Brief Notice of Rogers Re: Moraic writing system

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

> suzmccarth wrote:
> >
> > --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...>
> > wrote:
> > > suzmccarth wrote:
> > >> "Mora" is a technical term in phonological analysis, and it has
> > nothing
> > > to do with writing.
> >
> > What do you think Singler means by 'mora' in his chapter?
>
> I assume he refers to a phonological analysis of the Vai language.
>
> > > Nonsense. "Linguists" did not create 140-160 unneeded symbols.
> >
> > Singler clearly states that at the 1962 conference, said to be
> > dominated by western trained Vai scholars, rather than by script
> > users, participants 'filled in the blanks creating symbols where
> > none had existed before.' 'Most literates find the need for only 40
> > to 60 characters'. 'The seeming systematicity in the shape of the
> > characters is 'artificial, imposed in 1962 and never in fact widely
> > accepted by script users.'
> >
> > One can only assume that script users did not 'need' the extra
> > symbols invented first in 1900 and then in 1962. I think Singler's
> > analysis is quite honest and also typical of what was happening in
> > the 1960's with the 'rationalization' or 'phonemicization' of
> > scripts a la Pike.
>
> I suggest you look at the evidence for what was created in the 1830s, as
> gathered by e.g. Tuchscherer, or before him by Dalby in the early 1960s.
>
> > Singler has further concerns about the relationship of the chart to
> > ordinary use.
> >
> > I am trying to step back and consider fairly the implications of
> > this orthography conference and the many others which took place in
> > other groups. However, it is clear that it happened, for better or
> > worse.
> >
> > > There are no "new" symbols in Vai.
> >
> > 'creating symbols where none had existed before.' What have I
> > missed? Rows were added in 1900 and 1962 according to Singler.
>
> How many?

One source of information is the Vai propsoal for Unicode,
http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n2948.pdf , which contains a
fair bit of historical information. It's the outcome of a conference
on what to do in Unicode for Vai. Figure 1 in that proposal is a good
reference.

Nasalised vowels are a bit complicated. If one interprets vowel
initial syllables as beginning with a glottal stop, then one can say that:

1. Nasalisation always occurs after nasal (not pre-nasalised!) consonants.

2. Nasalisation is contrastive after glottal, labiovelar and velar
consonants. (A form of rhinoglottophilia!)

3. Nasalisation does not occur after other consonants.

4. There are seven oral but only five nasalised vowels in the Vai
language. (The missing nasalised vowels are (high) /e/ and /o/.)
Most apparently permissible combinations of consonant and nasalised
vowel are not represented in the script. Full sets of five nasalised
vowel occur in the both language and script only after the glottal
consonants.

On the basis of the above, I would say that vowel nasalisation is a
feature of the preceding consonant (cf. Irish mh).

Vai has 8 rows for nasalised consonants, 34 other rows and a syllabic
nasal. Of the 34 rows:

3 are for foreign sounds (/T/, /D/ and /Z/).
2 are for recently acquired sounds (/S/ and /r/).
1 is an addition, orginally intended for the foreign /W/, but now used
for /w~/.

These 6 times 7 = 42 symbols are all described as having been added by
Massaquoi.

To that you can add the 6 syllables for syllables containing the
non-Vai vowel sounds /e~/ and /o~/:
/me/, /mo/, /ne/, /no/, /ñe/, /ño/. There are also the two symbols
for the (randomly?) non-existent /mgbi/ and /mgbu/.

Beyond these 50 inventions, I can only guess at which the rest of the
inventions are. An obvious *guess* is that the distinguishing
diacritics are new or frequently unused - all the symbols for
nasalised syllables with non-glottal initials are modifications of the
symbols for the corresponding non-nasalised syllable.

Richard.