At 19:17 -0500 2003-12-12, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

>John Hudson wrote:
> > I don't have a problem with the idea that the Japanese writing system uses
>> characters from four different scripts. A script is a superset of signs,
>> and it isn't unusual for a language to be written with a subset (just as
>> English is written with the subset of the Latin script).
>
>No, it's written with the English alphabet.

Which is what? A-Z? Or does it include letters in
words like naïve, façade, rôle, coöperate, or
f¦tus?

> > Japanese happens
>> to be written with the whole set of two scripts (katakana and hiragana) and
>> a subset of two other scripts (Han characters -- or whatever you want to
>> call them -- and Latin).
>
>No, it's written with a couple of syllabaries and a batch of logograms.
>Why do you need further labels?

The couple of syllabaries have names, Katakana
and Hiragana, and we (in Unicode) call the whole
set of logograms CJK Unified Ideographs. This
doesn't differ from what you've said apart from
the names that the couple and batch are called.

> > What different term do you think should be used in
>> describing these relationships of particular writing systems to supersets
>> of related signs?
>
>Maybe the "supersets" are artifacts. (What's the opposite of the
>Gouldian sense of "spandrel" -- something that turns up as a byproduct
>of something else but is rather useless, like all that filler DNA in a
>chromosome?)

I confess I don't know who Gould is, or a
spandrel. The "superset" is just a collection of
all the Han-thingies, of which only some are used
in Japanese.
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com