--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, Michael Everson <everson@...> wrote:
At 05:10 +0000 2005-09-26, suzmccarth wrote:

> Has it, indeed. You know what? All linguists do not share the same
> opinions, or the same definitions. But maybe you're too young to
> remember the Hell that was Chomskyan "linguistics".
>
> >Anyway, at least I can quote this and say that this is what you
>>were
> >trying to say.
>
> What *I* was trying to say?

*You* said that Syllabics is a 'featural syllabary' because "regular
rotations and superscription of base characters was a regular way of
indicating relationships."

Featural means regular? Is this your definition? Someboy else's
definition? Explain yourself.

It is not only that we don't share a defintion but that Unicode does
not *provide* a definition for this idiosyncratic use of the
term 'featural'.

I can't know what Uniocde means without some kind of difintion. There
is no footnote or reference for this term in Unicode - I don't
remember anyone ever calling Cree a 'featural syllabary' before
Unicode or using the term featural to describe vowel markings anywhere
else. Can you provide a history for this or any reference at all.
Please.

(Anyway, they aren't usually called rotations but orientations,
vertical and horizontal flips, orientations - a detail.)

> But maybe you're too young to
> remember the Hell that was Chomskyan "linguistics".


I am not too young, I do remember Chomsky, when his stuff was fairly
new, and I am trying to write an academic article about Cree. Should I
ignore Unicode entirely, or will you give me a real explanation for
the term featural?

I remember Blissymbolics being used in Ontario in the 1970's, for
goodness sake. Do you think I make this stuff up?

Suzanne




> --
> Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com