Syllabary

In thelinguisticstudy ofwritten languages,asyllabaryis a set ofwritten symbolsthat represent thesyllablesor (more frequently)moraswhich make upwords.

A symbol in a syllabary, called asyllabogram,typically represents an (optional)consonantsound (simpleonset) followed by avowelsound (nucleus)—that is, a CV (consonant+vowel) or V syllable—but otherphonographicmappings, such as CVC, CV- tone, and C (normally nasals at the end of syllables), are also found in syllabaries.

Types

Eachsyllable(σ) branches intoconsonantalonset(ω) andrime(ρ) that is divided intonucleus(ν) andcoda(κ), non-/supra-segmental parameters liketone(τ) affect the syllable as a whole

Awriting systemusing a syllabary iscompletewhen it covers all syllables in the corresponding spoken language without requiring complexorthographic / graphemicrules, likeimplicit codas(⟨C₁V⟩⇒ /C₁VC₂/),silent vowels(⟨C₁V₁+C₂V₂⟩⇒ /C₁V₁C₂/) orecho vowels(⟨C₁V₁+C₂V₁⟩⇒ /C₁V₁C₂/). This loosely corresponds toshalloworthographies in Alpha betic writing systems.

Truesyllabograms are those that encompass all parts of a syllable, i.e., initial onset, medial nucleus and final coda, but since onset and coda are optional in at least some languages, there aremiddle(nucleus),start(onset-nucleus),end(nucleus-coda) andfull(onset-nucleus-coda) true syllabograms. Most syllabaries only feature one or two kinds of syllabograms and form other syllables by graphemic rules.

Syllabograms, hence syllabaries, arepure,analyticorarbitraryif they do not share graphic similarities that correspond to phonic similarities, e.g. the symbol forkadoes not resemble in any predictable way the symbol forki,nor the symbol fora.Otherwise, they aresynthetic,if they vary by onset, rime, nucleusorcoda, orsystematic,if they vary by all of them. Some scholars, e.g., Daniels,reserve the general term for analytic syllabaries and invent other terms (abugida,abjad) as necessary. Some systems providekatakanalanguage conversion.

Languages using syllabaries

Syllabaries often begin as simplified logograms, as shown here with the Japanesekatakanawriting system. To the left is the modern letter, with its originalChinese characterform on the right.

Multilingualstop sign employing theLatin Alpha betand theCherokee syllabaryinTahlequah, Oklahoma

Languages that use syllabic writing includeJapanese,Cherokee,Vai,theYi languagesof eastern Asia, the English-basedcreole languageNdyuka,Xiangnan Tuhua,and the ancient languageMycenaean Greek(Linear B). In addition, the undecoded CretanLinear Ais also believed by some to be a syllabic script, though this is not proven.

Chinese characters,thecuneiform scriptused forSumerian,Akkadianand other languages, and the formerMaya scriptare largely syllabic in nature, although based onlogograms.They are therefore sometimes referred to aslogosyllabic.

The contemporary Japanese language uses two syllabaries together calledkana(in addition to the non-syllabic systemskanjiandromaji), namelyhiraganaandkatakana,which were developed around 700. Because Japanese uses mainly CV (consonant + vowel) syllables, a syllabary is well suited to write the language. As in many syllabaries, vowel sequences and final consonants are written with separate glyphs, so that bothattaandkaitaare written with three kana: あった (a-t-ta) and かいた (ka-i-ta). It is therefore more correctly called amoraicwriting system, with syllables consisting of two moras corresponding to two kana symbols.

Languages that use syllabaries today tend to have simplephonotactics,with a predominance of monomoraic (CV) syllables. For example, the modernYi scriptis used to write languages that have no diphthongs or syllable codas; unusually among syllabaries, there is a separate glyph for every consonant-vowel-tone combination (CVT) in the language (apart from one tone which is indicated with a diacritic).

Few syllabaries have glyphs for syllables that are not monomoraic, and those that once did have simplified over time to eliminate that complexity. For example, the Vai syllabary originally had separate glyphs for syllables ending in a coda(doŋ),a long vowel(soo),or a diphthong(bai),though not enough glyphs to distinguish all CV combinations (some distinctions were ignored). The modern script has been expanded to cover all moras, but at the same time reduced to exclude all other syllables. Bimoraic syllables are now written with two letters, as in Japanese: diphthongs are written with the help of V orhV glyphs, and the nasal codas will be written with the glyph forŋ,which can form a syllable of its own in Vai.

InLinear B,which was used to transcribeMycenaean Greek,a language with complex syllables, complex consonant onsets were either written with two glyphs or simplified to one, while codas were generally ignored, e.g.,ko-no-soforΚνωσόςKnōsos,pe-maforσπέρμαsperma.

The Cherokee syllabary generally uses dummy vowels for coda consonants, but also has a segmental grapheme for /s/, which can be used both as a coda and in an initial /sC/ consonant cluster.

Difference from abugidas

The languages ofIndiaandSoutheast Asia,as well as theEthiopian Semitic languages,have a type ofAlpha betcalled anabugidaorAlpha syllabary.In these scripts, unlike in pure syllabaries, syllables starting with the same consonant are largely expressed withgraphemesregularly based on common graphical elements. Usually each character representing a syllable consists of several elements which designate the individual sounds of that syllable.

In the 19th century these systems were calledsyllabics,a term which has survived in the name ofCanadian Aboriginal syllabics(also an abugida).

In a true syllabary there may be graphic similarity between characters that share a common consonant or vowel sound, but it is not systematic or at all regular. For example, the characters forka ke koin Japanesehiragana– か け こ – have no similarity to indicate their common /k/ sound. Compare this withDevanagariscript, an abugida, where the characters forka ke koare क के को respectively.

Comparison to Alpha bets

English,along with many other Indo-European languages like German and Russian, allows for complex syllable structures, making it cumbersome to write English words with a syllabary. A "pure" English syllabary would require over 10,000 separate glyphs for each possible syllable(e.g., separate glyphs for "half" and "have" ). However, such pure systems are rare. A workaround to this problem, common to several syllabaries around the world (includingEnglish loanwords in Japanese), is to add aparagogicdummy vowel, as if thesyllable codawere a second syllable:ha-fufor "half" andha-vufor "have".

See also

• List of syllabaries