Richard Wordingham wrote:

>
> --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...>
> wrote:
>
> > (If tone was to be notated, diacritics would need to be added
> whether
> > syllabics or alphabet.)
>
> Not necessarily. Nushu appears to be a phonetic syllabary, but I
> have not heard that it uses diacritics for the tone distinctions.

What is Nushu? Is that a Chinese name for Yi?

Why would being a "phonetic syllabary" lead you to expect tone
distinctions to be written?

If it is Yi, that's a syllabary including tone that's only a few decades
old, hence a sophisticated grammatogeny, hence not interesting. Its 819
characters are cut down and regularized from thousands of logosyllabic
characters.

> There ought to be a language in which the tone contrast is solely
> marked in the initial consonant - tonal Mon-Khmer languages would be
> an obvious place to look. (Tone is generally a recent development in
> Mon-Khmer languages, and can carry the now generally lost distinction
> between voiced and voiceless initials, e.g. some dialects of Khmu.)
> Most Tai scripts use a combination of consonant and diacritic for the
> tone.

Why "ought" there to be? How many local languages have inherited writing
systems?

Smalley urged people to create Thai-based, not roman-based, scripts for
Tai languages, so his last book is an obvious place to look.

> Do the initial consonants mark a 3-way tone distinction in any Tai
> language or dialect? <hñ> v. <y> v. <ñ> would be possible for a Lao
> dialect that had, like Siamese, undergone the 3-way merger of /j/, /?
> j/ and /ñ/. The Thai digraph <'y> (or <?y> if you prefer) no longer
> occurs in the right environments to justify citing the U Thong
> dialect or a Southern Thai dialect, and I don't there there is a 3-
> way contrast (*not* supplemented by a tone mark) in the area where
> the Lanna Thai script may legitimately be used.

--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...