--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Don Osborn" <dzo@...> wrote:

>
> This inquiry from Linguist list (I get to that mail slowly these days)
> may be of interest. There exists a Yahoogroup on this script - see
> Qalam messages 882 & 1238, or http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Alibata/ .

The relevant content is in the early messages. Nowadays the group
seems to be more concerned with general Philippine issues.

> I am very interested in investigating aspects of the virtually extinct
> Philippine script known as alibata (also known as baybayin), and I was
> curious to find out if anyone knew of any work that had been done with
> this script.
>
> Most specifically, I am interested in the parsing of this script by
> Philippine readers, as alibata is infamous for its inability to
> represent the syllable-final consonants pervasive in many Philippine
> languages (i.e., the Tagalog word 'pagdating' would be represented as
> 'pa-da-ti'). I am curious regarding any possible phonological reasons,
> if any, why parsing this script was possible or if contextual clues
> really provide all of the cues necessary for readers to understand the
> text.

The parallels of Linear B and traditional Cree syllabics come to mind.
They show a similar drastic loss of phonetic information. Cree is
probably more relevant, as I am not sure how much Linear B was used
for communication between people rather than as private notes.

On a different tack, the loss of phonation (voicing, aspiration,
pre-nasalisation) information is quite common in early syllabic
scripts, e.g. Linear B, early kana (someone please correct me if the
voicing marks are not recent) and the early Vai script (though the
lack of information was not systematic there). Even now, the Vai
script completely fails to show the tones.

The first attempts to introduce a virama into the the Philippine
script (by a Spaniard) apparently failed - and is not supported by
Unicode. The introduction into the Hanunoo script has been more
successful, but the effort required shows that it was not preceived as
a benefit. There is the psychological point that it is seems easier
to learn a syllabary - even for an abugida or true alphabet such as
those used for Thai and Italian. We have seen examples on this list
of Thai and Italian school children learning their alphabets that way.

Alibata is a fairly recent name, based on the mistaken notion that the
alphabet was derived from Arabic.

Richard.