Re: Neosyllabaries

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

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

wrote:

> > A. According to Kuipers (
> >

http://home.gwu.edu/~kuipers/kuipers%20insular%20seasia%20scripts.pdf ):

> >
> > The Indic scripts of Insular Southeast Asia are similar to what
> > Bright calls an alphasyllabary. He defines these as scripts in
> > which "each consonant-vowel sequence is a unit, called an aksara,
> > [and] in which the vowel symbol functions as an obligatory
> > diacritic to the consonant" (Bright 1996).
>
> Yes, that's Bright's definition of "alphasyllabary."

Is or was?

> > B. Richard Sproat ( http://compling.ai.uiuc.edu/rws/newindex/indic.pdf
> > )interprets this as, 'They are alphasyllabic scripts (Bright, 1996a)
> > (though Daniels (1996) prefers the term abugida), meaning that they
> > are basically segmental in that almost all segments are represented in
> > the script, yet the fundamental organizing principle of the script is
> > the (orthographic) syllable'.
>
> Sproat has overlooked the distinction between "alphasyllabary" (formal)
> and "abugida" (functional). Perhaps this is based on the faulty
> "definition" of the latter that was found in the Unicode literature.

> > Have I missed something in these quotes? Neither (A) nor (B) requires
> > an implicit/inherent vowel, which Peter Daniels sees as an essential
> > feature of an abugida.
>
> And, if you look at Bill's context, for him too. When we moved out of
> India, to, say, hPags pa, it became clear that his definition was
> deficient.

> The sole defining feature of an abugida is the inherent vowel. Bill
> chose to make the defining feature of an alphasyllabary the use of
> "diacritics" rather than full letters for denoting vowels. Functional
> vs. formal.

There seem to be three concepts floating around:

1) Bright-1 alphasyllabary (Definition A above).
2) (Daniels) abugida
3) Bright-2 alphasyllabary - both a Bright-1 alphasyllabary and an
abugida.

Lao is a Bright-1 alphasyllabary, but not an abugida. I can't think
of an abugida that is not an alphasyllabary.

What's the issue with hPags-Pa? Is it that independent and dependent
vowels have the same symbol? (I'm assuming that the apparently
optional horizontal bar at the top of the vowel symbols is not a
distinguishing feature - perhaps it is!) Are the syllable-final
consonants an issue? Is it or is it not a 'Bright-2 alphasyllabary'?

Richard.