Re: Graphemes defined

Peter T. Daniels scripsit:

> IOW, it's not the slightest bit like a phoneme, a morpheme, a tagmeme,
> etc.; so why should it be an -eme word?

As I said, I solicit an alternative term that is less misleading.

> Is <sh> a grapheme of English? <th>? <ng>? <ough>? (NB those four
> examples are in a deliberate order.)

No, no, no, and no.

> What are the graphemes of Chinese?

I don't know.

> That's like saying there's no /x/ in English despite "Bach."

Indeed it is, and I agree: there is no /x/ in English, though [x] ~ [X]
occasionally appears as an L1- or L2-contaminated variety of /k/ in certain
borrowed lexical items. (I use phoneme slashes in a Newtonian manner.)

> > The Unicode Standard used this term between versions 3.0 and 4.0, when they
> > abandoned it in favor of the unanalyzable (in this context) term "grapheme
> > cluster".

Mea culpa: I should have said "The Unicode Standard used this term *in the
above sense*" etc.

--
Yes, chili in the eye is bad, but so is your John Cowan
ear. However, I would suggest you wash your jcowan@...
hands thoroughly before going to the toilet. http://www.reutershealth.com
--gadicath http://www.ccil.org/~cowan