Richard Wordingham wrote:

>
> --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...> wrote:
> > suzmccarth wrote:
> > >
> > > --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...>
> wrote:
> > > > Richard Wordingham wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...>
> > > > > wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > But the Japanese child doesn't have the option the Tamil child does, of
> > > > > > internalizing the fact that all the consonants and all the vowels are
> > > > > > written separately and (well, except /u/) similarly.
> > > > >
> > > > > And this is why a special name is wanted for the syllabically organised
> > > > > scripts where the option of further analysis is available.
> > > >
> > > > Something other than abugida?
>
> Yes. 'Alphasyllabary' as defined and interpreted by Bright is
> probably inappropriate, as hPags-Pa is very clearly organised by
> syllables. Sproat's concept seems more appropriate.

Sproat has a concept??

> > > > What is an "option"?
> > >
> > > I don't have an immediate suggestion. However, let's start with this
> > > question.
> >
> > Richard can speak for himself.
>
> I don't understand why Peter Daniels is asking what he meant when he
> used the word 'option'.

You said "syllabically organi[z]ed scripts where the option of further
analysis is available," and I have no idea what you meant.

> > > What does syllabary mean? Can these scripts in question be included
> > > under a broad definition of syllabary or not. That is, hasn't the
> > > definition of a syllabary been recently and perhaps unnecessarily
> > > restricted? I think that there are different kinds of syllabaries
> > > but I still want the similarities which syllabaries share to be made
> > > transparent.
> >
> > It has recently been clarified and necessarily restricted.
> >
> > Or do you want to continue to call whales fish?
>
> Phylogenetically, that's not as daft as you think it is. A herring is
> closer to a whale than to a shark! It's also quite appropriate
> hydrodynamically.

And that is a red herring.

> > > Let's explore the various meanings and uses of the term syllabary
> > > first. Then decide if syllabary is only a core or pure (unanalysable)
> > > syllabary or not.
> >
> > If you're going to continue to insist on calling the Indic scripts
> > "syllabaries," I won't discuss them with you.
>
> So what word do you think should be used to capture the parallels
> with, say, Tamil, which is not a typical Indian Brahmi script, and,
> say, Japanese kana? Tamil may have more in common with Further Indian
> Brahmi scripts than with other Indian scripts - and it's more closely
> related to the Further Indian scripts to boot!

Parallels of _what_ with Tamil and kana?

> Should we just say 'syllabically organised' until we're sure what come
> into the relevant category. I'm now having some reservations about
> describing Thai as syllabically organised, simply because of the
> amount of thought required to extract the division into syllables from
> the text.

More thought than is required to do the same for Hangul? Writing is
conservative, and becomes more and more morphophonemic.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...