suzmccarth wrote:

>
> --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, John Cowan <cowan@...> wrote:
> > Peter T. Daniels scripsit:
> >
> > > Yes. "Logographic" means that what the symbol encodes is a word (a
> > > morpheme, to be more precise). Or, as C. F. Hockett put it, a
> > > logographic system is a syllabary that distinguishes homophones.
> >
> > Why call it "logographic" if it encodes morphemes rather than words?
> > That merely confuses the issue when dealing with genuine logograms
> > (which do exist, even though there are no genuinely logographic
> > writing systems).
> >
> > --
> > John Cowan www.ccil.org/~cowan www.reutershealth.com cowan@...
>
> This confuses me as well. Would it not be accurate to call the
> Chinese writing system a syllabary which maps a language with a
> relatively high ratio of syllable to morpheme correspondance?

And other languages have some other rate of syllable to morpheme
correspondence?? What _are_ you saying?
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...