A Functional Approach to Garshunography

Abstract

It is argued here that functionalism lies at the heart of garshunographic writing systems (where one language is written in a script that is sociolinguistically associated with another language). Giving historical accounts of such systems that began as early as the eighth century, it will be demonstrated that garshunographic systems grew organically because of necessity and that they offered a certain degree of simplicity rather than complexity. While the paper discusses mostly Syriac-based systems, its arguments can probably be expanded to other garshunographic systems.