--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...

----- Original Message ----
From: Chris Fynn <cfynn@...>
To: qalam@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2007 9:04:37 AM
Subject: Re: What is an Indic Script?

[distributed five days later]

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

> Surely you don't consider Tibetan an Indic script, given the
considerable change in orthographic principles?

Of course Tibetan is an Indic script.

***
"Of course"??
***

Early in the 20th century an almost identical script was found on
ancient bricks in India. This archaeological discovery is referred to
in the writings on Gendun Chophel on the origins of the Tibetan script.

***
I'm afraid your confused prepositions make that last sentence uninterpretable.
***

What is the "considerable change in orthographic principles" you speak of?

***
I gather you know Tibetan. Is it, then, Sanskrit that you don't know?

The two orthographic schemes are vastly different.
***

A few letters were added to represent sounds in Tibetan absent from
North Indian languages of the time -

***
So what?
***

and the tsheg character was
introduced as a syllable / morpheme delimiter. This was neccesary as
Tibetan has largely unvoiced prefixes and suffixes which would be
mistaken for individual syllables if there were no tsheg character.

***
(the dot) And you don't find that to be an immense difference????
***

Sanskrit words and phrases are still often written in Tibetan without
any tsheg.

***
So what? French words in English are often written with accents.
***

Conjunct ligatures in Tibetan are formed vertically rather than
horizontally - but this was once also the case with Devanagari in many
parts of India.

***
There are very few ligatures in Tibetan. The ligature system is nearly moribund, replaced by the dot.
***

Horizontal ligatures became common in Devanagari & other scripts used
for modern Indian languages with the introduction of metal type. (It
required cutting far fewer individual type forms to create ligatures
this way.) The mechanical typewriter made this even more necessary.

***
So what? Only in Tamil and Malayalam is there a wholesale movement away from ligatures, less so in the latter.
***