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What are the constraints with which people create writing systems for spoken languages? Phonology, particulary speakers’ conceptualization of phonology, plays a central role. Bill Poser is a Japanese expert, among many other hats he wears. Around the turn of 2004/2005 he began to give a series of lectures on the correspondence between language and orthography. From the abstract it sounds like one of the central arguments is that syllabaries are very few. The other point I take away is that writing systems differ in the level of representations within syllables — syllables, onset-rime, etc. This latter point is important, and supports the vast psychology literature arguing the children progress in accessing smaller and smaller phonological units. I happen to NOT be a big fan of that theory.

I have to read the original. And I have to say up front that I am far from a phonologist. But it seems to me calling a writing system "moraic orthography" would be a misnomer.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Mora (plural moras or morae) is a unit of sound used in phonology that determines syllable weight (which in turn determines stress) in some languages. Like many technical linguistics terms, the exact definition of mora is debated. The term, meaning "delay", comes from Latin.

Mora is primarily a variable in the  time/weight demension.

Let’s start a working definition for calling an orthography X: an orthography A is called X-orthography if A uses different symbols to systematically  represent a linguistic feature X. This sense of X-orthography merely says that linguistic feature X is represented in A.

When we say A is X-based orthography  in the sanse that A is the primary basis for the orthography, then we need to know in which demension do all symbols in X vary the most.

Calling an orthography "moraic" is similar to call it "tonal"… it may represent the feature fairly systemtically, but that does not imply that most symbols are used to differentiate among "tones" or "morae". To me, the music score is a tonal writing system. A moraic orthography is what drummers read. Japanese surely represents moraic information, but it is primarily a syllabary.

Here is the abstract of Poser’s talk at Harvard. Via Suzanne E. McCarthy’s blog: http://abecedaria.blogspot.com/2005/07/william-posers-typology.html.  Risking duplication, I am posting the abstract here in full simply because it is too relevant not to. Next task: finding the talk or paper.

The Harvard GSAS 2004-5 Workshop
in Comparative Syntax and Linguistic Theory
presents the following talk:

William Poser (UPenn)
"Phonological Writing and Phonological Representation"

(The time and place of this talk are different from our regular time and
place for talks)
3:00 pm

Friday, December 10th

Abstract:
Received opinion holds that phonological writing systems are of two types: segmental and syllabic, and that syllabic systems are more basic, and, when the spread of the Greek alphabet and its descendants is discounted, far more common. A careful review of the evidence calls for a radical revision of this view. First, a richer typology is required, one that includes systems based on the mora and on the division of the sylalble into onset and rhyme. Second, the predominance of syllabaries has been vastly over-estimated. When the improved typology is taken into account and other erroneous analyses are corrected, syllabaries turn out to be so rare as to be virtually
non-existant.

Like many false ideas, the received view contains a kernel of truth. Syllables are more salient than segments to the "folk phonologist", as evidenced by the fact that while virtually all children become spontaneously aware of syllables by the age of four, most do not spontaneously become aware of segments. It is thus likely that a person inventing a phonological writing system ab initio will devise a syllabic system. The reason that we see so few syllabaries is that few
of our examples reflect the initial stage in the creation of a writing system. What we see is generally the result of further development, which has proceeded in the direction of further analysis.

The improved typology simplifies the correspondance between phonology and writing and provides additional evidence for the notions mora, segment, rhyme, and head of syllable. The extreme rarity of syllabaries undermines arguments for the psychological atomicity of the syllable, and with them one source of resistance to the teaching of reading via phonics.

Bill Poser also gave a similar talk at Cornell in Nov, 2004

Thurs, November 18: William Poser, U. of Pennsylvania
The Relationship Between Phonological Writing and Phonological Representation
Abstract of the talk

and at Swathmore College 

[I have learned to post comments first before the original, because how Ping/Trackback works. It still feel backward.] 

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