riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle) (11/30/84)
> I don't know what branch of linguistics gets into orthography. In 8 > years of study, I think we might have talked about this for only a > few hours. Courses on writing systems are taught pretty regularly in the linguistics department here at U.T. In addition to the sociolinguists' interest in spelling reform which you mentioned, members of a number of other branches of the field deal with the stuff: historical linguistics -- If you want to know how a language with no living speakers used to be pronounced, all you have to go by is its orthography, so writing systems suddenly become interesting. applied linguistics -- Linguists continue to be called upon to create writing systems for languages spoken by previously non-literate communities. Comparitive study of existing writing systems provides a basis on which to intelligently come up with new ones. Also, applied linguists who work with foreign language education or who study linguistic learning disabilities deal quite a bit more with written language, and thus writing systems, than mainstream theoretical linguists do. --- Prentiss Riddle ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada.") --- {ihnp4,harvard,seismo,gatech,ctvax}!ut-sally!riddle