Re: Conscripts 101

MorphemeAddict@WMCONNECT.COM wrote:
> In a message dated 4/7/2007 3:14:30 PM Central Daylight Time,
> beta_leonis@HOTMAIL.COM writes:
>
>
>
>>I've been researching a lot of natscripts recently for other comparisons.
>>I
>>think natlangs have covered most of the practical possibilities, from
>>alphabetic (Roman, Greek, Cyrillic) and consonantal (Hebrew, Arabic),
Known as _abjads_ in which each symbol represents a consonant phoneme.
Ancient Egyptian also had such symbols, but also a whole battery of
symbols representing sequences of two and three consonant phonemes.

to
>>syllabic (Hiragana, Cherokee), and ideographic (the various dialects of
>>Chinese).
IMO 'ideographic' is a misleading - and now dated - way of describing
Chinese writing system. Very many writing systems, including our own, do
include ideograms, but I doubt that any writing system has consisted
only (or mainly) of such symbols. The Chinese script has symbols for
morphemes (and pseudo-morphemes) and is usually (and IMO more
accurately) called _logographic_ now-a-days. But this has been discussed
more than once in the past on this list.

  Significant examples also exist of compound writing, like
>>Japanese and Egyptian (Hieroglyphics).
Mixed systems.

>>Korean Hangul is the freaky
>>exception -- alphabetic writing in syllabic clusters -- but that was a
>>conscript designed to fit within a specific natlang context.
>>
>>Am I missing any major classes of writing styles?  Any other notable
>>exceptions, like Hangul?
>>
>
> Devanagari.
Yep.
=================================

Ph.D. wrote:
[snip]
 >
 > Perhaps Ethiopic (Amharic), where each con-
 > sonant symbol undergoes a systematic change
 > in shape to indicate the vowel.

Yep.

Both Devanagari and the Amharic scripts are examples of _abugidas_. An
abugida is a system in which each symbol represents a consonant phoneme
plus an inherent vowel. Other vowel contrasts are marked by
modifications around the base symbol and, normally, there is also a
marking showing suppression of the inherent vowel. This is, in fact, a
very common system of writing and a list (possibly not exhaustive) may
be found at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Abugida_writing_systems

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Ray
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