Richard Wordingham wrote:

>
> --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...>
> wrote:
> > Richard Wordingham wrote:
> > >
> > > --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "suzmccarth" <suzmccarth@...>
> wrote:
>
> > > Are we overlooking another type of phonemically organised script,
> the
> > > pointed abjad? At a general level, an abugida seems simply to be
> an
> > > abjad with the optimisation that one particular vowel (originally
> the
> > > commonest, obviously) is not marked.
>
> > A pointed abjad is an alphabet. (Unless you want to follow Bright's
> > _formal_ criterion that the smallness of the vowel markers is what's
> > really important -- then I suppose it's an alphasyllabary.)
>
> > > Perhaps the critical thing about the most abugidas is that the
> vowel
> > > marks' positions are usually scattered about the consonant. How
> does
> > > the set of positions affect the cognitive processes?
>
> > No, the thing about all abugidas is the inherent vowel.
>
> > The positioning of the marks is a historical accident.
>
> > > I'm not sure that general Indic scripts are vulnerable to becoming
> > > syllabaries. Tamil has the ability because it has abandoned
> > > conjuncts and discarded about 70% of the orginal consonants.
>
> I think the educationalists will tell us that the placement is a very
> significant accident. Would Tamil be any less of a neosyllabary if
> pulli indicated /a/ and the base form the syllable final consonant?

"Neosyllabary" means nothing to me, and you won't provide a definition
for the way you're using it, so I cannot answer your question.

No language has VC syllables to the exclusion of CV syllables, so your
hypothetical seems counterfactual.

For a script that treats Cs and Vs differently from any other script,
check out Pahawh Hmong.

> I rather suspect not. You can argue that Cree is an abugida because
> the West(?) Cree finals are reduced forms of the a-forms, and

The way it notates final consonants has no bearing on its typology. Kana
also indicate the final consonant with a special character, but that
doesn't keep them from being syllabaries.

> therefore /a/ is the inherent vowel. A minor detail! An Old Tamil
> form of Brahmi was not an abugida. The inherent vowel and conjuncts
> are the resilient shared, derived characteristics of the Brahmi
> family, but they are not preserved everywhere. (Thai has completely
> shed conjuncts, but a strictly limited repertoire survives in Lao.)
>
> Some of the insular SE Asian scripts have also shed conjuncts, but
> that may be because they serve no purpose if aksharas cease to
> straddle syllable boundaries.

Or because no CC sequences exist in some languages.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...