Re: Abugidas (was: Chinese writing systems)

Florian Rivoal writes:
 > >Florian Rivoal writes:
 > > > >This sounds more like a featural syllabary, like Hangul.
 > > >
 > > > Hangul is not at all a syllabary. It is definitly an alphabet. You
 > > > can be tricted because characters are grouped by syllab, but it is
 > > > only visual.
 > > >
 > >
 > >I'm not sure that that's a meaningful distinction.  You can equally
 > >view each grouping as a regularly constructed syllabic character -
 > >this is how Korean fonts work.  It's generally considered an alphabet,
 > >but I've seen reference books that refer to it a syllabary.
 >

 >Is english considered ideographic because you group the letter by
 > words, and thus, if you consider a word as a single unit, every
 > unit of the writing system refers to a meaning? certainly not.

There have been analyses which suggest that English orthography is
best considered as partly logographic, yes. (Less because of breaking
characters into words than because of the retention of the same
spelling in derived forms which are pronounced differently, though, I
think.)

>
 > Hangul is not a syllabary. a syllabary is a system in which one
 > atomic symbol is one syllable. Hangul clearly does not work like
 > this. One atomic symbol is one sound. And this alphabet is pretty
 > well designed, on a linguistic point of view. the same phonetic
 > opposition is always noted the same way: "b" have the same
 > diference to "p" than "d" to "t" or "g" to "k"... This works also
 > with vowels "a" "e" "o" regularly change to "ya" "ye" "yo"...
 >

Look, we both know how Hangul works.  I'm just saying it's possible to
analyse it this way.  None of my definitions of the word "syllabary"
include the word "atomic".  Saying that someone who understands how
the system works is "tricked" into thinking it's a syllabary is just
silly.

Besides, your pointing out that there are elements that describe
features below the level of the phoneme would by the same logic
indicate that at least some of the characters aren't alphabetic
either, but rather collections of featural signs.  How can you say
that <h>+<a>+<n> isn't a syllabic character, and then maintain the
velar + aspirated _is_ a consonantal character?

 > the computer point of view is just because it is more easy to store
 > in a machine complete blocks of letters, than the rules saying
 > whether this letter should be on the left or under this other one.
 >

This is true, but irrelevant - I simply point out that each syllable
has a distinct character.  The fact that each such character is
regularly composed from more basic alphabetic characters does not
alter the fact that it can be seen as a syllabary on one level.

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