Towards a typology of phonemic scripts

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on those scripts whose basic grain size is the phoneme or phonological segment, arguing for both the essential unity and the diversity of such scripts. On the one hand, these scripts encode individual phonemes, unlike syllabaries, and should therefore be recognised as constituting a class. On the other hand, they vary in which vowels they represent, if any, and in how the relationship between vowels and consonants is encoded. These dimensions of which segments are represented and how those segments are arranged to form larger phonological structures vary independently of each other. Furthermore, some phonemic scripts also encode featural or moraic information. Thus, a short list of simple one-word names, like alphabet, abjad and abugida, does not capture the full range of segmental scripts or the relationships between them. A typology using more descriptive terms is presented.