John Jenkins wrote:

>
> On Dec 13, 2003, at 11:20 AM, Patrick Chew wrote:
>
> > I think it's a given that we acknowledge that there are
> > "phonetic"
> > components to Han logograms (hrm.. will this be a safe term to use?)
>
> Nah. I think I dislike the term "logogram" about as much as Peter
> dislikes "ideograph."

Morphogram would be better, but then you have to explain what morphemes
are.

Why do you dislike logogram?

> (This is one of the many reasons why Unicode sticks with "ideograph."
> It doesn't favor one nomenclature or another because everybody hates
> it.)
>
> > I wonder, though, how is it, then, that we can "derive" or
> > access
> > the phonetics from the _base_ graphemes? If broken down to the set of
> > graphemes used as "phonetic" components, there seems to be an
> > overwhelmingly large set of overlap (with *semantic* distinction)
> > given the
> > range of the phonology - even if using reconstructed phonologies for
> > Old
> > Chinese or Proto-Sino-Tibetan.
> >
>
> I'm sure this has been studied. Richard Cook of Berkeley has done some
> studies I know of using the traditional Chinese fancie system of
> indicating pronunciation, and found that the whole process is rather
> circular.

Yet somehow speakers of the language can usually figure out unfamiliar
characters from the components and the context. Remember, they _already
know_ the language perfectly.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...