--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, Andrew Dunbar <hippietrail@...> wrote:

> Blyssymbolics is a written-only language.
> Blyssymbolics is a language without a writing system.
> A writing system is clearly not a system of writing.
>
> Everybody got that?

Everybody should have gotten this, don't you think? A writing system
is the relationship between two things - the graphs and the units of
language, usually speech, utterance, sounds patterns, something like
that. If there are not two things being related then it is not a
writing system, it is a script or a system of writing if you will,
but not a "writing system"

That is one of the reasons why the term 'featural' is so odd
because 'featural' would normally be understood by linguists as
describing how the graphs relate to the sound patterns of the
language, not how the graphs relate to each other. The "system" in
writing system is not about how the graphs interact with each other
but how the graphs represent speech. That is the major way to
classify writing systems.

How the graphs relate to each other, like contextual shaping, may
also be studied and discussed, but these are script characteristics -
a different issue.

Suzanne