Young-Key Kim-Renaud wrote:

>
> From: suzmccarth <suzmccarth@...>
> Date: Thursday, July 22, 2004 11:31 pm
> Subject: Re: How about a typology for input methods
>
> > --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, Young-Key Kim-Renaud <kimrenau@...>
> > wrote:
> >
> > The letters are not put into syllable blocks randomly as
> > > > > a bundle! That is why han'gul is neither a syllabary nor an
> > > > > alphasyllabary, but simply an alphabet.
> >
> > Korean seems to me also to fit best with alphabets as it is a
> > script
> > that segments and sequences phonemes. The reason for hesitating
> > when the word linear comes up is that Korean does not fit phonemes
> > in a 'line' on the computer so it originally got a different
> > treatment than alphabets. But otherwise I think it fits well into
> > the alphabet class.
>
>
>
> If an alphabet is defined as "a system of signs expressing single [distinctive] sounds of speech" (Gelb 1952:166),

Which isn't an adequate definition (but it enabled his alphabetolatry).

> the Korean writing system is an alphabetic system. The confusion comes from the fact that han'gul letters were not arbitrarily chosen like in most alphabetic systems but were created based on deep linguistic knowledge of the Korean sound system. And other important linguistic units such as syllable are well accommodated.

Thus the classification doesn't apply to it.

Because you post lines of length > 256 (or 512 or 1024?) characters,
they don't get Quoted in my Reply. But here's a passage I don't agree
with:

> The reason why Peter and some others think han'gul

is "outside the classification" typologically is that the alphabetic
letters are assembled into syllable blocks in writing.

The reason I think it's outside the classification is that it was the
product of linguistic sophistication and hasn't "just growed."
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...