Re: Number of writing systems

At 03:02 +0000 2005-09-29, suzmccarth wrote:

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

I said:

"If you think about it you might suppose that it must have been
because someone thought that regular rotations and superscription of
base characters was a regular way of indicating relationships."

This is just me trying to interpret what "featural" might mean if
applied to Syllabics. I did not apply the term to it. I don't think
it is a particularly useful term with regard to the taxonomy of
writing systems.

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

I didn't try to define it.

>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'.

Are you interested in improving a definition? We did use this list to
improve the definitions of Abjad, Abugida, and Alphabet.

>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.

I cannot. You could ask this question on the Unicode list, where
people track those things. I track other things.

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

Same difference.

>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.

Oh. Will this help the Cree?

>Should I ignore Unicode entirely, or will you give me a real
>explanation for the term featural?

If you think about it you might suppose that the term must have been
used because someone thought that regular rotations and
superscription of base characters was a regular way of indicating
relationships.

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

Blissymbolics is still being used now. And it's a writing system. And
it's a language too.
--
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com