Abugida
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An abugida (
Related concepts were introduced independently in 1948 by
Abugidas include the extensive
Etymology
In several languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea, abugida traditionally meant letters of the Ethiopic or
Terminology
As Daniels used the word, an abugida is in contrast with a
The formal definitions given by Daniels and Bright for abugida and alphasyllabary differ; some writing systems are abugidas but not alphasyllabaries, and some are alphasyllabaries but not abugidas. An abugida is defined as "a type of writing system whose basic characters denote consonants followed by a particular vowel, and in which diacritics denote other vowels".[12] (This 'particular vowel' is referred to as the inherent or implicit vowel, as opposed to the explicit vowels marked by the 'diacritics'.)[12]
An alphasyllabary is defined as "a type of writing system in which the vowels are denoted by subsidiary symbols, not all of which occur in a linear order (with relation to the consonant symbols) that is congruent with their temporal order in speech".
General description
The fundamental principles of an abugida apply to words made up of consonant-vowel (CV) syllables. The syllables are written as letters in a straight line, where each syllable is either a letter that represents the sound of a consonant and its inherent vowel or a letter modified to indicate the vowel. Letters can be modified either by means of diacritics or by changes in the form of the letter itself. If all modifications are by diacritics and all diacritics follow the direction of the writing of the letters, then the abugida is not an alphasyllabary. However, most languages have words that are more complicated than a sequence of CV syllables, even ignoring tone.
The first complication is syllables that consist of just a vowel (V). For some languages, a zero consonant letter is used as though every syllable began with a consonant. For other languages, each vowel has a separate letter that is used for each syllable consisting of just the vowel. These letters are known as independent vowels, and are found in most Indic scripts. These letters may be quite different from the corresponding diacritics, which by contrast are known as dependent vowels. As a result of the spread of writing systems, independent vowels may be used to represent syllables beginning with a glottal stop, even for non-initial syllables.
The next two complications are consonant clusters before a vowel (CCV) and syllables ending in a consonant (CVC). The simplest solution, which is not always available, is to break with the principle of writing words as a sequence of syllables and use a letter representing just a consonant (C). This final consonant may be represented with:
- a modification of the final letter that explicitly indicates the lack of a vowel (virama),
- a lack of vowel marking on the letter (often with ambiguity between no vowel and a default inherent vowel),
- vowel marking on the letter for a short or neutral vowel such as schwa(with ambiguity between no vowel and that short or neutral vowel), or
- a visually unrelated letter.
In a true abugida, the lack of distinctive vowel marking of the letter may result from the diachronic loss of the inherent vowel, e.g. by syncope and apocope in Hindi.
When not separating syllables containing consonant clusters (CCV) into C + CV, these syllables are often written by combining the two consonants. In the Indic scripts, the earliest method was simply to arrange them vertically, writing the second consonant of the cluster below the first one. The two consonants may also merge as
When they are arranged vertically, as in
The division of a word into syllables for the purposes of writing does not always accord with the natural phonetics of the language. For example, Brahmic scripts commonly handle a phonetic sequence CVC-CV as CV-CCV or CV-C-CV. However, sometimes phonetic CVC syllables are handled as single units, and the final consonant may be represented:
- in much the same way as the second consonant in CCV, e.g. in the Tai Tham[14]scripts. The positioning of the components may be slightly different, as in Khmer and Tai Tham.
- by a special dependent consonant sign, which may be a smaller or differently placed version of the full consonant letter, or may be a distinct sign altogether.
- not at all. For example, repeated consonants need not be represented, homorganic nasals may be ignored, and in Baybayin and Makasar script, the syllable-final consonant was traditionally never represented.[15]
More complicated unit structures (e.g. CC or CCVC) are handled by combining the various techniques above.
Examples using the Devanagari script
- K = /ka/ =
- Ki = /ki/ =
- K* = /k/ = under the character)
- K*M = /kma/ =
- İK = /ika/ =
- İK* = /ik/ =
- İKi = /iki/ =
- etc.
Family-specific features
There are three principal families of abugidas, depending on whether vowels are indicated by modifying consonants by diacritics, distortion, or orientation.[16]
- The oldest and largest is the ligatures, diacritics, or with a special vowel-canceling mark.
- In the Ethiopic family, vowels are marked by modifying the shapes of the consonants, and one of the vowel-forms serves additionally to indicate final consonants.
- In Canadian Aboriginal syllabics, vowels are marked by rotating or flipping the consonants, and final consonants are indicated with either special diacritics or superscript forms of the main initial consonants.
Feature | North Indic | South Indic | Tāna | Ethiopic | Canadian Aboriginal |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Vowel representation after consonant |
Dependent sign (diacritic) in distinct position per vowel |
Fused diacritic | Rotate/reflect | ||
Initial vowel representation |
Distinct inline letter per vowel[a] |
Glottal stop or zero consonant plus dependent vowel[b] |
Glottal stop plus dependent |
Zero consonant plus dependent | |
Inherent vowel (value of no vowel sign) |
[ə], [ɔ], [a], or [o][c] | No | [ɐ][18] | N/A | |
Zero vowel sign (sign for no value) |
Often | Always used when no final vowel[d] |
Ambiguous with ə ([ɨ]) | Shrunk or separate letter[e] | |
Consonant cluster | Conjunct[f] | Stacked or separate[clarification needed][g] | Separate | ||
Final consonant (not sign) | Inline[h] | Inline | Inline | ||
Distinct final sign | Only for ṃ, ḥ[i][j] | No | Only in Western | ||
Final sign position | Inline or top | Inline, top or occasionally bottom | N/A | Raised or inline[clarification needed] | |
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Indic (Brahmic)
Indic scripts originated in
).The primary division is with North Indic scripts, used in Northern India, Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan, Mongolia, and Russia; and Southern Indic scripts, used in
Indic scripts indicate vowels through dependent vowel signs (diacritics) around the consonants, often including a sign that explicitly indicates the lack of a vowel. If a consonant has no vowel sign, this indicates a default vowel. Vowel diacritics may appear above, below, to the left, to the right, or around the consonant.
The most widely used Indic script is
position | syllable | pronunciation | base form | script |
---|---|---|---|---|
above | के | /keː/ | क /k(a)/ | Devanagari |
below | कु | /ku/ | ||
left | कि | /ki/ | ||
right | को | /koː/ | ||
around | கௌ | /kau̯/ | க /ka/ | Tamil |
within | கி | /ki/ | ||
surround | កៀ | /kie/ | ក /kɑː/ | Khmer
|
within | ಕಿ | /ki/ | ಕ /ka/ | Kannada
|
within | కి | /ki/ | క /ka/ | Telugu
|
below and extend to the right |
ꦏꦾ | /kja/ | ꦏ /ka/ | Javanese |
below and extend to the left |
ꦏꦿꦸ | /kru/ |
In many of the Brahmic scripts, a syllable beginning with a cluster is treated as a single character for purposes of vowel marking, so a vowel marker like ि -i, falling before the character it modifies, may appear several positions before the place where it is pronounced. For example, the game
In many abugidas, there is also a diacritic to suppress the inherent vowel, yielding the bare consonant. In
The
Ethiopic
In
Though now an abugida, the
Canadian Aboriginal syllabics
In the family known as
Borderline cases
Vowelled abjads
Abjads are typically written without indication of many vowels. However, in some contexts like teaching materials or
The Arabic scripts used for
The Arabic script used for
Phagspa
The imperial Mongol script called
Pahawh
Meroitic
It is difficult to draw a dividing line between abugidas and other segmental scripts. For example, the Meroitic script of ancient Sudan did not indicate an inherent a (one symbol stood for both m and ma, for example), and is thus similar to Brahmic family of abugidas. However, the other vowels were indicated with full letters, not diacritics or modification, so the system was essentially an alphabet that did not bother to write the most common vowel.
Shorthand
Several systems of
Development
As the term alphasyllabary suggests, abugidas have been considered[by whom?] an intermediate step between alphabets and syllabaries. Historically, abugidas appear to have evolved from abjads (vowelless alphabets).[citation needed] They contrast with syllabaries, where there is a distinct symbol for each syllable or consonant-vowel combination, and where these have no systematic similarity to each other, and typically develop directly from logographic scripts. Compare the examples above to sets of syllables in the Japanese hiragana syllabary: か ka, き ki, く ku, け ke, こ ko have nothing in common to indicate k; while ら ra, り ri, る ru, れ re, ろ ro have neither anything in common for r, nor anything to indicate that they have the same vowels as the k set.
Most Indian and Indochinese abugidas appear to have first been developed from abjads with the
Ge'ez derived from a different abjad, the
The Cree syllabary was invented with full knowledge of the Devanagari system.
The Meroitic script was developed from Egyptian hieroglyphs, within which various schemes of 'group writing'[21] had been used for showing vowels.
List of abugidas
- Brāhmī(c. 6th century BC)
- Ahom
- Assamese
- Balinese
- Bataklanguages
- Visayan languages, and possibly other Philippine languages
- Bengali[22] – Bengali
- Bhaiksuki
- Buhid
- Chakma
- Cham
- Devanagari – Hindi, Sanskrit, Marathi, Nepali, Konkani and other languages of northern India
- Dhives Akuru
- Grantha– Sanskrit
- Kachchi
- Gurmukhi script – Punjabi
- Hanunó’o
- Javanese
- Kaganga – Rencong, Rejang
- Kaithi – Bhojpuri and other languages of northern and eastern India
- Kannada – Kannada, Tulu, Konkani, Kodava
- Kawi
- Khmer
- Khojki
- Khotanese
- Khudawadi
- Kulitan
- Lao
- Leke
- Lepcha
- Limbu
- Makassar, and Mandar
- Mahajani
- Malayalam – Malayalam
- Malayanma – Malayalam
- Marchen – Zhang-Zhung
- Meetei Mayek
- Modi – Marathi
- Multani – Saraiki
- Nandinagari – Sanskrit
- Nepal Bhasa, Sanskrit
- New Tai Lue
- Odia
- Pallava script – Tamil, Sanskrit, various Prakrits
- Nepal Bhasa, Sanskrit
- Sharada – Sanskrit
- Siddham – Sanskrit
- Sinhala
- Sourashtra
- Soyombo
- Sundanese
- Sylheti Nagri – Sylheti language
- Palawan languages
- Tai Dam
- Tai Le
- Tai Tham – Khün, and Northern Thai
- Takri
- Tamil
- Telugu
- Thai
- Tibetan
- Tirhuta – Maithili
- Tocharian
- Vatteluttu – Tamil, Malayalam
- Zanabazar Square
- Zhang zhung scripts
- Kharoṣṭhī, from the 3rd century BC
- Meroitic
- Ge'ez, from the 4th century AD
- Canadian Aboriginal syllabics
- Pollard script
- Pitman shorthand
Fictional
Abugida-like scripts
- Meroitic (an alphabet with an inherent vowel) – Meroitic, Old Nubian (possibly)
- Thaana (abugida with no inherent vowel)
References
- ^ "abugida". Dictionary.com Unabridged (Online). n.d.
- ^ Février, James Germain (1948). "Le Néosyllabisme". Histoire de l'écriture. Payot. pp. 333–83.
- ^ Diringer, David (1948). The Alphabet: A Key to the History of Mankind. Philosophical Library. p. 601 (index).
- ^ Householder, F. (1959). Review of The Decipherment of Linear B by John Chadwick, The Classical Journal, 54(8), 379–83. Retrieved 30 September 2020.
- ^ Daniels, P. (1990). Fundamentals of Grammatology. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 110(4), 727–31. doi:10.2307/602899: "We must recognize that the West Semitic scripts constitute a third fundamental type of script, the kind that denotes individual consonants only. It cannot be subsumed under either of the other terms. A suitable name for this type would be "alephbeth," in honor of its Levantine origin, but this term seems too similar to "alphabet" to be practical; so I propose to call this type an "abjad," [Footnote: I.e., the alif-ba-jim order familiar from earlier Semitic alphabets, from which the modern order alif-ba-ta-tha is derived by placing together the letters with similar shapes and differing numbers of dots. The abjad is the order in which numerical values are assigned to the letters (as in Hebrew).] from the Arabic word for the traditional order of its script, which (unvocalized), of course, falls in this category... There is yet a fourth fundamental type of script, a type recognized over forty years ago by James-Germain Fevrier, called by him the "neosyllabary" (1948, 330), and again by Fred Householder thirty years ago, who called it "pseudo-alphabet" (1959, 382). These are the scripts of Ethiopia and "greater India" that use a basic form for the specific syllable consonant + a particular vowel (in practice always the unmarked a) and modify it to denote the syllables with other vowels or with no vowel. Were it not for this existing term, I would propose maintaining the pattern by calling this type an "abugida," from the Ethiopian word for the auxiliary order of consonants in the signary."
- ^ a b c William Bright (2000:65–66): "A Matter of Typology: Alphasyllabaries and Abugidas". In: Studies in the Linguistic Sciences. Volume 30, Number 1, pages 63–71
- ^ Amalia E. Gnanadesikan (2017) Towards a typology of phonemic scripts, Writing Systems Research, 9:1, 14–35, DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2017.1308239 "The second is that of Bright (1996, 1999) which follows Daniels in abjads and alphabets (Bright, 1999), but identifies instead of abugidas a category of alphasyllabaries. As Bright (1999) points out, the definition of abugida and the definition of alpha-syllabary differ. This fact alone suggests that at least one of the two classifications is either incomplete or inaccurate—or, at the very least, that they have two different purposes. This paper is intended as a (long-delayed) response to Bright (1999) and argues that both of these systems are in fact incomplete."
- ^ Peter T. Daniels, Littera ex occidente: Toward a Functional History of Writing, in Studies in Semitic and Afroasiatic Linguistics presented to Gene B. Gragg edited by Cynthia L. Miller pages 53–69: "Alongside the terms I rejected (neosyllabary [Février 1948], pseudo-alphabet [Householder 1959], semisyllabary [Diringer 1948], and alphasyllabary [Bright 1992]) because they imply exactly the notion I am trying to refute – that the abugida is a kind of alphabet or a kind of syllabary – I have just come across semialphabet in the Encyclopœdia Britannica Micropœdia (though what is intended by the distinction "the syllabic KharoœøÏ [sic] and semialphabetic BrΩhmÏ" [s.v. "Indic Writing Systems"] is unfathomable). W. Bright denies having devised the term alphasyllabary, but it has not yet been found to occur earlier than his 1992 encyclopedia (in 1990:136 he approved semisyllabary). Compare Daniels 1996b:4 n. * and Bright 2000 for the different conceptualizations of abugida and alphasyllabary: functional vs. formal, as it happens. The words abjad and abugida are simply words in Arabic and Ethiopic, respectively, for the ancient Northwest Semitic order of letters, which is used in those languages in certain functions alongside the customary orders in Arabic reflecting rearrangement according to shape, and in Ethiopic reflecting an entirely different letter-order tradition"
- ^ Amalia E. Gnanadesikan (2017) Towards a typology of phonemic scripts, Writing Systems Research, 9:1, 14–35, DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2017.1308239 "This type of script has been given many names, among them semi-alphabet (Diringer, 1948, referring to Brāhmī), semi-syllabary (Diringer, 1948, referring to Devanāgarī) or semi-syllabic script (Baker, 1997), syllabic alphabet (Coulmas, 1999), alphasyllabary (Bright, 1996, 1999; Trigger, 2004), neosyllabary (Daniels, 1990), abugida (Daniels, 1996a) and segmentally coded syllabically linear phonographic script (Faber, 1992) as well as the Sanskrit-inspired terms aksara system (Gnanadesikan, 2009) or āksharik script (Rimzhim, Katz, & Fowler, 2014). As is discussed further below, however, there is a considerable degree of typological diversity in this family of scripts."
- JSTOR 602899.
- ^ He describes this term as "formal," i.e., more concerned with the graphic arrangement of symbols, whereas abugida was "functional," putting the focus on sound–symbol correspondence. However, this is not a distinction made in the literature.
- ^ a b c Glossary of Daniels & Bright (1996) The World's Writing Systems
- ^ "The Unicode Standard, Version 8.0" (PDF). August 2015. Section 16.4 Khmer, Subscript Consonants. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022.
- ^ Everson, Michael; Hosken, Martin (6 August 2006). "Proposal for encoding the Lanna script in the BMP of the UCS" (PDF). Working Group Document. International Organization for Standardization. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022.
- ^ Joel C. Kuipers & Ray McDermott, "Insular Southeast Asian Scripts". In Daniels & Bright (1996) The World's Writing Systems
- ^ John D. Berry (2002:19) Language Culture Type
- ^ Everson, Michael (6 August 2006). "Proposal for encoding the Cham script in the BMP of the UCS" (PDF). Unicode Consortium. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022.
- ^ a b Getatchew Haile, "Ethiopic Writing". In Daniels & Bright (1996) The World's Writing Systems
- ^ "Standard Azeri" (PDF). azeri.org. Retrieved 7 May 2023.
- ^ "The Joy of Pitman Shorthand". pitmanshorthand.homestead.com.
- ^ James Hoch (1994) Semitic Words in Egyptian Texts of the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Periods
- ^ "ScriptSource – Bengali (Bangla)". scriptsource.org. Retrieved 9 May 2019.
- ^ "Ihathvé Sabethired". omniglot.com.