--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "John H. Jenkins" <jenkins@...> wrote:

>
> ©ó Jul 2, 2004 12:03 AM ®É¡Asuzmccarth ´£¨ì¡G
>
> > 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

I have picked up the term 'morphosyllabic' from W.Y.S. Wang, 1981
and later Defrancis. http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/visible/

And Hockett seems to define Chinese as a syllabary which ....

More recently Doctoral Dissertation of Chih-Hao Tsai says
"In the modern system, the characters map onto the language at both
syllable and morpheme levels. Despite the significant shift of their
function from logographic to morphosyllabic, the Chinese characters
still bear much resemblance in structure to their classic yet
stylish forms stabilized in the Han dynasty about two thousand years
ago."
http://www.geocities.com/hao520/research/dissertation/chapter-2.htm

So I have been thinking that historically and in structural
appearance Chinese is logographic, but functionally it is
morphosyllabic.

> 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.
>

I am not trying to invent a classification, I am trying to use a
classification in a systematic way to further my own educational
research.

Suzanne McCarthy

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