On 11/13/2001 10:00:31 AM Michael Everson wrote:

>>Why? What is it that makes us willing to use "featural" to describe
>>a script? Obviously it has some limits; what are they?
>
>Shapes. A featural syllabary uses its glyphs to help you remember and
>recognize the sounds. "All these ones that look alike have a similar
>sound". A non-featural syllabary is a collection of shapes that have
>no systematic relation to the sounds they represent.

It sounds, then, like every abugida would by definition (assuming your
definition) be featural.

>Look at the script. See if it has any systematic relation between
>shapes and sounds, or if they're just conventional, unrelated to one
>another.

That's a little more explicit. I think it should be fleshed out more,
though.

>>The shape P can also easily be morphed
>>into the shape D, and there is some commonality in terms of articulation
>>(they're both stops) in the sounds.
>
>Stopness seems pretty weak.

That's exactly one of the points of the example: the definition you gave
didn't give any idea of what the limits are. The second point was a
corrolary: you could take it and identify a lot of more or less ad hoc
pairs and claim that they fit the description you gave.

>>What exactly is your (or anybody's) meaning of "featural"?
>
>Vide supra.

What I "vide supra"-ed wasn't explicit enough for me to know how to apply
it, which is why I asked again. Some of your more recent comments are
moving closer to an adequately explicit definition.

>> >The West African syllabaries, some of them, do things like add dots
>> >in the centre to indicate some vowels. Whatever the system is, it's
>> >the systematic relation of glyphs to sounds that makes it featural.
>>
>>O systematically relates to certain sounds, but I don't see any reason

to

>>say therefore that Latin is featural.
>
>O? The letter O?

My point was your statement, viz. "it's the systematic relation of glyphs
to sounds that makes it featural" is so inexplicit as to make it
ineffectual.

>>By this definition, every writing system is featural.
>
>Whatever the system is, it's the systematic relation of glyph shapes
>to sounds that makes it featural.

Virtually every occurrence of "o" in English relates to a certain limited
ranges of sounds. Similarly every occurrence of "i" or "w" or "t" relates
to certain limited ranges of sounds. There are, therefore, systematic
relationships between glyph shapes and sounds, and thus English
orthography fits your definition. If the conclusion isn't what we want,
then I'd suggest that the definition isn't adequate.

BTW, I don't think we want a definition that talks about relationships to
sounds (which are language-specific) unless we want to create a typology
of orthographies rather than of scripts. Maybe that's what is wanted, but
I don't think that's where we should be going.



- Peter


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Constable

Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International
7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA
Tel: +1 972 708 7485
E-mail: <peter_constable@...>