More matters of typology: Alphasyllabaries, abugidas and related vowelled segmentaries

Since their coinage a quarter-century ago, the terms abugida and alphasyllabary (Bright 1999; Daniels & Bright 1996) have revolutionised our conceptualisation of writing systems. Together with alphabet, these terms have proven invaluable in classifying subtypes of segmentaries–writing systems whose grain size is the phonological segment (Gnanadesikan 2017). Nevertheless, there remain areas of ambiguity. Segmentaries that are either abugidas or alphasyllabaries–but not both–may be classified under various labels, and inconsistently so. Moreover, certain minoritised writing systems such as those based on Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics or Braille are only rarely covered in typological studies, despite the potential insights they offer.

In this paper, I use Bright's (1999) and Gnanadesikan's (2017) typology of vowelled segmentaries as the point of departure to propose an augmented classification based on specific graphematic criteria. Aside from illustrating the proposed typology by applying it to various writing systems, I also identify avenues for further refinement.