Iberian scripts - symbolism based on sonority
Tags:Linguistics Research
The Iberian scripts is a mixture of alphabetic and syllabic symbols. What interests me is what are kept syllabic:
Southern Iberian script
According to Pierre Swiggers (p. 109 in Daniels & Bright, 1996):
The vawels and all the continuants are represented by single signs, whereas the stops are written together with a following vowel.
I suspect the reason is that all the continuants can be articulated alone, whereas stop consonants cannot. This would fit our OT model for PA and writing. I am yet to find examples of how the script actually worked.
March 6th, 2007 at 5:39 pm e
http://www.webpersonal.net/jrr/ib7_en.htm has a short page on the phonology of the language, although much based on written records.