At 16:44 -0700 2001-10-11, Kenneth Whistler wrote: > > 1. Hangul is a featural script, which is means a script where > > the shapes of the basic symbols are organized by phonetic > > principles. > >I disagree with this characterization of a featural system. It isn't >that the "shapes of the basic symbols are organized by phonetic >principles", but rather than aspects of some of the shapes of >the symbols (not necessarily "basic symbols") are *correlated* >with segmental distinctions made by the language(s) which are >written with the script.
Shavian, Sweet's phonetic shorthand, and Cirth are featural alphabets. Tengwar then is a featural abjad (though it can be used alphabetically just as the Hebrew abjad is used alphabetically to write Yiddish). And Canadian Syllabics and Ethiopic are featural syllabaries. >So the Korean writing system, as Jungshik suggested, is both >an alphabet (at the lower level) and a featural syllabary (at >the higher level). I think rather that it is a featural alphabet (at the lower level) and a syllabary (at the higher level) Because aspects of the shapes of the symbols are correlated to segmental distinctions. I don't think the typographic arrangement of the symbols relates to those distinctions. -- Michael Everson *** Everson Typography *** http://www.evertype.com 15 Port Chaeimhghein �ochtarach; Baile �tha Cliath 2; �ire/Ireland Telephone +353 86 807 9169 *** Fax +353 1 478 2597 (by arrangement)
