MoonRightRomantic wrote:clawgrip wrote:Stacking is also a possibility. I did something like this for a vertical syllabary I made, though this was only for coda consonants and geminates. When you had a coda consonant, you would simply write two glyphs beside each other. This is basically the echo/dummy technique you mention, except with an explicit visual cue that a dummy vowel is being used.
Sịmekkalit Ngwụddọ mul rupu chahaimat sẽpet Rụkụ̃t zẽ mul tuzọfọu shek tẽrĩ tẽri pasa mil mil maike ọghụ.
You can see the first word
Sịmekkalit (top left) is written as sị / me / ka-ka / li-ti, with echo vowels (there is ambiguity between kka and kak, but that is part of the fun of it). Also this script uses signs for coda nasals, which also mark voiced geminates, but that's a different story.
Writing Systems and Cognition refers to echo vowel sequences of <CV-CV> producing /CCV/ or /CVC/ as "progressive" and "regressive", respectively. It is impossible to determine which (or both!) of these is being used, which is what made Cypriot so difficult to read.
I am not sure how a pointing system would work, except to insert a vowel or diacritic next to the syllable nuclei whenever a sequence of the same vowel occurs. For example, <po-ro-o-ca-la-a-ru-u-ʃu> or <po-ró-ca-lá-rú-ʃu> would produce /proclaruʃ/.
(point out the Stargate reference first)
Well Devanagari and other abugidas sometimes use a special diacritic to mark the fact that a given syllabic sign
did not have a vowel. I can't see any reason why a syllabary couldn't develop a similar marker. Start out with echo syllables, then have writers start to indicate which ones are pronounced in full, or not pronounced at all. There's nothing saying that there has to be a next step so it could just end there.
If the script were borrowed you could go down the route of:
PI PU PA > /pi pu pa/ vs.
PA-I PA-U > /pe po/
SI-PI SU-PU SA-PA > /spi spu spa/ vs.
SA-PI SA-PU > /spe spo/
SI-I-PI SU-U-PU SA-A-PA > /sipi supu sapa/ vs.
SA-A-PI SA-A-PU > /sapi sapu/
SA-I-PI SA-U-PU > /sepi sopu/ vs.
SA-A-PA-I SA-A-PA-U > /sape sapo/
... etc.
MoonRightRomantic wrote:Linguifex wrote:You could go the Mayan route and "underspell" certain syllables.
The Cypriot and Linear B syllabaries represented Greek inaccurately, often omitting inconvenient onsets and codas on top of using echo and/or dummy vowels. For example, /knōsos/ was represented as <ko-no-so> in Linear B; /anthrōpos/ as <a-to-ro-po-se> in Cypriot.
That is what I am trying to avoid.
The "underspelling" in Linear B, and to a lesser extent the Cypriot Syllabary, partly comes from the script being a borrowed invention, as well as their use. Linear B was, as far as I can remember, mostly used for texts relating to tax (and other "state" stuff), so the vocabulary was relatively limited and supplemented with logograms. The chances for ambiguity were, IIRC, relatively low as a result and familiarity with Mycenaean Greek certainly would have aided in reading. From what I can tell, Cypriot was used in a wider range of contexts, which is probably why underspelling was somewhat remedied, but again familiarity with the spoken language probably would have aided in reading (much as familiarity with spoken Hebrew or Arabic aids in reading their respective scripts despite not writing vowels at all). (see your own example of Linear B
A-TO-RO-QO vs. Cypriote
A-TO-RO-PO-SE).
Underspelling isn't necessarily a bad thing and it might actually make the script more interesting