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From: deb5@ellis.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: Korean: Odd man out?
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References: <4kd461$hr1@juliana.sprynet.com> <SDLEE.96Apr9210621@wisdom.cs.hku.hk> <DpLyFn.4qL@midway.uchicago.edu> <316AC53D.1340@esinet.net>
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 1996 01:03:19 GMT
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In article <316AC53D.1340@esinet.net>,
Tihamer von Ghyczy  <ghyczy@esinet.net> wrote:
>Daniel von Brighoff wrote:
>> >>>>>> "R" == R Jeffrey Grace <rjgrace@pobox.com> writes:
>> >
>> >    R> I was wondering how the Korean language is viewed by Linguists,
>> >    R> given the fact that it's alphabet is so unique.  How does it
>> >    R> stand to study?
>
>> >The  Korean alphabet is unique?  How?
>> 
>>         It is one of the only (if not the only) alphabet now in general
>> use which was devised by a group scholars according to definite linguis-
>> tic principles.
>
>Do we know that with some certainty? Most alphabets make a reasonably systematic
>impression. As if designed or, at least, standardized at some stage by
>people who had the authority to enforce the rules.

	That's not the kind of systematicity I mean.  What graphic
features in the Roman (or Cyrillic, or Devanagri, or Batak)
alphabet relate t to d and distinguish both from b and p?  Or link
the nasals (m, n, N) in contrast to other consonants?  Some alpha-
bets clearly distinguish vowels graphically from consonants (e.g. by
treating them as diacritics rather than full letters), but these tend 
to be alphabets (like the Semitic scripts) which did not originally
represent vowels.

	In hankul, all of this relationships are more-or-less transparent.
The labials, for example, are all built around a basic square shape.  /m/
is a simple box, /p/ is a box with the vertical sides extended above the
top line, and /ph/ is a box with the horizontal sides extended past both
vertical lines.  All of the vowels are formed from some combination of a
vertical line (the basis for /u/, /wu/, and /o/) or a vertical line (the
basis for /a/, /e/, and /i/) and one or two dots.

	Subsequent phonological changes and scribal simplifications have 
only partially obscured these systematic relations.

>This happened very late with the Korean alphabet (if I recall correctly in the
>16th or 17th century) and thus we know more about how and with what principles
>in mind it was designed. In the design process, they all must have used 
>linguistic principles. This is true by definition. Some of the principles 
>may not have been very sound but that is a different matter.

Perhaps I should have said "linguistical principles" to make it clear
that I mean "principles of linguistics" rather than "principles of lan-
guage."  By definition, all script designers use the latter, but few have
taken advantage of the former.

	With most alphabets, we can clearly trace their evolution from
non-alphabetic scripts, many of which were logographic in nature and
thus had no systematic graphic relation between form and pronunciation.
Even those whose origin is more obscure (like Georgian, Turkic runes--
or have these been demonstrated to derive from Sogdian script?--and so
forth) do not show this kind of relationship.  Some syllabaries (such 
as those used for Amharic and Cree) have systematic features relating,
above all to depiction of vowels, but, with the exception of recently-
designed scripts (like the Shavian alphabet or Tolkien's tengwar and 
its precedents) none go as far as hankul.

-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
