В. Г. Гузев. Избранное

342 Some Puzzling Aspects of the Turkic Runiform Script (Guzev V. G. Some Puzzling Aspects of the Turkic Runiform Script // Journal of Turcology. 1995. Vol. 2. No 2. /Szeged/ P. 197–204.) The present paper is an attempt to respond to a number of publications on the origins of Old Turkic Runiform script (hereafter referred to as OTRS) which have appeared during the last few decades. With growing certainty, their authors have advanced the hypothesis that the script was of foreign origin, and had, thus, been adopted. The scholars I have in mind are primarily the following: Clauson (1970), who maintains that OTRS was devised by one person, possibly a Sogdian, “by taking the Iranian alphabet as backbone, and supplementing it with a few letters from the Greek alphabet”; Amanžolov (1978), who sought to identify the family of signs to which the OTRS belongs; Livšic (1978), whose theory of the Sogdian origins of OTRS goes back to Gauthiot; Sulejmenov, who thinks that the OTRS is probably genetically related to other ancient alphabets; Pritsak (1980), who would derive OTRS “from a hitherto unknown West Semitic Syllabary”; Róna-Tas (1987), who hypothesizes that the OTRS goes back to an Aramaic alphabet close to, though not identical with , the Old Sogdian and the Armazic, and has suggested that there were various stages in the evolution of OTRS, etc.; Ivanov (1992: 29), who has tentatively suggested that the Tokharian writing system (Brāhmī) might have had an influence on the formation of consonantal dualism in OTRS.