Peter T. Daniels <grammatim at worldnet dot att dot net> wrote:

>>> No, non-linear sequence somehow distinguishes it from an alphabet.
>>
>> Not true at all:
>
> This is wrong in three of four lines:

You know, I just knew that was going to happen. "Boy, Suzanne seems
confused about the different types of writing systems. I'd like to
explain them to her, only I'm afraid Peter will pick my explanation to
bits." I went ahead and pulled some definitions out of someplace near
my back pocket, and pretty much got what I asked for. None of them came
from WWS, and I guess I should apologize for that.

>> * An alphabet has symbols for both consonants and vowels, and all are
>> mandatory.
>> * An abjad is similar, but symbols for most vowels are optional.
>
> The definition of "abjad" does not mention vowels at all; Phoenician
> never indicated vowels in any way (until Late Punic under Greek
> influence)

Phoe what? Oh, you mean those alternative glyphs for Hebrew. ;-)

How about "symbols for most vowels are optional, or may not be present
at all"? As opposed to an alphabet, where they must be present.

>> * An abugida has the concept of an inherent vowel, which must be
>> explicitly overridden if not present.
>
> An abugida has the inherent unmarked vowel; overriding is irrelevant

How does one indicate vowels other than A, or consonant clusters, in an
abugida without overriding them? If they go totally unmarked, aren't we
really using an abjad?

>> * A syllabary has a separate symbol for each syllable. The shape of
>> these symbols may be systematic (Ethiopic) or not (hiragana).
>
> Ethiopic is not a syllabary, but an abugida -- the word "abugida" is
> itself Ethiopic.

OK, I freely admit my error wrt Ethiopic. I'm neither the first nor the
last to be misled (*) by the fact that it's encoded that way.
(* semi-gratuitous use of the word)

>> Notice that linear and non-linear sequence was not mentioned in this
>> taxonomy. In fact, there's really no reason why an alphabet couldn't
>> have reordrant letters, though I can't think of such an alphabet
>> offhand.
>
> Linear vs. non-linear is important to Bill Bright, whose definition of
> "alphasyllabary" excludes hPags pa because the vowel-letters only
> follow their consonants.

But is linearity a generally agreed-upon criterion for an alphabet, and
if so, why? (I guess that's really a question for Dr. Bright.)

-Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/