Approccio scientifico e questioni di metodo nello studio delle scritture cirilliche

The paper deals with the formulation of a scientific method for the analysis of cyrillic writing. The traditional classification of different types of cyrillic script as ustav, poluustav and skoropis’ is considered inadequate by several scholars. However, the author considers inappropriate the solutions hitherto proposed because they failed to provide a scientifically based palaographic definition of the aforementioned denomina- tions. On the contrary, the new proposals involve non palaographic principles in clas- sification, such as orthographic ones, with or without ethnic labels. The classification method developed in the article is based on the morphological features of each differ- ent patterns of cyrillic script. Likewise, it focuses on the various social uses of writing in order to pinpoint the relations between society and the changes in writing.