於 Jul 2, 2004 12:03 AM 時，suzmccarth 提到：

> 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?
>

No, it would not.

Or, to be more precise, the standard morphology for writing systems has
a definition for "syllabary" which Chinese doesn't fit.

1) There are far more units in the writing system than syllables in the
language(s) it's used for

2) Symbols frequently have multiple, context-dependent pronunciations
which are frequently unrelated

3) Most syllables have multiple symbols associated with them

4) New symbols can be made up at any point and added to the system

5) Native readers/speakers don't think of it that way, nor are they
taught to learn it that way

This isn't to say that an alternate morphology is impossible. You
could also classify bats with birds, but don't expect biologists to
follow suit.

========
John H. Jenkins
jenkins@...
jhjenkins@...
http://homepage.mac.com/jhjenkins/