become aware of segments. It is thus likely that a person inventing a phonological writing system ab initio will devise a syllabic system. The reason that we see so few syllabaries is that few of our examples reflect the initial stage in the creation of a writing system. What we see is generally the result of further development, which has proceeded in the direction of further analysis.

The improved typology simplifies the correspondance between phonology and writing and provides additional evidence for the notions mora, segment, rhyme, and head of syllable. The extreme rarity of syllabaries undermines arguments for the psychological atomicity of the syllable, and with them one source of resistance to the teaching of reading via phonics."

Thank you, Bridget.