suzmccarth wrote:

>
> I have noticed recently that the term "moraic" has come to be used
> for any writing system that has CV units.
>
> Hank Rogers at U. of Toronto is using it in his course notes
>
> http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~rogers/handouts/10Maya.pdf
>
> for Mayan, Cree, Cherokee and Vai. I haven't seen his new book yet
> but I assume it will be in there.
>
> I have no idea how this could relate to the phonology of Cree, so I
> am wondering if anyone knows how this term has come to be used for
> so many systems. I have seen it elsewhere as well - it seems to be
> relatively common now.

That's easy. In 1992, Bill Poser presented a paper at the LSA annual
meeting in Philadelphia -- which has never even been written down, mush
less published, and never will be (p.c. at Chicago LSA 1997) -- claiming
that because Japanese phonology is best described using a moraic
analysis (see Jim McCawley's dissertation, Tim Vance's expansion of that
work, and Jim Unger's writings on both Japanese phonology and script),
therefore all "syllabic" scripts except Yi should be called "moraic." I
have no idea why Yi is excepted, but this is utter nonsense -- there is
no phonological analysis whatsoever of, e.g., Akkadian or Greek to
suggest that a "moraic" description suits the language better than a
segmental description, so there is no reason to relabel the syllabaries
as moraiaries.

I have said this in reviews of D. Gary Miller's little book on ancient
"phonological awareness" (in WLL 1) and of Rogers's textbook (to appear,
any year now, in Language).

I don't know how many people can have heard the original presentation,
or what it contained, but it instantly entered the folklore -- remember,
in those days writing systems wasn't the hot topic it is today -- and
has been passed around for more than a decade.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...