Peter Constable wrote:
But if one can only point to cases of (say) documents from a given community containing 0 and .6, or 0 and .9, then it would seem that the nodes had some conceptual validity within that community.
I don't doubt that nodes had 'conceptual validity' in the ancient community, but what was the concept? We subdivide the writing of the Latin script into historical and regional nodes (themselves open to dispute), but we recognise only a single script. I think Simon Montagu made the point regarding the 'conceptual validity' of the nodes very well today:
...the limited evidence seems to suggest that Palaeo-Hebrew
and Square Hebrew were viewed as font variants by Hebrew
speakers 2,000 years ago, and as separate scripts by Hebrew
speakers today.Of course the term 'font variant' is anachronistic, but Simon's observation captures the essence of the shift from seeing two styles of the same semtitic script to seeing two different scripts. If nothing else, this should help us understand why any insistence on the identity of these scripts as being either obviously unified or obviously distinct is unlikely to get us anywhere. The identity very much depends on the perspective of the observer.
John Hudson
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Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Vancouver, BC [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Currently reading: Typespaces, by Peter Burnhill White Mughals, by William Dalrymple Hebrew manuscripts of the Middle Ages, by Colette Sirat
