suzmccarth wrote:

>
> --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, John Cowan <cowan@...> wrote:
> > Peter T. Daniels scripsit:
> >
> > > > 4. logosyllabary: structural units represent syllables and/or
> > > > morphemes (e.g. Chinese ideographs)"
> > >
> > > Why "and/or"?
> >
> > Certainly there are now many Chinese words in which the hanzi are
> functioning as
> > mere syllabograms, from the classical hudie to the modern
> bu'ershuwike; in
> > addition, there are more marginal cases like mamahuhu and dongxi.
>
> Okay, now I see why the 'and/or'. Thanks. (Actually this is why I
> was mumbling on about 'bound morphemes' earlier. Just to say that
> they weren't stand alone characters, not words.) Is there any word
> that can express this about Chinese without using the
> term 'morphosyhllabic'?
>
> > No theoretical schema can precisely carve the complexities of the
> Real World
> > into neat little chunks.
>
> Salient features then - no classes or types? Then a script can have
> several salient features and not be placed in any one group.
> Sometimes different langauge communities see the same script
> different ways. Some see Cree as being phonemic, others more
> syllabic. (The Cree always claim this difference but I would find it
> hard to define without scanning in a collection of handwritten and
> published Cree from across the country.)

Of course Cree is phonemic. It just gives you its phonemes two at a
time. What are you claiming now??
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...