--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...>
wrote:

> suzmccarth wrote:
>
> > For Syllabics, basic units of representation are syllable level
> > graphs, analyzable by shape for consonants, and by orientation
> > (rather than rotation) for vowels - could it be called an
> > alphasyllabary?
>
> No, but it could be called an abugida, if one felt that one of the
> orientations was the base and the other three were rotations.

No, they are organized as either down up right left; or upper right
and left, and lower right and left. Two sets of reflections.

After your comment I went back to Vadja's site and found that he
calls Chinese an írregular syllabary. 'Irregular' for Vadja means
heterographic. Therefore Japanese would be a regular syllabary
according to Vadja.

<http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/ling201/writingsystems/developmentc
hinesewriting.htm>

I like him already! But he should know to abbreviate his webpage
filenames.

"Syllabaries may also be irregular to varying degrees. Syllabaries
may be highly regular phonetically: ... Or they may be highly
irregular, with the meaning of words and morphemes being taken into
account in the writing of the sound of each syllable: this is the
case with Japanese Kanji and modern Chinese characters."

http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/ling201/test4materials/Writing1.htm

Vadja even finds that morphosyllabic is not right for Chinese,
hence 'irregular' syllabary.

"All true writing somehow represents units of sound. Representation
of particular sounds is the primary function of the symbols of true
writing. Through the medium of graphic symbols which represent
sound, true writing represents concepts and ideas. So, in the case
of all true writing there is present the correlation:

graphic symbol (grapheme) = sound unit of a language"

Suzanne