Re: Why Consonants?

Most languages have only a relatively small number of contrastive vowels
(i.e. phonemes) which is at least equalled and more frequently massively
outweighed by the number of consonants. In addition, in most languages
vowels are the only elements which can function as syllable nuclei
(essential midpoints), around which consonants are structured as onsets (to
give you CV), codas (to give you VC), or together (CVC), and clusters (e.g.
CCVCC).

Leaving out vowels, which probably originally had a morphological basis,
means that a) you're not losing much info, maybe 5 or 7 possible contrasts
at best, and b) you have a pretty good idea where the vowels will come in
the sequence for reasons of consonant phonotactics. Although b) would still
apply in many languages, but a) would usually leave you guessing about a
much larger range of possible contrasts. Imagine a sequence <aeiou>. Most
languages would probably break that up as <CaCeCiCoCu>, but which C's? And
<CaCCeCCiCCoCCuC> is still a possibility in languages with complex syllable
shapes, with the problems of C identification massively amplified.

I would guess that no human alphabet leaves out consonants as no human
language has the right structure: more vowels than consonants, with very
strict phonotactic constraints. Maybe if the system represented allophones
not phonemes you could do it more easily.

Mark

Mark J. Jones
Department of Linguistics
University of Cambridge
http://kiri.ling.cam.ac.uk/mark/
mjj13@cam.ac.uk

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