* Peter T. Daniels
|
| A symbol represents a specific vowel plus a neutral consonant -- and
| the consonant is modified by prefixing a symbol for a different
| consonant.

I was wondering whether that might be your rationale.

| That's totally parallel to the standard abugida, where a symbol
| represents a specific consonant plus a neutral vowel -- and the
| vowel is modified by adjoining a symbol for a different vowel.

I agree that it is *parallel* to an abugida, but it doesn't fit the
definition given in WWS, since that explicitly describes consonants as
the base character.

To me it seems that it may be useful to modify the typology by
splitting the abugidas into two groups, based on the type of the base
symbol.

Script
|
+-- Abjad
+-- Alphabet
+-- Featural script
+-- Abugida
| |
| +-- Vowel abugida
| +-- Consonant abugida
+-- Syllabary

The "vowel" abugida seems to me to work in a quite different way from
the "consonant" abugida. The first thing you see when you look at a
word in Pahawh Hmong is the central vowel of the syllable, followed by
the initial consonant. Or don't you consider that a significant
difference?

Another question is: are there any other known examples of "vowel"
abugidas?

| Same idea, but clearly not based on the closest available models,
| Lao and Thai!

True. I liked Ratliff's comment that Shong Lue Yang seems to have
perceived vowels as primary. The script does look as if he did, and as
far as I can tell it is the only one that does.

--
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian <URL: http://www.ontopia.net >
ISO SC34/WG3, OASIS GeoLang TC <URL: http://www.garshol.priv.no >