Re: Which scripts show syllable breaks

Joachim Pense wrote:
>
> Am Sat, 28 Jan 2006 14:13:55 GMT schrieb Peter T. Daniels:
>
> > Joachim Pense wrote:
> >>
> >> Am Fri, 27 Jan 2006 19:35:18 +0000 schrieb Steve Jones:
> >>
> >>> ranjit_mathews@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> >>>> Which, if any, languages are normally written using scripts and
> >>>> conventions that tell the reader where the syllable breaks are?
> >> ...
> >>> syllabaries
> >>
> >> Probably; which? Certainly not the Japanese syllabaries, they indicate
> >> moras.
> >>
> >> OTOH chinese script, which is not a syllabary, does indicate the syllable
> >> breakes.
> >
> > What do you mean by "syllabary," such that neither Japanese nor Chinese
> > qualifies?
>
> Japanese is normally called a syllabary; but it does not indicate the
> syllable breaks.

It does to anyone who can read it.

Some examples of where bits of syllables are written with symbols that
mostly denote other syllables (as with Indic aksharas [except Tamil])?

> For a syllabary I would expect a one-to-one or
> near-one-to-one-correspondence between the syllables and the characters.
> But in Chinese, we have one-to-many.
>
> >
> > Moras and syllables are not mutually exclusive.
> >
>
> No, but there are two-more syllables in Japanese.
>
> > Morphosyllabaries record syllables with meanings.
>
> Ok. So Chinese characters form a morphosyllabary. Makes sense. At least
> extensionally (and that's probably what counts, because modern linguistics
> is a child of the twentieth century). But intensionally (or do you call
> that word "intentionally" in English?) I have my doubts. Chinese characters
> record morphemes with meanings, and the morphemes happen to be syllables.
> But if there was a sound change so what now is a syllable would become
> two-syllable units, the characters would denote the two-syllable units.
> This is because the idea of the characters is to denote morphemes, not
> syllables.

There are two-syllable morphemes in Chinese ('butterfly' is the famous
one; others were posted here just a few days ago), and they are written
with two characters.

Some examples of morphemes growing new syllables?
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.

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