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

> suzmccarth wrote:

> > Salient features then - no classes or types? Then a script can

have

> > several salient features and not be placed in any one group.
> > Sometimes different langauge communities see the same script
> > different ways. Some see Cree as being phonemic, others more
> > syllabic. (The Cree always claim this difference but I would

find it

> > hard to define without scanning in a collection of handwritten

and

> > published Cree from across the country.)
>
> Of course Cree is phonemic. It just gives you its phonemes two at a
> time. What are you claiming now??

The Cree style of writing for years was with just the CV main
syllabic characters. The vowel lengthener, w, preaspirate, the
syllable finals and the word finals were dropped or used non-
phonmecally for emphasis, strategically to differentiate homographs
or to mark tense. Then in Eastern Cree, the big push by the
linguists and school board was to make everything 'phonemic' Then
it would fit in a dictionary. A even now the Eastern Cree have a
syllabary that shows vowel length but the others don't use it this
way. They use a pepipopa not a pe,pee, pi, pii, po, poo, pa, paa.
(one of them should be missing, fon't know which) Evans invented
symbols for all phonemic representation but it was not used this way
by the Cree.

One could say that this should be described as a difference between
full phonemic representation and underrepresentation with
differentiation of homographs. But the linguists wanted something
really regular and consistent with full representation. The
linguists at that time said that they wanted it to be 'phonemic'.
It wasn't 'phonemic', it should be 'phonemic', not my words, you
take it up with them. I was just an observer.

Suzanne

> --
> Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...