--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...> wrote:

> Richard Wordingham wrote:
> >
> > --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...>
> > wrote:
> > > Richard Wordingham wrote:

> > > > Perhaps the critical thing about the most abugidas is that the
> > > > vowel marks' positions are usually scattered about the
> > > > consonant. How does the set of positions affect the
> > > > cognitive processes?

> > > No, the thing about all abugidas is the inherent vowel.

> > > The positioning of the marks is a historical accident.

> > I think the educationalists will tell us that the placement is a
> > very significant accident. Would Tamil be any less of a
> > neosyllabary if pulli indicated /a/ and the base form the syllable
> > final consonant?

> "Neosyllabary" means nothing to me, and you won't provide a definition
> for the way you're using it, so I cannot answer your question.

I did, but you rejected it because I'm not persuaded that a real
neosyllabary in that sense actually exists. To me a neosyllabary is a
descendant of a phonemic writing system, but a descendant in which the
originally phonemic nature is so obscured that the system is best
worked with as a syllabary. As there are degrees of obscurity, it is
legitimate to talk of a system being more or less of a neosyllabary,
just as in chemistry the difference between covalent and ionic bonding
is a continuum.

> No language has VC syllables to the exclusion of CV syllables, so your
> hypothetical seems counterfactual.

Which is an indication that you misunderstood it! I will therefore
rephrase the question.

Let us ignore marginal exceptions which have no bearing on the basic
system. Native Tamil words have a (C)V(C) syllable structure. The
final C is written as base consonant plus pulli; the CV part is
written as base consonant alone, or base consonant plus vowel symbol.
Some of these combinations have sufficiently obscure forms that Tamil
is considered to be partly a neosyllabary as I understand the term.

Now suppose, as actually happened in one form of Old Tamil Brahmi,
that CV was always written as base consonant plus vowel symbol, and
the the final C were written as base consonant without additional
mark. For the sake of definiteness, let us further assume that the
vowel form for /a/ were identical to the actual pulli. (That is not
so very far from an actual Thai/Khmer symbol for short /a/ in closed
syllables, and does not change the percentage of vowels that are
indicated after the consonant.)

Should this hypothetical but plausible modification of Tamil have more
or less or fewer obscure combinations than actual Tamil?

> > You can argue that Cree is an abugida because
> > the West(?) Cree finals are reduced forms of the a-forms, and
>
> The way it notates final consonants has no bearing on its typology.

On the contrary, it shows that the a-form is the default form. The
other CV forms are derived by rotation or reflection, and the virama
equivalent is shrinkage. West Cree thus has an inherent vowel - /a/ -
and is thus an abugida!

Richard.