Berry, Jack 1977

Berry, Jack. 1977. "`The making of alphabets' revisited." In Fishman 1977. Interest level: specialist.

Cooper: updates 1958 writing. Smalley's (1964) five criteria used for basis of article. Main argument with Smalley is in order of importance. Maximum motivation includes acceptance and utilization of writing system. Acceptance not based on linguistic adequacy, but may be based on identification with prestige culture, or desire for a writing system close to prestige language. Nationalistic opposition or ethnic pride may cause a preference for a unique system. Choices to make include

• syllabary or alphabet
• existing or new writing system
• digraphs or diacritics
• grammatical information, and\
• punctuation.

Concludes that modern theory does not require phonetic, phonemic, or one-to-one writing system. Phonemic, morphophonemic, or paraphonemic are equally acceptable. All contrasts need not be marked--particularly those with low functional load. Mixing systems is O.K. Dialect problems may depend on political, sociocultural, or economic factors rather than linguistic or psychological.

Deitch: uses Smalley's criteria for orthography design and examines its implications in light of more recent theories in linguistics and sociolinguistics. Refutes Venezky's theory of linguistic accuracy.

• Bibliography module: Berry, Jack 1977
• In overview module: Bibliography (Literacy): B
• In modular book: Bibliography (Literacy), by Doris Gallemore, Trudi C. Hunt, Jeanne Swanson, and Stephen L. Walter
• In document collection: Reference materials
• In bookshelf: Literacy

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 4.0, published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 1999. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 18 May 1999

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