suzmccarth wrote:

>
> --- 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.

"Mora" is a technical term in phonological analysis, and it has nothing
to do with writing. To learn what it means, study Jim McCawley's MIT
dissertation on Japanese phonology (pub. Mouton, 1965 -- I think it's
called *The Phonological Component of a Grammar of Japanese*) or his
student, my classmate, Tim Vance's book on Japanese phonology.

> 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.

Nonsense. "Linguists" did not create 140-160 unneeded symbols.

> 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.

There are no "new" symbols in Vai.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...