Re: caselike gender system

Nokta Kanto writes:
 > On Thu, 19 Dec 2002 18:28:06 +0000, Tim May <butsuri@...> wrote:
 >
 > >That frame thingy around the characters looks very nice.  The
 > >glosses don't line up with the heading "meaning" on the characters
 > >page, though.
 >
 > Thanks. Which browser are you using?
 >
Konqueror v3.0.4 (that's what I meant by "I do", but I guess it was
ambiguous).

 > >Also, in your introduction you say written Chinese is a "pure example
 > >of an ideographic language" which just isn't true - there's a large
 > >phonetic component.  See e.g. http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm
 >
 > Actually, I've seen that page before. I thought that since there is one
 > meaning per character, it is ideographic, regardless of the character's
 > construction. But I'll change that.
 >
 > ...?
 >
Well, the preferred term is logographic (morpho-syllabic is more
precisely descriptive of Chinese, but logographic is better known).
Characters represent not so much particular ideas as particular
morphemes of the spoken language.

Try reading _Cracking the Maya Code_, by Michael Coe.  He goes on at
length about hew there are, historically, no ideographic scripts (so
that he can demonstrate the foolishness of Mayanists who insisted that
the Mayan glyphs must have been principally ideographic, and were
subsequently proved wrong).