Re: Number of writing systems

Michael Everson wrote:

>
> At 05:10 +0000 2005-09-26, suzmccarth wrote:
>
> > > 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.
> >
> >It *is* a regular way of indicating relationships, and Syllabics is
> >as systematic as Hangul - I don't know what that was all about. It
> >is just that 'featural' has had a different use in linguistics for
> >some time.
>
> 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".

Hallean phonology (which is the viewpoint that was incorporated into
"Chomskyan 'linguistics'" -- which is far from defunct) does not use
"feature" to refer to vowels or consonants. There is no way Cree
Syllabics can be interpreted as a "featural syllabary" using any
definition of "feature" that has ever been current in linguistics.

SPE (authored by Chomsky and Halle) has a feature [+vocalic], but even
it by itself does not demarcate the category of "vowel"; featurally,
vowels are [+vocalic, -consonantal] (and the other three permutations of
those two features are also used in describing the sound pattern of
English).

> >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" in English is singular or plural. Suzanne was likely addressing
those of you who ascribe to and have contributed to the Unicode
glossary.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...