Three Pwo Karen Scripts: A Study of Alphabet Formation

43 Pages·1968·4.904 MB·English

by  Theodore Stern

Anthropological Linguistics
Volume 10 Number 1
January, 1968
A Publication of the
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T'HREE PWO KAREN SCRIPTS:
A SI UDY OF A-LPHABET FORMATION
Theodore Stern
University of Oregon
0. Introduction
I . Consonantal oIsets
2. Syllabic nuclei
3. Syllabic pitch
4. Logographs and combinatorial features
Sociocultural
5 fa.ctors
0. In the ad&aptdtion of a writing system to a new language, factors
which are specifically linguistic intersect with others more broadly
cultural. Such transfer may ordinarily entail knowledge of the language
with which the script has been associated, although it is not an indispen-
sable condition. A Scquoyah can arbitrarily assign new
values to graphs divested of their original associations, pwhoh.i-cohl ogaicrael thus
imported simply as Cormal figures. A set of symbols may be taken over
only with their acrophonic labels; here it is the label which provides a cue
to the pronunciation of the graph it names. Such instances need involve
no knowledge of the language to which the Ec ript earlier had reference.
Ordinarily, however, the transfer of a writing system is likely to rest
upon some degree of bilingualTsm, in which the innovator takes cogni-
zance of the sound values linked '.;iith the symbols in the donor language
in assigning them new values in the receiving language.1
While engaged in a study of bilingualism among the Karen of
western Thailand, the writer encountered three scripts which had been
developed for Pwo Karen out of two writing systems cloisely related to
each other, those of the Mon and the Burmese. In the following pages
a comparison is made of the manner in which, given similar resources
and a common language to fit, the three scripts have been developed.
The writing systems treated here are all alphabetic, in that
symbols have chie:fly phonemic reference. They stem in common from
a South Indian source, passing through the Mon of Lower Burma to the
Burmese. From that point on there have developed the three Pwo
systems, a-dadptc:t to tble ltanguage spoken by a hill and jungle folk who
are today an emerge-nt peasantry and who, notwithstanding emlaative
legends of lost books, -have long lacked a writing system of their own.
I
2 ArthL(pog,-,1 1[I nguistics, Vol.. 10, No. I
Each of the three Pwo scripts is about a hundred years old. One,
the product of Francis Mason, Engiish-born member of the American
Baptist Mission at Tavoy and Moulmein, was adapted from the system
developed by his colleague, Jonathan Wade, for the closely related Sgaw
Karen. Like Wade's script, it was based upon the Burmese, although
Mason also knew Mon (Mason, 1846 1870). The Mission script, as it
will be designated, underwent subsequent change, and it is in its modern
form that it is considered here. The second script, associated with the
name of Phu Ta Maik, whom tradition holds to be the first Burmese
Karen to be granted royal permission to enter the Buddhist monkhood,
stems from his monastic contacts with Mon clergy. Although primarily
secular in use, it is still largely learned during the Buddhist novitiate,
and so is termed the Monastic script. The third system is associated
with the Leke sect, a millenarian Buddhist movement among the Karen
(Marin, 1943; Stern, n.d.), and constitutes so distinctive and complicated
a system that a rival sect scathingly refers to it as 'chicken-scratch
writing'. It seems to draw upon both Mon and Burmese systems, and
may have been influenced as well by the other Pwo scripts.2
It might well be thought that the task of readaptation of a writing
system should be easier between Burmese and Pwo than between Mon
and the latter language, inasmuch as the former pair are linked through
common Sino-Tibetan (Shafer, 1955), o;, even narrower Tibeto-Burman
(Luce, 1959b) relationship, and thus could be expected to bear closer
resemblance in phonemic structure than either to Mon, which as an
Austroasiatic language, is held to be unrelated to them. However, Mon
has nonetheless laid its historical influence upon both Burmese and Pwo
(Luce, 1953). Among Karen groups, indeed, the weight of that influence
was recognized in the term by which the Pwo were sometimes desig-
nated, 'Talaing (i.e., Mon) Karen'.
When the processes of transfer must be reconstructed well after
the act, as here, the decision as to which dialects were involved from
within each language poses some difficulties. In what follows, it is
assumed that the source Burmese for the missionaries was the standard
Burmese learned by Adoniram Judson in Rangoon, rather than the
Tavoyan dialect to which Mason was exposed (Pe Maung Tin, 1933). The
Mon is taken to be the colloquial language described by Shorto (1962,
1966); that studied briefly among emigres in Sangkhlaburi, at the head
of the Khwae Noi in western Thailand, agrees well with his data.
For Pwo Karen, it seems probable on geographical grounds that
the Moulmein dialect was the common receptor language of all three
scripts, inasmuch as they had their origin within a fifty-mile radius
of that town. What changes it may have undergone in the intervening
century cannot be said. However, since the Monastic script was Etudied
in the field for its direct fit to the dialect spoken in the vicinity of
Sangkhlaburi, that dialect must also enter into consideration. Although
a fourfold comparison involving the Pwo dialects of Bassein and Moulmein
in Burma (Jones, 1961) and those of Sangkhlaburi and of Chiengmai
Three Pwo Karen Scripts 3
province in Thailand (Smalley, 1964: 89f., 95f.; n.d.) shows that the
two Burmese dialects stand together against the two in Thailand, that
of Sangkhtaburi is nonetheless intimately connected with that spoken at
Moulmein. Where germane, differences between those two receiving
dialects will be specified.
Alphabets of the Mon-Burmese type are classified by Voegelin and
Voegelin (1961) as CVS plus IV: that is, they comprise a set of consonant
signs which distinguish adjacent (here, following) vowels of graphemic
similarity, together with a set of independent vowel signs. In the former,
vowel quality is denoted by a set of symbols which are graphemically
attributive to the consonantal grapheme. The independent vowel set is
restricted in privilege of occurrence to syllable-initial position. Since
the dependent graphemes, when modifying one specific member of the
consonantal set, can also generate the full range of vowels in this pos-
ition, the two series are redundant. To judge by dictionary entries for
Mon (Halliday, 1922) and Burmese (Judson, 1953), in neither language
do entries written with the dependent vowel set approach in number their
equivalents in the independent series.3 It is the more striking, then,
that the three Pwo systems have all rejected the independent vowel set,
productive though it is in both the source languages, thus arriving at
a new alphabetic type, which may be represented by the formula, CVS.
The solution, in which the Mission script may possibly have provided
a model for its somewhat younger fellows, involves retention of a
system for representing initial vowels which is consistent with that for
denoting vowels in all other positions. It thus exemplifies what Kroeber
has characterized as the segregation of more efficient elements and
the reduction by elimination of specialized redundancies (Kroeber, 1948:
373f.).
In their graphemic inventories, the Mon and Burmese alphabets
possess a rich array of symbols, the great majority of them held in
common and even employed to render similar phonological values.
Some, such as the consonantal subset rendering what in Indian values
is a retroflex series, appear primarily in the spelling of PIli loans,
while others, such as those which, in Indian terms, were voiced as-
pirate stops, have been reassigned new values. Single graphs may
render single phonemes, while two or more may be combined into a
compound grapheme having a phonemic referent related remotely or
not at all to the separate values of its constituent graphs. Such combi-
nation may be sequential, but for consonantal graphemes, expressing
compound graphemes, initial consonant clusters, the initial consonants
of sequent syllables, of which the first is unstressed (Mon only), or
a sequence of interlude consonants at syllabic margins, the arrangement
is vertical, with sequence passing from top to bottom. In these conjunct
arrangements, limited ordinarily to two graphemes, the lower member
is often abbreviated or altered in position, thus constituting an allograph
of the linear grapheme of the same value. In Mon, conjunct and linear
presentations may sorr:etimes constitute alternative spellings, as in
4 Anthropological Linguistics, Vol. 10, No. 1
< top, end (Shorto, 1962: 209, 204, 65).4 Burmese
in addition possesses a superimposed combination (Jones and Khin, 1953:
23), but this is a rare arrangement.
From the standpoint of their syllabic structure, both of the source
scripts, together with the three Pwo systems derived from them, exploit
a basic graphemic formula, which can be represented by C(C)V - (Cv).
The first member has as its graphemic head a member of the consonantal
set (it may be the basic vowel %rapheme) which may be expanded in conjunct
5
fashion to a consonant cluster. Attributive to that head is the set of
vowel graphemes which in position stand immediately before, after, above,
below, or discontinuously embracing the consonantal head horizontally or
vertically. In whatever position the vowel graphemes stand to the head,
they record a vowel which in speech immediately follows the onset consti-
tuent and comprises the syllabic peak. The series includes one member
which is graphemically zero, the unmarked consonantal grapheme car-
rying an inherent vowel. Some graphemes have allographs adapted to the
particular form of the consonantal head or to the presence of con'unct
forms, thus: (--0n 6-3 - - -7 ,
Graphemically a mem-- ber of the vowel serie-s is the - virama, wh-i-c' h when
affixed to a consonantal head acts as devocalizer to suppress the inherent
vowel. Unlike other members of the set, however, it appears only with
the final consonant of a syllable. It is ordinarily, but not always, omitted
in conjunct consonants.6 In the basic formula given above other members
of the attributive vowel graphemes are symbolized by V,the vir'ma by V.
The final member of the formula, the coda, is optionally present.
Represented by a single consonantal grapheme modified by a virama, the
coda ordinarily has consonantal reference. However, as in Burmese
<-. ) , consonantal graphemes in this context may have
vowel r-e- ference instead; and constructions ending in a consonantal grapheme
may sometimes vary widely in value; thus Burmese < -
/ o an a9 / (see Jones and Khin, 1953: 12- 15). In the compound graphemes
which render Mon (and derivative Monastic) vowels, consonantal graphemes
sometimes comprise the final constituent. Codal graphemes often act in
construction with the vowel graphemes of the onset member to alter their
literal phonological value. Thus compare Burmese <( /d6/ we
and ( R) / dain/ umpire.
In the rendition of segmental pitch or register, features absent in
the Indian languages for which the ancestral script had been designed,
Burmese and Mon improvised differently, and in turn the Pwo scripts have
found still other methods of notation. In open and nasalized syllables,
Burmese needs to distinguish a level, a convex, and a sharply falling
tone; an atonic is specified largely by position. A stopped tone forms a
separate syllable type. As Jones and Khin (1953: 19f.) point out, many
vowel graphemes in Burmese have an inherent tone. There is it least
a partial pitch distinction in related pairs of vowel graphemes. Thus
/ i u a/ each is represented by two graphemes, in a contrast which may
formerly have been associated with length but which in present use is
Three Pwo Karen Scripts 5
imperfectly linked with pitch distinctions in open and nasalized syllables,
one with inherent falling tone, the other rendering level and convex
pitches. Thus compare (coyr /k/ give medicine and <
c
/gu/ cave (Cornyn and Musgrave, 1958). This system, which is least
regular for /a/, may be termed a vowel-pitch notation.
In addition, the Burmese system imposes another form of pitch
notation, again restricted in use to open and nasalized syllables. This
is a pair of postscript or subscript dot notations, rendering respectively
convex and falling tone, level tone being unmarked; thus < - -, )
These graphemes must be used with vowel graphemes of compatible in-
herent tone. The system, which may be designated separate pitch
notation, is one commonly found in linguistic transcription. The Leke
script seems, at least tentatively, to employ a separate pitch notation.
Mon indicates its quasi-tonal register opposition through the use of
two largely distinct sets of graphemes for the initial consonants. While
each set is complex in composition, they may be illustrated by some of
their members, here cited in Indian values. The head-register (High)
is denoted in part by the use of graphemes including unvoiced stops,
fricatives, and the basic vowel; while chest-register (Low) graphemes
include those for voiced stops, some nasals, flap, and semiconsonants.
Several nasals and a lateral may denote either register, and there are
otner minor exceptions (Halliday, 1922; Shorto, 1962).7 This may be
termed an onset-pitch notation.
The other two writing systems each employ a single method of
noting pitch. That of the Monastic script, imperfectly realized, employs
a vowel-pitch notation akin to that of the Burmese, by subsets of com-
pound graphemes for each of several vowel referents, so that each
distinctive spelling discriminates both vowel and pitch-class. This
method is similar to that found in the National Romanization of Chinese
(Chao, 1948). Finally, the Mission script combines in the coda symbols
which express both the final consonant (or its absence) and the pitch.
With this coda-pitch notation, we exhaust the possibilities of rendering
pitch simultaneously with one of the constituents of the basic formula.
Phonologically, it might be argued, the Monastic vowel-pitch
notation comes closest to the mark in the sequential replication of
speech, since syllabic pitch is most clearly audible upon the peak
vowel. And if it is noted to the contrary that vowel graphemes may
precede or embrace the consonantal head, and so do not adequately
record sequence, it is nonetheless true that, in those instances which
record pitch contrast, the notation in the vowel grapheme follows the
consonantal head.
However, it is unlikely that such a consideration lay behind the
Monastic innovation, for as will be shown below the compound gra-
phemes chiefly involved in such notation are largely of Mon derivation,
and it is a Mon notation for syllable contrast which has been remade
to render a Karen tonal opposition.
6 Anthropological Linguistics, Vol. 10, No. 1
Indeed, the evidence for all five scripts is that in the expression of
pitch the graphemic representation is less one of a sequence of consti-
tuents than of a single Gestalt. This conclusion gains force from a con-
sideration already cited, which holds true for all but the Mission script,
namely that the codal consonant often alters the value of the preceding
grapheme for the syllabic vowel. For these scripts, accordingly, closure
cannot occur short of the codal grapheme; for the Burmese and Leke
scripts it must further embrace the separate pitch notation. To a
heightened degree, then, the syllabic graphemes are seen to be knit
together into a whole.
The foregoing has bearing upon the relationship between writing
and speech, though in order not to go too far astray the remarks below
are confined to the Voegetins' (1961) 'self-sufficient alphabets', those
with direct phonological reference. Since in speech and writing two dif-
ferent media are employed - - Uldall's (1944: 1l1)'stream of air [and]
stream of ink' -- the relationship between them must of necessity be
arbitrary, and thus of the nature termed elsewhere 'encoding' (Stern,
1957: 487): there can be no iconic nexus. Because, however, there
need be no physical similarity between the systems, as there is in
'abridging' relationships such as exist for drum 'languages', the
writing system is free to elaborate contrasts in a wide variety of
modes.
The fundamental level at which relationship is manifested has
been mooted. Bazell (1956: 45; cf. Pulgram, 1965: 212) sees graphemes
as configurations of graphs which serve to distinguish them; likening
those features roughly to phonemes, he sees the grapheme in turn
approximating the morpheme of speech. Inrt he great majority of al-
phabetic systems, however, graphemes differ by whole figures, and
thus stand in suppletive relationship. A writing system that gave
recognition to the distinctive features (Jakobson, Fant, and Halle,
1952) of speech could be visualized: it might, for example, symbolize
each feature by a graph, so that a phoneme would be represented by a
grapheme composed of the graphs for its constituent features. Although
the manner of combination of those graphs would still be arbitrary,
such a writing system would provide a greater degree of graphic iso-
morphism to the phonological data it symbolized.
Systems of this sort have been approximated on the phonetic
level by such notations as the Bell-Sweet system of Visible Speech and
the analphabetic transcriptions of Jespersen and of Pike (see summary
in Gelb, 1962: 242f.), though both are so complicated as to defy
general use. On the phonemic level, a distintive feature notation
appears in some writing systems with wide popular currency. In the
Japanese kana syllabaries, for example, a superscript grapheme
marks the symbols for syllables with voiced stop and spirant onset,
in contrast to the same symbols which, when unmarked, represent
the voiceless counterparts.8 The Korean hangl alphabet goes further,
employing a marker to generate an aspirate stop series for graphemes
Three Pwo Karen S(: ript,; 7
which, unmarked, denote the inaspirate set, as well as denoting the
fortis stops and spirants by gemination of the graphemies for the cor-
responding lenis set. The vowel graphemes are made from one to
three basic lines in combination; by way of illastration, when the major
line is vertical, reference is to one of the front or central vowels,
when horizontal, to one of the back series.
By comparison with such systems, then, the majority of writing
systems engage phonological systems only by whole graphemes, the
references being either phones or phonenies. 'at such a correspon-
dence exists is widely affirmed; thus Vachek (1959: 28) concludes that
a relationship at this level 'still constitutes the basis upon which the
English writing norm rests'. Yet for all that Vachek (1939: 98; 1945;
1959: 9- 11), together with Uldall (1944: 11, 14), and Pulgram (1965:
208) regard the two systems as distinct; in Vachek's formulation,
writing does not exist simply as a second-order transcription of
speech but constitutes an expression of its own norms, which in turn
refer, as do speech norms, to a single common langue. Therefore,
as Bazell (1956: 44) asserts, the principles upon which a graphic system
rests are independent of referential reltationship to the phonemic system
and its norms.
This can be illustrated for allographs of the same grapheme,
which, though they must have the same phonemic referent, are not to
be paired with allophones of the linked phoneme, since the former
vary with graphic context, the latter with phonemic environment. In
Burmese, Cornyn (1944 8) distinguishes three allophones of /a/ ,
occurring in complementary tonal contexts: one appears with the tones
appropriate to open or nasalized nuclei, another with that of the stopped
nucleus, and the third with the atonic orf the unstressed, open nucleus.
Two graphemes represent /a/, one, ( ---) , having as referent the
atonic allophone, while the second, (---')syrrbolizes the remaining
vaiues. The latter, in turn, has two allographs, determined by the
form of the consonantal head. thus j --r) [ occurs with (< 0 0 3 O) ,
and sometimes with others such asC @0,> , while the second, I -.) I ,
is used with all others save the first set (Jones and Khin, 195 3: 11).
ALthough the independence of allographs fomYn allophones is inherent,
the use of two graphemes to represent the same phoneme, at least as
presented above, runs contrary to the standard sought by the misesi.onary-
inguist of a one-to-one relationship between grapheme and phoneme
(Pike, 1947: 208; Smalley, 1964). That standard may indeed be used
as an initial measure of the efficiency of representation, as in the fol-
lowing pages. Though my renmarks are cast in normative terms,
because performance is best measured against a standard, I recognize
that representational efficiency is only one of the goals of a writing
system.
For beyond the level of phonological representation, conventional
devices may employ graphemes to effect lexical distinctions, as in the
use of spelling to differentiate between homonyms* morphophonemic
8 Anthropological Linguistics, Vol. 10, No. 1
change may or may not be recognized; capital letters, underscoring,
punctuation, and the like may well provide graphemic information not
communicated or differently imparted in speech (Berry, 1958). Thus,
in Burmese the grapheme (& > /1/ is traditionally reserved for
spelling words with pejorative connotation, in distinction to the homophone
( CD ) /1/ of general use (Jones and Khin, 1953: 12, note 8). While
Vachek's characterization of speech as against writing (1959: 10f.) is
overlystereotypic, ignoring as it does the diverse styles in each medium
(thus see Nida, 1964: 124f.), he is persuasive in arguing that gra-
phemic systems are read directly in their own terms, without being
mediated by reference to speech. This latter point has been richly il-
lustrated by Bolinger (1946), who demonstrates that visually commun-
icated systems may operate for the experienced reader in virtual
independence from speech.
To this general introduction to the findings the following pages add
a more detailed consideration of the data. Concluding remarks will
touch upon the sociocultural factors which may have conditioned the
shaping of the final scripts.
1. In the detailed comparison of the solutions embodied in the
three Pwo scripts, discussion will begin with initial consonants and con-
sonantal clusters, which, together with the basic vowel grapheme, con-
stitute the elements modified by vowel constructions. Subsequent
sections will treat syllabic nuclei (comprising syllabic peak and coda),
and pitch, with a brief consideration of morphological and syntactic
conventions. In order to facilitate comparison, general phonemic pre-
sentation follows that of Jones (1961) in his analysis of Karen.
Table I lists Pwo initial consenants, together with corresponding
graphemes for Burmese and Mon and for the derivative scripts. The
list is not complete for either Mon or Burmese: only those graphs
which were chosen for some Pwo script are given. Thus, the majority
of voiced stops are omitted and, with the exception of the nasal, the
entire set of what, in Indian values, would be the retroflex series.
The order of presentation is that in which the Leke graphemes were set
forth by my informant and is retained for its evidential weight in as-
sessing the source of that script. For phonemes, the markings are:
present only in: (Moulmein dialect), Sangkhlaburi dialect; those
unmarked are common to both. In both dialects, /hf/ occur rarely.
At Sangkhlaburi, the same can be said of /r/ , while [] has but
small functional load, occurring in a few plarticles to be found in
sentence-final position; further analysis may indicate that it incor-
porates a suprasegmental phoneme. The value /z/ introduced by the
Mission script seems to be restricted to rendering Burmese loans.
In no fewer than fifteen of the twenty-eight entries, /k kh rj j t
th n p ph m j r 1 w h/, Mon and Burmese both employ the same
grapheme, and the Mission and Monastic scripts have taken over each
of these in the same form or with slight emendations. It should be