--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Doug Ewell" <dewell@...> wrote:

> This was where I fell off the trolley, when it turned out that a

single

> script could be one type of writing system or another depending on

how

> it was used. At that point I knew the thing being discussed was

not of

> practical use to me.

I agree. If the distinction between alphabets and abjads is of the
same order as the distinction between alphabets and morphosyllabic
systems (Han Chinese) then the classification is not useful. A
script can transform from alphabet to abjad because they are of the
same fundamental type - they are phonetically segmental systems, as
is Korean. What will be said about Tifinagh, which has vowels in
some countires and not in others?

Syllabic systems are of a different basic type and therefore it is
possible to make comparisons between Cree, Ethiopic and Japanese in
terms of coding, keyboard input, psycholinguistic effect and so on.
Even Chinese is a type of a basically syllabic system and
phonological processing can be compared between Chinese readers and
readers of syllabaries.

Tamil has been described by Richard Sproat in this paper

http://catarina.ai.uiuc.edu/L403C/paper.pdf

as being "almost a core syllabary like kana". "Tamil is moving
towards being an alphasyllabic version of kana." I agree
wholeheartedly with this.

There must be a way to indicate that there are similarities between
Tamil and other syllabic systems. Tamil is processed like a
syllabary with very little phonetic segmentation below the syllable
in the minds of readers. This inhibits phonetic input. Readers of
syllabic scripts do not develop the same phonemic segmentation
skills that readers of alphabets do.

Therefore, there is a significant population in Japan, Hong Kong and
China who prefer to input by glyph not by transliteration (Pinyin or
Ramnji). Tamil needs input by visual sequence (comparable to glyph-
based input) as an option, because readers of Tamil do not develop
phonemic segmentation skills to the same extent that readers of
alphabets do.

There is a significant literature and research on the effect of
literacy in syllabic languages, which refers to readers of Japanese,
Chinese, and Tamil. These scripts belong to the same basic group-
syllabic. See Richard Sproat and Alice Faber. I don't agree with
their classification entirely but it is at least somewhat useful.

I hope that Unicode members will consider these issues and indicate
that there are two major classes:

A Phonemically segmental systems: alphabets and consonantal alphabets

B Syllabic systems - syllabaries, visually segmental syllabaries
and morphosyllabaries

Regards,

Suzanne McCarthy