Peter T Daniels

Biographic Data

ID734676
NAMEPeter T Daniels
GIVEN NAMESPeter T
FAMILY NAMEDaniels
SIGNATUREDANIELS P T
AFFILIATIONSDepartment of Linguistics University of Chicago Chicago, IL 60637
ORCID0000-0001-9843-5034
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS54
TOTAL CITATIONS22
AUTHOR COUNT54
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1978
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX2

  • Special Issue (Celebrating 80 Years of the Journal Word ): Words on Word

    Peter T DanielsARTICLEWORD2026

  • When is non-writing writing? or, When is writing non-writing

    Open AccessPeter T DanielsARTICLEWritten Language & Literacy2023

    It was easy to say that writing was invented out of nothing three times (that we can be sure of), in Sumer, China, and Mesoamerica. That syllables were important in those inventions emerged from attention to modern inventions of writing. But in recent years, specialists in Mesopotamian and Mesoamerican texts have been uncovering details about the development of cuneiform and glyphs that, perhaps surprisingly, prove to be comparable and mutually i…

  • Look with thine ears”: Why Writing Is Syllable-based

    Peter T DanielsARTICLEWORD2023References: 25

    Writing, both ancient and modern, originates de novo only when the language written is syllabically organized, because only there does the most salient unit of speech, the syllable, correspond with the most salient unit of language, the morpheme, thus bringing a sound sufficiently to consciousness that a pictograph for the item named by the morpheme can be recognized as also representing its sound – so that it can be transferred to represent the …

  • Interrelations of West Semitic vocalization systems

    Peter T DanielsARTICLEBrill's Journal of Afroasiatic…2022

  • Hebrew script for Jewish languages: A unique phenomenon

    Open AccessPeter T DanielsARTICLEWritten Language & Literacy2021

    That “script follows religion” is well known. Missionary activities by Christian, Manichaean and Islamic, and Buddhist and Hindu proselytizers brought literacy, in alphabetic, abjadic, and abugidic scripts respectively, to previously non-literate communities in Europe, Asia and Africa, and South and Southeast Asia respectively. Judaism, however, did not proselytize; instead, it “wandered,” bringing Jewish communities throughout Europe and a good …

  • Foundations of graphonomy: A linguist addresses psychologists

    Open AccessPeter T DanielsARTICLEJournal of Cultural Cognitive…2021Cited by: 1References: 23

  • Writing and Writing Systems: Classification of Scripts

    Open AccessPeter T DanielsOTHERThe International Encyclopedia of…2020

    The elements (characters, signs, letters) of a writing system relate to the languages they record in a variety of ways. In the nineteenth century a classification into three types was developed: ideography, syllabary, and alphabet, according as the elements related to words, syllables, or segments. This sequence also supposedly represented inexorable, teleological evolution, whereby “the alphabet” was claimed to be the “best type.” The mid‐twenti…

  • Aramaic Documents from Achaemenid Bactria: Connections to the West—and the East—and the Future

    Peter T DanielsCHAPTERFrom Qom to Barcelona2020

    In 2012, Aramaic Documents from Ancient Bactria in the Khalili Collection was published by the late Joseph Naveh and Shaul Shaked. These comprise 30 items on leather—many excellently preserved—and 18 wooden tally sticks, all inscribed with ink. They date to the middle of the 4th century BCE, spanning the end of the Achaemenid Empire and the rule of Alexander. Their provenance is unknown; the editors believe they came from Balkh, Afghanistan = anc…

  • Writing System Variation and Its Consequences for Reading and Dyslexia

    Peter T Daniels, David L ShareARTICLEScientific Studies of Reading2018

    Most current theories of reading and dyslexia derive from a relatively narrow empirical base: research on English and a handful of other European alphabets. Furthermore, the two dominant theoretical frameworks for describing cross-script diversity—orthographic depth and psycholinguistic grain size theory—are also deeply entrenched in Anglophone and Eurocentric/alphabetocentric perspectives, giving little consideration to non-European writing syst…

  • Development of Veterinary Laboratory Networks for Avian Influenza and Other Emerging Infectious Disease Control: The Southeast Asian Experience

    Open AccessPeter T Daniels, Peter Daniels et al.ARTICLEEcoHealth2014

  • Alphabets and scripts, ancient Near East

    Open AccessPeter T DanielsCHAPTERThe Encyclopedia of Ancient History2012

    Writing throve east and south of Hellas and Italia long before reaching the Mediterranean peninsulas. It emerged in southern Mesopotamia ( see Cuneiform ) when it was realized that a (usually pictographic) symbol for a thing also represented the name of that thing, and such a symbol could be used for the sound of the name of that thing in notating words or affixes unamenable to (pictographic) representation. In agglutinative Sumerian, morphemes d…

  • Semitic languages

    Open AccessPeter T DanielsCHAPTERThe Encyclopedia of Ancient History2012

    The term “Semitic” was introduced in 1781 to label a group of closely related languages (because in Gen 10:21 Shem is called the ancestor of the speakers of some of those languages). It does not name a “people” or an ethnic group.

  • Decipherment

    Open AccessPeter T DanielsCHAPTERThe Encyclopedia of Ancient History2012

    Decipherment is interpreting unknown characters of a script to yield texts that can be interpreted as a known or hitherto unknown language.

  • The Native Syriac Linguistic Tradition: Resources Ancient and Modern

    Peter T DanielsARTICLEHistoriographia Linguistica2012References: 18

    The native Syriac linguistic tradition comprises annotations to the biblical text ('masorah'), lexica, and grammars created between the 6th and 13th centuries; 24 Syriac scholars are known by name. Syriac grammarians have been considered to be mere imitators, of both Greek and Arab grammarians, but this is a severe exaggeration; they were, however, the source of much that is found among the Arabs. The first, Jacob of Edessa (640-708 A.D.), and th…

  • Writing in the World and Linguistics

    Open AccessPeter T DanielsARTICLEProceedings of the Annual Meeting…2010Cited by: 2References: 2

    It seems to me that the study of writing is about where the study of language was before the development of linguistics over the past century-and-a-bit. Everyone we know knows how to write, and therefore everyone we know thinks they know about writing. This paper looks at how writing has been presented to the general public, and how it has been treated in linguistics since the first real textbook of 1933

  • Two notes on terminology

    Peter T DanielsARTICLEWritten Language & Literacy2009

    Preview this article: Two notes on terminology, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/wll.12.2.09dan-1.gif

  • Letters to Language

    Open AccessMartin Haspelman, Peter T Daniels et al.ARTICLELanguage2008

    Letters to Language Martin Haspelman, Peter T. Daniels, and Eric P. Hamp Language accepts letters from readers that briefly and succinctly respond to or comment upon either material published previously in the journal or issues deemed of importance to the field. The editor reserves the right to edit letters as needed. Brief replies from relevant parties are included as warranted. Names and bibliographic practice October 1, 2008 To the Editor: Not…

  • On beyond alphabets

    Peter T DanielsARTICLEWritten Language & Literacy2006

    Scripts are often borrowed or adapted for writing new languages, and the borrowing language usually includes sounds not found in the source language. Mechanisms for accommodating new sounds or phonotactics have not been studied as a group before, and a wide variety of cases is considered here. The techniques are found to fall into a limited number of categories: inventory reduction, inventory expansion, character combination, character alteration…

  • Reply to Victor H. Mair

    Peter T DanielsARTICLEWORD2006References: 4

  • Three Models of Script Transfer

    Peter T DanielsARTICLEWORD2006Cited by: 7References: 2

    When a writing system is adapted to a previously unwritten language, it can happen that the deviser(s) of the new writing system do not fully understand the way the system worked in the donor language; they then, probably accidentally, create a writing system that operates on a different principle. Writing systems are invented ex nihilo only for mono-syllabically organized languages; an example is Sumerian cuneiform, but Egyptian is not such a la…

  • Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family (review)

    Open AccessPeter T DanielsARTICLELanguage2004

    Reviewed by: Indo-European and its closest relatives: The Eurasiatic language family, vol. 1: Grammar by Joseph H. Greenberg, and: Indo-European and its closest relatives: The Eurasiatic language family, vol. 2: Lexicon by Joseph H. Greenberg Peter T. Daniels Indo-European and its closest relatives: The Eurasiatic language family, vol. 1: Grammar. By Joseph H. Greenberg. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. Pp. xiv, 326. ISBN 0804738122. $6…

  • A Dictionary of the World's Languages: With Tables of Language Families (review)

    Open AccessPeter T DanielsARTICLELanguage2004

    Reviewed by: A dictionary of the world’s languages: With tables of language families by Carlos del Saz-Orozco Peter T. Daniels A dictionary of the world’s languages: With tables of language families. By Carlos del Saz-Orozco. Taipei: FuJen University, 2002. Pp. x, 302. ISBN 9576342716. Born in Spain and educated at Stanford University, the author taught Spanish in Taiwan for many years. The intent of the Dictionary of the world’s languages is per…

  • The Geography of International Trade in Services: Australia and the Apec Region

    Open AccessKevin O''Connor, Kevin O’connor et al.ARTICLEEnvironment and Planning A…2001Cited by: 1References: 19

    This paper develops a new perspective to describe and account for the geography of trade in advanced services. The authors begin by acknowledging the national and global significance of trade in advanced services within national economic change and also global trade policy. They find current approaches to this issue, based on firm decisionmaking, are narrow, and seek out a broader perspective. The foundation for that perspective incorporates esta…

  • Some Semitic Phonological Considerations on the Sibilants of the Greek Alphabet

    Peter T DanielsARTICLEWritten Language & Literacy1999

    A recent reinterpretation of the phonetics of the sibilant phonemes in Semitic makes it unnecessary to hunt for "explanations" of the apparent failure of Greek sibilant letters to correspond in value with their Phoenician counterparts

  • And the Word was God: Missionary Linguistics and Missionary Grammar

    Peter T Daniels, Even HovdhaugenARTICLELanguage1998