Anabugida (/ˌɑːbuːˈɡiːdə,ˌæb-/ⓘ;[1] fromGeʽez:አቡጊዳ,'äbugīda) – sometimes also calledalphasyllabary,neosyllabary, orpseudo-alphabet – is a segmentalwriting system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as units; each unit is based on aconsonant letter, andvowel notation is secondary, similar to adiacritical mark. This contrasts with a fullalphabet, in which vowels have status equal to consonants, and with anabjad, in which vowel marking is absent,partial, or optional – in less formal contexts, all three types of the script may be termed "alphabets".[2] The terms also contrast them with asyllabary, in which a single symbol denotes the combination of one consonant and one vowel.
Related concepts were introduced independently in 1948 byJames Germain Février (using the termnéosyllabisme)[3] andDavid Diringer (using the termsemisyllabary),[4] then in 1959 byFred Householder (introducing the termpseudo-alphabet).[5] TheEthiopic term "abugida" was chosen as a designation for the concept in 1990 byPeter T. Daniels.[6][2] In 1992, Faber suggested "segmentally coded syllabically linear phonographic script", and in 1992 Bright used the termalphasyllabary,[7][8] and Gnanadesikan and Rimzhim, Katz, & Fowler have suggestedaksara orāksharik.[9]
Abugidas include the extensiveBrahmic family of scripts of Tibet, South and Southeast Asia,Semitic Ethiopic scripts, andCanadian Aboriginal syllabics. As is the case for syllabaries, the units of the writing system may consist of the representations both of syllables and of consonants. For scripts of the Brahmic family, the termakshara is used for the units.
In several languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea,abugida traditionally meant letters of the Ethiopic orGeʽez script in which many of these languages are written. The Geʽez script is one of several segmental writing systems in the world, others includeIndic/Brahmic scripts andCanadian Aboriginal Syllabics. The word abugida is derived from the four letters,'ä, bu, gi, andda, in much the same way thatabecedary is derived from Latin lettersa be ce de,abjad is derived from theArabica b j d, andalphabet is derived from the names of the two first letters in theGreek alphabet,alpha andbeta.Abugida as a term in linguistics was proposed byPeter T. Daniels in his 1990typology ofwriting systems.[10]
As Daniels used the word, an abugida is in contrast with asyllabary, where letters with shared consonant or vowel sounds show no particular resemblance to one another. Furthermore, an abugida is also in contrast with analphabet proper, where independent letters are used to denote consonants and vowels. The termalphasyllabary was suggested for the Indic scripts in 1997 byWilliam Bright, following South Asian linguistic usage, to convey the idea that, "they share features of both alphabet and syllabary."[11][2]
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 theinherent orimplicit vowel, as opposed to theexplicit 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".[12] Bright did not require that an alphabet explicitly represent all vowels.[2]ʼPhags-pa is an example of an abugida because it has aninherent vowel, but it is not an alphasyllabary because its vowels are written in linear order. ModernLao is an example of an alphasyllabary that is not an abugida, for there is no inherent vowel and its vowels are always written explicitly and not in accordance to their temporal order in speech, meaning that a vowel can be written before, below or above a consonant letter, while the syllable is still pronounced in the order of a consonant-vowel combination (CV).
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 ofdiacritics 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, azero 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 asindependent vowels, and are found in most Indic scripts. These letters may be quite different from the corresponding diacritics, which by contrast are known asdependent vowels. As a result of the spread of writing systems, independent vowels may be used to represent syllables beginning with aglottal stop, even for non-initial syllables.
The next two complications areconsonant 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). Thisfinal 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 defaultinherent vowel),
vowel marking on the letter for a short or neutral vowel such asschwa (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. bysyncope andapocope inHindi.
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 asconjunct consonant letters, where two or more letters are graphically joined in aligature, or otherwise change their shapes. Rarely, one of the consonants may be replaced by a gemination mark, e.g. theGurmukhiaddak.
When they are arranged vertically, as inBurmese orKhmer, they are said to be 'stacked'. Often there has been a change to writing the two consonants side by side. In the latter case, this combination may be indicated by a diacritic on one of the consonants or a change in the form of one of the consonants, e.g. thehalf forms of Devanagari. Generally, the reading order of stacked consonants is top to bottom, or the general reading order of the script, but sometimes the reading order can be reversed.
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 theTibetan[citation needed],Khmer[13] andTai 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 inBaybayin andMakasar 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.
There are three principal families of abugidas, depending on whether vowels are indicated by modifying consonants bydiacritics, distortion, ororientation.[16]
The oldest and largest is theBrahmic family of India and Southeast Asia, in which vowels are marked withdiacritics and syllable-final consonants, when they occur, are indicated withligatures, diacritics, or with a specialvowel-canceling mark.
In theGeʽez script, vowels are marked by modifying the shapes of the consonants, and one of the vowel-forms serves additionally to indicate final consonants.
InCanadian 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.
Lao andTāna have dependent vowels and a zero vowel sign, but no inherent vowel.
Feature
North Indic
South Indic
Tāna
Ethiopic
Canadian Aboriginal
Vowel representation after consonant
Dependent sign (diacritic) in distinct position per vowel
^Tibetan,Róng andKharoṣṭhī use the glottal stop or zero consonant plus dependent vowel.
^Pali in the Burmese, Khmer and Tai Tham scripts uses independent vowels instead, and they are also used in loan words in the local languages. The Cham script also uses both independent vowels and glottal stop consonant plus dependent vowel.[17] In all three cases, the glottal stop letter is the same as the independent vowel letter for the inherent vowel. Conversely, theLontara script ofSulawesi uses zero consonant plus vowel.
^Lao has no inherent vowel – it is an alphasyllabary but not an abugida. There is also a Thai-script Pali orthography which has no inherent vowel.
^The Thai, Lao, Tai Viet, Tai Tham and Khmer scripts often or always use the plain letter for word-final consonants, and normally do not use a zero vowel sign. However, the Thai script regularly uses it for Pali and Sanskrit.
^Often separate and unmodified as a result ofsyncope. Also, as a legitimate font fall-back, can occur as side-by-side consonants modified only by the inclusion of a virama.
^Tamil and Lao have conjuncts formed from straightforward ligation of side by side consonants. Burmese and Tai Tham have a few conjuncts.
^Tibetan and Khmer occasionally and Tai Tham regularly write final consonants below the rest of the akshara. This practice is the origin of the Lao letter ຽ U+0EBD LAO SEMIVOWEL SIGN NYO, and a similar sign may be found in Javanese. Tai Tham may also write several final consonants above the rest of the akshara. The Rónɡ script writes final consonants above the rest of the akshara, except that final /ŋ/precedes the rest. The Philippine scripts do not represent final consonants.
^The symbol for ṃ represents the sound for /m/ or /ŋ/ in some languages, and the symbol for ḥ may represent a ɡlottal stop or even /k/. Not all scripts have these symbols.
^Tai Tham has superscript and subscript signs for final /k/. Javanese and related scripts have a superscript symbol for final /r/, though it is ultimately related to the normal letter for /r/.
The primary division is with North Indic scripts, used in Northern India, Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan, Mongolia, and Russia; and Southern Indic scripts, used inSouth India,Sri Lanka andSoutheast Asia. South Indic letter forms are more rounded than North Indic forms, thoughOdia,Golmol andLitumol of Nepal script are rounded. Most North Indic scripts' full letters incorporate a horizontal line at the top, withGujarati and Odia as exceptions; South Indic scripts do not.
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 isDevanagari, shared byHindi,Bihari,Marathi,Konkani,Nepali, and oftenSanskrit. A basic letter such asक in Hindi represents a syllable with the default vowel, in this caseka ([kə]). In some languages, including Hindi, it becomes a final closing consonant at the end of a word, in this casek. The inherent vowel may be changed by adding vowel mark (diacritics), producing syllables such as किki, कुku, केke, कोko.
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 gamecricket inHindi is क्रिकेटkrikeṭ; the diacritic for/i/ appears before theconsonant cluster/kr/, not before the/r/. A more unusual example is seen in theBatak alphabet: Here the syllablebim is writtenba-ma-i-(virama). That is, the vowel diacritic and virama are both written after the consonants for the whole syllable.
In many abugidas, there is also a diacritic to suppress the inherent vowel, yielding the bare consonant. In Devanagari, प् isp, and फ् isph. This is called thevirāma orhalantam in Sanskrit. It may be used to formconsonant clusters, or to indicate that a consonant occurs at the end of a word. Thus in Sanskrit, a default vowel consonant such as फ does not take on a final consonant sound. Instead, it keeps its vowel. For writing two consonants without a vowel in between, instead of using diacritics on the first consonant to remove its vowel, another popular method of specialconjunct forms is used in which two or more consonant characters are merged to express a cluster, such as Devanagari, as in अप्फappha. (Some fonts display this as प् followed by फ, rather than forming a conjunct. This expedient is used byISCII and South Asian scripts ofUnicode.) Thus a closed syllable such asphaṣ requires twoaksharas to write: फष्phaṣ.
TheRóng script used for theLepcha language goes further than other Indic abugidas, in that a singleakshara can represent a closed syllable: Not only the vowel, but any final consonant is indicated by a diacritic. For example, the syllable [sok] would be written as something like s̥̽, here with an underring representing/o/ and an overcross representing the diacritic for final/k/. Most other Indic abugidas can only indicate a very limited set of final consonants with diacritics, such as/ŋ/ or/r/, if they can indicate any at all.
InGeʽez script,fidels (individual "letters" of the script) have "diacritics" that are fused with the consonants to the point that they must be considered modifications of the form of the letters. Children learn each modification separately, as in a syllabary; nonetheless, the graphic similarities between syllables with the same consonant are readily apparent, unlike the case in a truesyllabary.
Though now an abugida, the Geʽez script, until the advent ofChristianity (c. AD350), had originally been what would now be termed anabjad. In the Geʽez script (orfidel), the base form of the letter (also known asfidel) may be altered. For example, ሀhä[hə] (base form), ሁhu (with a right-side diacritic that does not alter the letter), ሂhi (with a subdiacritic that compresses the consonant, so it is the same height), ህhə[hɨ] or[h] (where the letter is modified with a kink in the left arm).
In the family known asCanadian Aboriginal syllabics, which was inspired by theDevanagari script of India, vowels are indicated by changing the orientation of thesyllabogram. Each vowel has a consistent orientation; for example,Inuktitut ᐱpi, ᐳpu, ᐸpa; ᑎti, ᑐtu, ᑕta. Although there is a vowel inherent in each, all rotations have equal status and none can be identified as basic. Bare consonants are indicated either by separate diacritics, or by superscript versions of theaksharas; there is no vowel-killer mark.
Abjads are typically written without indication of many vowels. However, in some contexts like teaching materials orscriptures,Arabic andHebrew are written with full indication of vowels via diacritic marks (harakat,niqqud) making them effectively alphasyllabaries.
The Arabic scripts used forKurdish in Iraq and forUyghur inXinjiang, China, as well as the Hebrew script ofYiddish, are fully vowelled, but because the vowels are written with full letters rather than diacritics (with the exception of distinguishing between /a/ and /o/ in the latter) and there are no inherent vowels, these are considered alphabets, not abugidas.
The Arabic script used forSouth Azerbaijani generally writes the vowel /æ/ (written as ə in North Azerbaijani) as a diacritic, but writes all other vowels as full letters (similarly to Kurdish and Uyghur). This means that when no vowel diacritics are present (most of the time), it technically has an inherent vowel. However, like the Phagspa and Meroitic scripts whose status as abugidas is controversial (see below), all other vowels are written in-line. Additionally, the practice of explicitly writing all-but-one vowel does not apply to loanwords from Arabic and Persian, so the script does not have an inherent vowel for Arabic and Persian words. The inconsistency of its vowel notation makes it difficult to categorize.[19]
The imperial Mongol script calledPhagspa was derived from the Tibetan abugida, but all vowels are written in-line rather than as diacritics. However, it retains the features of having an inherent vowel /a/ and having distinct initial vowel letters.
Pahawh Hmong is a non-segmental script that indicatessyllable onsets andrimes, such as consonant clusters and vowels with final consonants. Thus it is not segmental and cannot be considered an abugida. However, it superficially resembles an abugida with the roles of consonant and vowel reversed. Most syllables are written with two letters in the order rime–onset (typically vowel-consonant), even though they are pronounced as onset-rime (consonant-vowel), rather like the position of the/i/ vowel in Devanagari, which is written before the consonant. Pahawh is also unusual in that, while an inherent rime/āu/ (with mid tone) is unwritten, it also has an inherent onset/k/. For the syllable/kau/, which requires one or the other of the inherent sounds to be overt, it is/au/ that is written. Thus it is the rime (vowel) that is basic to the system.[citation needed]
Drawing a dividing line between abugidas and othersegmental scripts can be difficult. For example, theMeroitic script of ancientSudan did not indicate an inherenta (one symbol stood for bothm andma, 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.
Several systems ofshorthand use diacritics for vowels, but they do not have an inherent vowel, and are thus more similar toThaana andKurdish script than to the Brahmic scripts. TheGabelsberger shorthand system and its derivatives modify thefollowing consonant to represent vowels. ThePollard script, which was based on shorthand, also uses diacritics for vowels; the placements of the vowel relative to the consonant indicatestone.Pitman shorthand uses straight strokes and quarter-circle marks in different orientations as the principal "alphabet" of consonants; vowels are shown as light and heavy dots, dashes and other marks in one of 3 possible positions to indicate the various vowel-sounds. However, to increase writing speed, Pitman has rules for "vowel indication"[20] using the positioning or choice of consonant signs so that writing vowel-marks can be dispensed with.
As the termalphasyllabary suggests, abugidas have been considered[21] an intermediate step between alphabets andsyllabaries. Historically, abugidas appear to have evolved fromabjads (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 fromlogographic scripts. Compare the examples above to sets of syllables in the Japanesehiragana syllabary: かka, きki, くku, けke, こko have nothing in common to indicatek; while らra, りri, るru, れre, ろro have neither anything in common forr, nor anything to indicate that they have the same vowels as thek set.
Most Indian and Indochinese abugidas appear to have first been developed from abjads with theKharoṣṭhī andBrāhmī scripts; the abjad in question is usually considered to be theAramaic one, but while the link between Aramaic and Kharosthi is more or less undisputed, this is not the case with Brahmi. The Kharosthi family does not survive today, but Brahmi's descendants include most of the modern scripts ofSouth andSoutheast Asia.
The Geʽez script derived from a different abjad, theSabean script ofYemen; the advent of vowels coincided with the introduction or adoption of Christianity about AD 350.[18] The Ethiopic script is the elaboration of an abjad.
TheCree syllabary was invented with full knowledge of the Devanagari system.
^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."
^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."
^Daniels, Peter T. (October–December 1990). "Fundamentals of Grammatology".Journal of the American Oriental Society.119 (4):727–731.doi:10.2307/602899.JSTOR602899.
^He describes this term as "formal," i.e., more concerned with the graphic arrangement of symbols, whereasabugida was "functional," putting the focus on sound–symbol correspondence. However, this is not a distinction made in the literature.
^abcGlossary of Daniels & Bright (1996)The World's Writing Systems
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