suzmccarth wrote:

>
> --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "John H. Jenkins" <jenkins@...> wrote:
>
> > Personally, I believe that just calling them "Han
> > characters," or "Chinese characters," or "sinograms" is to be
> preferred
> > over other words.
> >
>
> This sounds a little more straight forward. There probably isn't a
> need for a specific linguistic label.

Of course there's a need for a specific linguistic label.

> A description of how
> thesystem works should be enough.

For whom??

> If Han Chinese characters
> function as ideographs in some way then say that.

They don't.

> Linguistic terms,
> as unqualified types, should probably be left to a different arena
> altogether.

Well _I_ sure didn't drag them into this arena.

> Evidently Daniels terms were meant to indicate historic order. It

No, they are meant to indicate types. After the classification was
introduced, it proved to illumniate history rather spectacularly.

> might be better not to label concurrent systems used for
> technological communication and nation-building as if they belonged
> to either an earlier or later historic period. It might label some
> systems as if they were more suited to the needs of modernity,
> e.g.literacy and democracy, than others.

Ok, Cree is written with democratic characters and Chinese with
communist characters. What does that illuminate?

> On the topic of replacing terms that are already in traditional use,
> virtually all land surveys in Canada are still in the imperial
> system. Even if there were an agreement on new terminology, it might
> take more than a generation to have these terms accepted.
>
> I would certainly wish to invite Peter Daniels to more genial debate
> if so many different issues were not intertwined. I find his ideas
> quite interesting but cannot accept his typology as the status quo
> for use outside the discussion of the *history* of writing
> systems.

Nor did I ever suggest that it be.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...