Marco Cimarosti wrote:

>
> OK, OK, everybody calm down. :-)
>
> The definition of "abugida" in WWS and Unicode *do* have differences.
> Actually, they seem to have absolutely nothing in common, apart the entry
> term...
>
> WWS says that:
>
> W.1) The basic characters of an abugida denote consonants followed
> by a particular vowel;
>
> W.2) Diacritics [applied to basic characters] denote the other
> vowels.
>
> Unicode says that:
>
> U.1) An abugida is "special";
>
> U.2) Many scripts of South and Southeast Asia are abugidas;
>
> U.3) Scripts called "abugidas" are historically derived from the
> ancient Brahmi script;
>
> U.4) A comment about the etymology of the word "abugida".
>
> Frankly, the Unicode definition sounds quite broken... I would say that U.3
> is false (how about Ethiopic?), U.2 and U.4 are useless (U.4 perhaps even
> incorrect), and U.1 is simply meaningless ("special" compared to what?).
>
> The WWS definition corresponds to my understanding of the term and,
> probably, to the understanding of many other people here. But notice that
> Peter T. Daniels, the author of the definition and, it seems, inventor of
> the term, negated clause W.2 just a few days ago on this very forum, so it
> is not clear right now whether we should credit what the author says or what
> he wrote...

No, all I did was say I wouldn't call the vowel markings "diacritics."

> Perhaps we should restart the discussion from here: do you, prof. Daniels,
> confirm or withdraw clause W.2 above? If you withdraw it, do you think that
> clause W.1 alone is enough to define an abugida, or would you add substitute
> old W.2 with something new?

Just remove the word "diacritics" and replace it with "appendages" or
"modifications." ("Modifications" would presumably let Cree in.)
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...