* Peter T. Daniels
|
| Maybe you can "classify" writing systems without using the category.
| Fine! But if your "classification" doesn't note that Korean is
| qualitatively different from all the others, then it's missing
| something.
This I agree with. There are two things that set Hangul apart, and a
classification that is explicit about at least one of them is better
than one that is not.
* Marco Cimarosti
|
| Any term is arbitrary and conventional, of course. Nevertheless,
| standing the linguistic meaning of the English term "feature", seems
| to me that "featural" may suggests "something connected with
| (phonetic) features".
Well, that is one of the things that sets Hangul apart, isn't it?
There is a systematic correspondence between the shapes of basic
symbols and phonetic features, and this is what is meant by calling it
"featural".
| But Hangul is not more "connected with phonetic features" than many
| other writings systems.
Not necessarily more, but perhaps in a different way. Abugidas, for
example, denote vowels in a systematic way. However, as far as I
understand, vowels are _not_ features, and therefore abugidas are not
featural scripts.
So, since there are many properties of speech which are not features,
not all scripts are featural.
| What is unique in Hangul (compared to purely alphabetic writing) is
| that each syllable is graphically organized in a square cluster,
| which must necessarily include an initial consonant sign, a vowel
| sign, and an optional final consonant sign.
How individual symbols are organized in Hangul is another thing that
sets it apart, yes, but that's not what makes Hangul featural.
| So, one could argue that the term "featural" fails to explain *what*
| is unique in Hangul.
Well, I don't think "featural" does explain what is unique about
Hangul, nor do I think it (as a type in a typology) should even try.
The proponents of the term have noted that the Gregg and Pitman
shorthand systems are also featural, so clearly the term is not meant
to define what's unique about Hangul. (We already have a term for
that: "Hangul". :-)
| However, while "ideographic" is a venerable term, very difficult to
| eradicate, "featural" is much younger, and perhaps it is still
| possible to come up with a more descriptive alternative:
| "clustered"? "structured"? "syllabic"? etc.
That's a term for something else, methinks. And since the other types
have more to do with the relation between symbols and sounds than with
the organization of symbols I don't think a type of this kind would
fit very well.
Of course, you could try making a different typology where the
organization of symbols is what the types are organized by. Who knows,
it might even work. :-)