--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham"
<richard.wordingham@...> wrote:

>You can argue that Cree is an abugida because
> the West(?) Cree finals are reduced forms of the a-forms, and
> therefore /a/ is the inherent vowel. A minor detail!

The a-form is the last column and since the finals are listed
following the last column I think that is where they got their
orientation. These were not the original finals, which were entirely
different shapes.

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.

Yes, the old Tamil Brahmi forms did not have an inherent a but were
otherwise the same type of script. Organized in syllables but no
inherent a.

The problem with calling Cree an abugida is that it is thought of as
a pe-pi-po-pa. Doesn't this seem to conflict? There isn't any a-b-g-d-
series. That was apparently from the Hebrew.

Compositional syllabic notation describes it and that would include
Indic and Cree. No?

Actually it is a relatively open class since there are many types of
shorthand with compostional syllabic notation. This concept is also
important in Automatic speech recognition. Cued speech is based on
compositional syllabic notataion. It most closely reflects speech.

Suzanne