--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...> The

> other is quite serious. On the basis of a now mythic talk at the 1992
> LSA by William Poser, never published and (pers.comm.) never even to
>be
> written down, R claims that all scripts (except Yi) traditionally
>called
> syllabaries, including Japanese kana, Greek Linear B, and
>Mesopotamian
> cuneiform, are in fact moraic scripts. A moraic analysis of Japanese
> phonology is legitimate, but no phonological analysis of any Semitic
> language has justified the claim that e.g. Akkadian is written with a
> cuneiform moraography.

I just checked WWS and the chapter on African scripts for Vai. Singler
says 'the basic unit of the system is more acccurately the mora.'
This is because there is a syllabic nasal, and because long vowels,
optional, are marked by two separate symbols, and diphthongs also are
represented by two symbols.

By this definition of morae I think one could easily call Cree moraic,
not that I like it but I can see it coming. Although Nichols makes it
quite clear that unmarked Cree doesn't bother to represent long vowels
or finals in the middle of a word.

The other problem with Vai, and this is very well described by
Singler, is that the inventory has 200 symbols but Vai literates only
use 40 - 60. This is also similar to Cree. Linguists are creating
distinctions that were not formerly made.

Will this be a problem for Vai literates if they do ever use Vai on a
computer? Since only a few will use the new symbols, spelling will be
extremely diverse, sorting and searching will be a very different
matter than in a more standardized system. I don't really know if this
is a problem but I have seen a Cree literate look at a Cree
dictionary - mystified.

Suzanne