LM ==> Lars Marius Garshol
KW ==> Kenneth Whistler
ME ==> Michael Everson
JS ==> Jungshik Shin
JS> For instance, Korean Hangul is not only featural but also alphabetic
JS> and alphasyllabaric.
LM> How can this be? If a script uses diacritics out of temporal order to
LM> indicate vowels it can't be an alphabet, and, similarly, if it does
LM> not, how can it be an alphasyllabary?
LM> I'm not convinced that you are wrong, but I'm not convinced that you
LM> are right, either. Could you elaborate?
KW>The jamo clearly constitute an alphabet, which I think is Jungshik's
KW>point. I'm not sure about the alphasyllabic status,
Yes, it's my principal point that Hangul is an alphabetic script
because Jamo is an alphabet. When it was invented by King Sejong and
scholars in his court and officially announced on October 9th, 1446,
Hangul was described as consisting of 28 characters (17 consonants and
11 vowels. 3 consonants and 1 vowel are not used in modern Korean so
we have 14 consonants and 10 vowels in modern Korean) as opposed to
counting almost infinite - in theory - number of syllables that could
be made out of those consonants and vowels (note that Middle Korean
allowed consonant clusters at the initial consonant position. Modern
Korean still does in a sense in a form of 'double' consonants)
As for alphasyllabic status, I think I have to take that back.
ME> Hangul is an alphabet. It organizes its letters into syllable
ME> clusters, but it is an alphabet.
LM> This is what Kenneth Whistler also says, and I agree that it makes
LM> sense. Peter T. Daniels, on the other hand, says that it is a featural
LM> script[1], while Ross King says that it is a "phonemically based
LM> alphabet"[2].
To me, that Daniels and King came up with two different 'designations'
for Hangul just strengthens the case that Hangul cannot be put into
any single type, but it is both. And other scripts may have similar
characteristics so that I think it'd better to life the restriction of
'pigeon-holing'. How about making a table with one axis running along
scripts and the other axis along various characteristics?
KW> The way Daniels defines it is "In a featural system, like
KW> Korean or 'phonotypic' shorthand, the shapes of the characters
KW> correlate with distinctive features of the segments of the
KW> language." Taken as a syllabary, Korean fits that bill, since
KW> the parts of the syllable (the jamo) do *correlate* with
KW> distinctive segmental features of the language. Furthermore,
KW> the single versus double jamo spelling for initial consonants
KW> correlates with the systematic manner distinction for consonants
KW> in Korean.
KW> Since the syllabic units themselves are constructed
KW> by regular rules from the jamo, they are featural as well.
KW> So the Korean writing system, as Jungshik suggested, is both
KW> an alphabet (at the lower level) and a featural syllabary (at
KW> the higher level).
I think this is a fair summary except for one thing I like to add.
Why is Hangul featural? As Ken wrote, Hangul is featural at
the higher level (syllable level). However, I had something different
in mind when I wrote that Hangul is featural. (actually, Ken alluded
to a part of what I'm writing when talking about single consonant vs
double consonant.) It's also featural at a lower level. The shape
of basic consonants - Giyeok [k/g], Nieun [n], Digeut [t/d], etc - were
devised to 'imitate' the shape of 'vocal organs' when they're pronounced
(with varying degree of success given a limited but then the state of the
art understanding of ....) The shape of 'derived'/related consonants
were determined/derived by adding a stroke or point to basic consonants
( Giyeok [k/g] -> Kieuk [k'], Digeut [t/d] -> Tieut[t'], etc) so that
consonants close in terms of pronunciation are similar to each other in
their shapes as well. This was recorded in Hun-min-jeong-um (a book
by which Hangul was officially announced and the official name of the
script when it was invented).
As for vowels, basic vowels ( A, Eo, O, U, EU, I ) don't have
any featural characteristics ('Hun-min-jeong-um' recorded that shapes
of these vowels came from 'heaven', 'earth' and 'man', but....), but
the way diphtong and more complex vowels are formed out of basic vowels
could well be regarded as featural in a sense.
I also think this was succinctly summarized
by Michael when he wrote the following (although 'happens to be' may not
be entirely right given that they're designed that way by its inventors)
ME> It's an alphabet which happens to be featural with regard to its glyphs.
BTW, it just occurred to me that Latin alphabets can be regarded
as featural in that various vowels with related/similar pronunciations
are distinguished by adding diacritics to base vowels. This is
Jungshik Shin
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