Re: Number of writing systems

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

>
> On Sep 22, 2005, at 8:09 PM, suzmccarth wrote:
>
> > Not to mention the everlasting suggestion that 'ideographic' is a
> > term that is 'widely understood', rather than 'widely
> > misunderstood'. If 'ideographic' is a legacy term that could be
> > explicitly explained and one could learn to live with it.
> >
>
> "Widely understood" by non-specialists. Most educated people

would

> know what is meant by "Chinese ideograph," whereas "Chinese

logogram"

> would be less understood

I get it now. I didn't take it that way. I thought it meant that the
*concept* of ideographic was `widely understood', not that there
would be a widely made association between Chinese characters and the
word ideographic by non-specialists. Maybe, one could say that
ideographic is 'a commonly used term'. As I said, I do see why it is
used.

>
> In any event, Unicode is stuck with the term "ideograph" now and
> can't get rid of it.

I know that. Is that also true for the term 'featural syllabary'and
the assignation of Ethiopic to the class of 'featural syllabaries'?

> > I realize DeFrancis is considered obscure for some reason unknown

to

> > me, since I think his books are great.
> >
>
> No, he's not obscure. Everybody thinks his books are great. I do
> need to re-read them to see how he handles the use of kanji in
> Japanese and hanja in Korean, but his books are IMHO a sine qua

non

> for anyone interested in East Asian writing.
>
> FWIW, the ideograph myth is also discussed in the latest version

of

> my paper, "The Dao of Unihan," at

<http://homepage.mac.com/jhjenkins/

> Unicode/DaoOfUnihan.pdf>

I read it last year and found it very interesting but probably didn't
retain much. I would like to read it again.

>
> > However, I take it 'morphosyllabic' is not 'satisfactory'. I can
> > only assume that this is because it does not sufficiently befuddle
> > the reader.
> >
>
> Something like that. :-)

Thanks!

>Really the only truly sensible approach is to do what East
> Asians do, call them "Chinese characters," and have done with it.
> Naming them by function always runs afoul of the exceptions.
>
> > Is it true that for Chinese, "the units of the writing system are
> > used primarily to write words and/or morphemes of words" - surely
> > there is a primary relationship between the graphs and the sound
> > patterns at the syllable level - no?
> >
>
> I'm not sure what you mean here. The *primary* quality of the
> Chinese characters is their semantics -- at least, for most of

them.

> In Chinese -- but not in Japanese -- each graph represents a

single

> syllable, but not necessarily the same syllable, depending on
> context. In Mandarin, roughly 25% of the characters have multiple
> pronunciations.

I thought that writing systems were now classified *primarily*
according to the way that the units of writing related to the units
of speech, that is phonology. Then *secondarily*, by the degree of
logography or morphemic representation. Sproat states this explicitly
by creating an x axis for type of phonography and a y axis for amount
of logography, (though DeFrancis would say morphography). However, I
assumed that this was the current commonly understood principle for
writing systems taxonomy. Obviously I have assumed more consensus in
the field that there is. Sorry.

Maybe this list of crude taxonomies posted by Sproat would represent
the problem better. At the bottom of the webpage there is a series of
tree diagrams. There is a shift from "logographic and phonographic"
(Sampson) being the primary contrast, to "syllabic and segmental"
(DeFrancis) being the primary contrast.

http://catarina.ai.uiuc.edu/L403C/lecture2.html

Suzanne