  We present chemical abundance measurements for 19 damped lya systems observed
with HIRES on the 10m W.M. Keck Telescope. Our principal goal is to investigate
the abundance patterns of the damped systems and thereby determine the
underlying physical processes which dominate their chemical evolution. We place
particular emphasis on gauging the relative importance of two complementary
effects often invoked to explain the damped lya abundances: (1) nucleosynthetic
enrichment from Type II supernovae and (2) an ISM-like dust depletion pattern.
  Similar to the principal results of Lu et al. (1996), our observations lend
support both for dust depletion and Type II SN enrichment. Specifically, the
observed overabundance of Zn/Fe and underabundance of Ni/Fe relative to solar
abundances suggest significant dust depletion within the damped lya systems.
Meanwhile, the relative abundances of Al, Si, and Cr vs. Fe are consistent with
both dust depletion and Type II supernova enrichment. Our measurements of Ti/Fe
and the Mn/Fe measurements from Lu et al. (1996), however, cannot be explained
by dust depletion and indicate an underlying Type II SN pattern. Finally, the
observed values of [S/Fe] are inconsistent with the combined effects of dust
depletion and the nucleosynthetic yields expected for Type II supernovae. This
last result emphasizes the need for another physical process to explain the
damped lya abundance patterns.
  We also examine the metallicity of the damped lya systems both with respect
to Zn/H and Fe/H. Our results confirm previous surveys by Pettini and
collaborators, i.e., [<Zn/H>] = -1.15 +/- 0.15 dex. [abridged]
