John Cowan wrote:

>
> Peter T. Daniels scripsit:
>
> > > Isn't "abugida" the term for an abjad whose vowel marks became obligatory?
> >
> > No, it's where the unadorned character is /Ca/ and vowel marks are added
> > to it to change the vowel.
>
> Fair enough, although I think Canadian Syllabics can be called an abugida
> as well; the vowel marks take the form of rotations, and virama takes
> the form of superscripting. Are there any abugidas that don't have
> explicit or implicit virama other than Buginese?

Syllabics is outside the system because it was invented with full
phonetic awareness ("sophisticated" grammatogeny) (Evans knew his
Pitman; some claim that some of his shapes come from Pitman's shorthand,
but I don't see it), but if you had to put it into one of my pigeonholes
(shades of the engineers who were plaguing me last year!), it would sort
of be an abugida.

Ethiopic has no virama; the 6th order is ambiguous between "shwa" (i.e.
high central vowel, not a reduced vowel) and zero. (Hetzron tried to
claim that the distinction isn't phonemic in Amharic, but he later
renounced that article and anyway it would have to be shown to be
nonphonemic in Ge`ez, not Amharic.)
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...