Newsgroups: sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!howland.reston.ans.net!cs.utexas.edu!utnut!nott!cunews!superior!iandale
From: iandale@superior.carleton.ca (Ian Dale)
Subject: Re: Evolution of Writing (Was: Chimps & Toolmaking?)
Message-ID: <Cxvt54.D5x@cunews.carleton.ca>
Sender: news@cunews.carleton.ca (News Administrator)
Organization: Carleton University
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL0]
References: <bmoore-111094130953@bmoore.qualcomm.com> <horkCwpuno.GGt@netcom.com> <horkCwtKCr.86M@netcom.com> <lungstru.780766486@spot.Colorado.EDU> <36cvcl$qou@nntp.Stanford.EDU> <36hgg5$mni@bronze.lcs.mit.edu> <wignellp-111094134026@138.80.123.6> <151094122153@rempt.xs4all.nl>
Date: Tue, 18 Oct 1994 18:39:04 GMT
Lines: 52

Boudewijn (boud@rempt.xs4all.nl) wrote:
: In article <bmoore-111094130953@bmoore.qualcomm.com> Holoholona 

: > ok, so what do we call scripts like devanagari (hindi, marathi, etc) 
: > . . .  are these syllabaries (inherent vowel), or alphabets? 

: I would call them alphabets where the most used vowel is unmarked. 

I would call them syllabaries, where there is a degree of consistency
in the way in which syllables which have the same vowels are written.

The following considerations are based on the Tamil script. I am not
sure whether  they are completely applicable to other Indic scripts; but I
expect that to some degree they are.

i. In such a script, there are basically two sorts of letters: V
letters and CV letters. Each letter represents a syllable.

ii. The source of the current controversy is the fact that most of the
CV letters can be broken down into a C part and a V part. If this were
not the case, I suspect that everyone would agree that the systems are
syllabic, in the way that, for example, the Japanese syllabaries are.

iii. However, although the syllable structures in question are CV, the
V part does not generally follow the C part in the letter, although of
course the letters (syllables) that make up a word do follow one
another in the linear order we have come to expect in writing systems
in general. Would we still say that our writing system was alphabetic
if we spelled /pet/ "epta" (where "ep" represents the syllabic letter
pronounced /pe/, with the V part orthographically preceding the C
part; and "ta" represents the unmarked letter (cf. vi below) with
inherent V)?

iv. The V part of a CV letter is not the same as the letter that
represents the V alone (i.e. a syllable consisting of a V), although 
some of them do show a degree of similarity (that is, my rendition of
the syllable /pe/ as "ep" above makes the situation look slightly more
alphabetic than it really is).

v. Although the V parts of a set of CV letters containing the same V
are usually quite similar, there are exceptional cases in which they
are not (in contemporary Tamil, these exceptions are in the course of
being eliminated).

vi. If the C part of a CV letter is written by itself, it still stands
for a CV syllable -- namely the C plus inherent vowel, ('a' in most
languages).

vii. If one wishes to write a C without a V, a diacritic mark needs to
be added to the basic CV letter to show that the inherent vowel is to
be ignored.

