Richard Wordingham wrote:

>
> --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...> wrote:
> > Richard Wordingham wrote:
>
> > > It seems to me that most 'moraic' systems are really writing (onset +
> > > nucleus) + coda, but I'm not aware of a word for 'onset + nucleus'.
> > >
> > > What writing systems actually work in terms of onset + rhyme?
>
> > Check out Pahawh Hmong, on which you can consult Martha Ratliff's
> > chapter in WWS, or the book by Smalley et al. from Chicago. (Or
> > bopomofo, though it's never become more than an auxiliary phonetic
> > notation.)
>
> Pahawh Hmong is just an alphabet - it has eleven oral vowels and two
> nasal vowels. All the Hmong codas are implicit in the nucleus!

No, it is not an alphabet. It is a sort of reverse abugida. (Burmese is
what it's most like, but Smalley insisted the inventor could only have
known Thai or Lao -- but a book on the history of Shan writing has just
appeared: a Tai language but with a Burmese-looking script. Could this
be a connection?)

> Bopomofo is a valid example - and feels distinctly moraic! It is
> almost as rare as Yi in its way!
>
> > I find it interesting that he seems unaware of the typology I
> published 15 years ago now, which is also available in so widely
> distributed a reference as the Blackwell Handbook of Linguistics.
>
> I thought your typology wasn't valid for scripts with a sophisticated
> grammatogeny. How would you classify Bopmofo? Just another alphabet?

It's a sophisticated grammatogeny (plus, it's not used for writing
Chinese), so as you say it doesn't need to fit in the typology. It's a
notation for the traditional Chinese analysis into onset, rhyme, and
tone.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...