Marco Cimarosti wrote:

>
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > Yes. "Logographic" means that what the symbol encodes is a word (a
> > morpheme, to be more precise).
>
> This sounds fine.
>
> > Or, as C. F. Hockett put it, a logographic system is a syllabary
> > that distinguishes homophones.
>
> This sounds silly...
>
> How can Egyptian writing be called a "syllabary" (whatever it does or does
> not distinguish semantically)?

No one supposes that it is ...

> Even Chinese characters, as used in Japanese, are in no way "syllabic":
> several On readings are by-syllabic, and Kun readings can be several
> syllables long.

So who says kanji are a syllabary?
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...