W Syllabry (was Re: Orthographies with lotsa diacritics (was: Ogoneking theConsonants))

Kristian Jensen wrote:
> Has anyone tried designing an orthography equally cluttered
> with diacritics and special characters?
Not a Romanized orthography, but the native syllabry for Watakassí is
filled with diacritics, sometimes a character can have as many as four
diacritics.

The syllabry contains characters for all combinations of CV (except w
and y), as well as CLV.  There are diacritics for codas (f, s, v, z, n),
for gemination *of the following consonant*, for long vowels, for
beginning of high pitch (romanized as acute), and for "second vowels"
(e.g., <kai> = <ka> plus <-i> diacritic, and <pya> = <pi> plus <-a>
diacritic) and even third vowels (e.g., <pyai> = <pi> plus <-a> and <-i>
diacritics).  There's also a character for <l>.  It is often
morphologically driven, rather than phonetically, so that, for instance,
<waflaazázi> (days) is written as waf-laa-záz-i, because waf- is the
gender 6 plural prefixes, and -i is the plural suffix (the second z is
actually an underlying form that is silent in the singular, which is
walaazá).  Phonetically, it would be wa-flaa-zá-zi, but that would
require a different initial character for the root (fla instead of la),
and the plural suffix wouldn't be as visible, being different for every
word (as it is, it's always -i).  I'm considering using forms like <na>
for the prefix <na->, even when simplified to <n->, thus <nlakús> (man)
would be written na-la-kús, the contraction to n- is perfectly regular
for that prefix, thus it would require merely a basic knowledge of
Watakassí grammar (presumably a little difficult for people learning
Watakassí as a second language, but people who have it as an L1 would
find it easy).  Also, the orthography contains things like <twi> (TU
with -i diacritic, or TU followed by I), which is pronounced /pi/ and
written as <pi> in my romanization, these result from morphemic
boundaries, like <zipikú> (more beautiful), which is the comparative
(infix -tu-) of <ziikú>.  So, <ziikú> is written zi-i-kú (it is written
as that, and not as zi with long diacritic, for historical and
morphological reasons), and the comparative is written zi-tu-i-kú.
Also, altho forms like <kkla> can exist orthographically, they are not
pronounced that way (<kkla> is pronounced the same as <kla>).  A
geminate consonant cannot be followed by <l>, <w>, or <y> (note that
<sy>, <ty>, and <zy> are considered single consonants, thus <ssy> is
pronounced /S:/)

A complication exists for <j> (/dZ/).  For a long time, <j> was written
as <dy> (altho the two are distinct phonemes), namely, <ja> was <di>
with <-a> diacritic.  There was ambiguity between <dya> and <ja>, but
<j> is a rare enough phoneme that the problem was rare.  But, a solution
was invented anyways by an influential scholar.  <dy> continued to be
written in the old way, but to indicate <j>, a line was drawn thru <di>,
so that <ja> is written as <di-with-line> and <-a> diacritic

Historically, it was pretty simple, there were only CV syllables, and
only one diacritic.  In Common Kassí, there were 6 vowels, a, e, i, o,
u, and ë (e-umlaut, /@/), and 10 written consonants (p, t, k, q, b, d,
g, m, n, r).  The one diacritic was the "fricative diacritic".  The
syllabry had been adapted from a language wherein fricatives had evolved
from allophones of stops, hence the use of a special diacritic when the
phonemes had split.  [Side question: is that how the Japanese voicing
diacritic evolved?  There seems to be a lot of variation between
voiceless and voiced pairs that would suggest that]

So, with the fricative diacritic, one could write f, s, h [from k], v,
and z.  When the Kassí adopted this syllabry, they added a "stress"
diacritic, in effect, an underline, this evolved into the modern
pitch-accent system.  Common Kassí had a CV(C) syllable-structure, so to
represent those, the schwa series was used, but that created
ambiguities.  For instance, kasë could either be /kas@/ or /kas/.
Several methods were used for disambiguating, but the one that was
eventually adopted was to place one syllable above another to make
complex syllables, thus, /kas/ would be <ka> placed above <së>.  The
schwa-series evolved into diacritics, with <rë> having an interesting
development.  In the evolution of Common Kassí to Standard Watakassí,
combinations of r (which later, when not lost, became /l/) and consonant
became geminate consonants, thus, _karsá_ became _kassá_.  Consequently,
<rë> became a diacritic indicating that the *following* consonant is
geminated.

In addition, Common Kassí had phonemic /j/ and /w/.  These were
indicated by combining <hi> or <hu> with <h-vowel>, so that /wa/ was
<hu> above <ha>.

Later, with the loss of h and q, the old q-series took over for
consonant-less vowels and for indicating "w" and "y".  Series of letters
like <këra> became consonant-l clusters, such as <kla>.  The characters
became written in a system like for writing /kas/, namely, <kë> above
<ra>, these evolved into ligatures.  Combinations like <pya> were
written as <pi> above <a>, creating the secondary vowel diacritics.
Solitary <l> evolved from the old <rë>, e.g., CK <karëtená> became MW
<kaltiná>, but whereas other cases like that merely merged with
previously existing diacritics (e.g., *<pasëtá> would become *<pastá>),
and so were replaced with the previously-existing diacritics, there was
no diacritic for <-l>.

Syllable-final stops later on became fricatives, so that -p and -f
merged, -t and -s, etc., the fricative diacritic was dropped from the
coda diacritics.  Final -k and -g became [x] and [G], which later were
both lost, lengthening the previous vowel, so that, for instance, /pak/
--> /pax/ --> /pa:/.  So, old <kë> became the long-vowel diacritic (-k
was more common than -g)

Also, when the old phonemes /e/ and /i/ merged, and /o/ and /u/ merged,
the differences were dropped.  In some cases, the form with /i/ was
kept, and /e/ dropped (for instance <di> from <di>), and in others, /e/
was kept, and /i/ dropped (for instance, <pi> from <pe>), largely
determined by which was simpler to write (quite even, actually, 6 of the
-i syllables come from the old -e, and four from -i, while 5 of the -u
come from -o, and five from -u).

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