Any Japonic or Koreanic conlangs out there?

[Moose-tache]

I think a truly "featural" writing system would have abstractions below the level of the phoneme. So, for example, you might have a vertical line to indicate velarness, and a horizontal line to indicate nasalness, and a plus sign would therefore be "ng." This happens to some small extent in almost every writing system (e.g. Latin G comes from C plus a distinguishing mark), but never with perfect regularity/predictability (except where it's been added later, as in the tenten voicing marks on hiragana). I'm not sure how well this would serve as a "category" of scripts, since they would also presumably be abugidas, or alphabets, or whatever else.

[masako]

@keenir

How is an unnecessary redundant category like "featural" not convoluted? That term doesn't add any substantive information to the description of how Hangul functions, was designed, or compares to other systems, especially given that all writing conveys (at least some) phonological information.

Convoluted.

I'll back away from this thread so it can get back to its intended topic. Cheers.

[keenir]

@keenir

How is an unnecessary redundant category like "featural" not convoluted? That term doesn't add any substantive information to the description of how Hangul functions, was designed, or compares to other systems, especially given that all writing conveys (at least some) phonological information.

You explained how its redundant...but "doesn't add any new info" is not part of any definition of "convoluted i ever encountered. ergo i asked how its convoluted.


{sorry}

[jal]

How is an unnecessary redundant category like "featural" not convoluted? That term doesn't add any substantive information to the description of how Hangul functions, was designed, or compares to other systems, especially given that all writing conveys (at least some) phonological information.

First, the term "featural" as applied to writing systems was specifically invented to describe Korean. You may not like that, but you're starting to rant, so chill. Secondly, as Wikipedia writes:

The letters for the five basic consonants reflect the shape of the speech organs used to pronounce them, and they are systematically modified to indicate phonetic features; similarly, the vowel letters are systematically modified for related sounds, making Hangul a featural writing system

Again, you may disagree with what Wikipedia states, but I'd say you'd need some better evidence than just stating your opinion.


JAL

[Moose-tache]

I'm not crazy about reviving an argument that ended a week ago, but that nonsense about the mouth shape is a myth. There is no evidence for this idea until centuries after Hangeul was invented. Seems strange that the Hunminjeongeum wouldn't mention that fact, nor anyone else alive at the time. A much more likely possibility is that the letter shapes are mostly just made up with some inspiration from other writing systems. For example, look at the Phags-pa glyphs for g, d, b, j, l, s, and their Hangeul equivalents. Unlike mouth shapes, we know that Korean inellectuals had exposure to Phags-pa in the late Goryeo/early Joseon period.

As for the whole "featural" terminology thing, Masako let it go so I think it's best to just move on.

[jal]

I'm not crazy about reviving an argument that ended a week ago

Sorry, I can't always keep up with the topics here. Probably should've checked the date.

but that nonsense about the mouth shape is a myth.

It might very well be, but it wasn't always considered a myth, and Wikipedia still has not even a hint of it being a myth.


JAL

[Moose-tache]

I'm not crazy about reviving an argument that ended a week ago

Sorry, I can't always keep up with the topics here. Probably should've checked the date.

but that nonsense about the mouth shape is a myth.

It might very well be, but it wasn't always considered a myth, and Wikipedia still has not even a hint of it being a myth.


JAL

OK, a) plenty of people believe it; that's how myths work. And b) Wikipedia is not perfect. Until recently Wikipedia was still repeating the myth that Dubai doesn't have a sewer system. I really don't care how many people have folk-etymologied a mouth-shape explanation. there is no evidence of it.

[WeepingElf]

There is IMHO no hard and fast boundary between "ordinary" alphabets and "featural" ones. The difference is a rather gradual one. Many orthographies use diacritics or digraphs in phnonologically consistent ways such that the diacritic marks the presence of a specific feature. German uses two dots above for front vowels resulting from the umlaut rule; Czech and other languages use caron for palatal consonants; Old Irish uses dot above (and Modern Irish uses a following h) for spirantization.

And Hangul is certainly much less "featural" than, for instance, Visible Speech. The basic letters don't really depict mouth shapes; rather, they probably originated in Phags-pa. Glottalized consonants are marked by doubling, aspirated ones by an extra stroke; both of these changes can be considered "consistent ways of using diacritics or digraphs", taken farther than in most languages, but the difference is merely one of degree, not one of kind.

[jal]

Many orthographies use diacritics or digraphs in phnonologically consistent ways such that the diacritic marks the presence of a specific feature. German uses two dots above for front vowels resulting from the umlaut rule; Czech and other languages use caron for palatal consonants; Old Irish uses dot above (and Modern Irish uses a following h) for spirantization.

Good point, hadn't considered that.


JAL

[Moose-tache]

This happens to some small extent in almost every writing system (e.g. Latin G comes from C plus a distinguishing mark), but never with perfect regularity/predictability (except where it's been added later, as in the tenten voicing marks on hiragana).

Many orthographies use diacritics or digraphs in phnonologically consistent ways such that the diacritic marks the presence of a specific feature. German uses two dots above for front vowels resulting from the umlaut rule; Czech and other languages use caron for palatal consonants; Old Irish uses dot above (and Modern Irish uses a following h) for spirantization.

Good point, hadn't considered that.

[KathTheDragon]

The basic letters don't really depict mouth shapes; rather, they probably originated in Phags-pa.

This has nothing to do with it being featural, though. Unless your definition of "featural" explicitly includes that, in which case why do you have a weird definition of "featural"?

[WeepingElf]

The basic letters don't really depict mouth shapes; rather, they probably originated in Phags-pa.

This has nothing to do with it being featural, though. Unless your definition of "featural" explicitly includes that, in which case why do you have a weird definition of "featural"?

You misunderstood. I just doubted the "mouth shape" notion about Hangul; I did not mean to doubt its featurality. I do think that Hangul is a featural script; this has nothing to do with the fact that the basic letter forms do not really show tongue positions or anything like that. It suffices that each of them denotes a particular place of articulation, and that the phonation types are consistently indicated by an extra stroke (for aspiration) or doubling the letter (for glottalization). Actually, there are degrees of featurality; it is not a "black or white" matter, as the European examples I have cited show.

[keenir]

On page 1 of this thread, some features of Japonic languages were helpfully and kindly laid out, as were features held in common by Japonic and Koreanic languages. What would be some features found in the Koreanic languages but not in Japonic?

Thank you.

[KathTheDragon]

The basic letters don't really depict mouth shapes; rather, they probably originated in Phags-pa.

This has nothing to do with it being featural, though. Unless your definition of "featural" explicitly includes that, in which case why do you have a weird definition of "featural"?

You misunderstood. I just doubted the "mouth shape" notion about Hangul; I did not mean to doubt its featurality. I do think that Hangul is a featural script; this has nothing to do with the fact that the basic letter forms do not really show tongue positions or anything like that. It suffices that each of them denotes a particular place of articulation, and that the phonation types are consistently indicated by an extra stroke (for aspiration) or doubling the letter (for glottalization). Actually, there are degrees of featurality; it is not a "black or white" matter, as the European examples I have cited show.

Ah, gotcha. I still don't get why it's being brought up in the same breath as the question of whether or not the script itself is featural.

[Travis B.]

This has nothing to do with it being featural, though. Unless your definition of "featural" explicitly includes that, in which case why do you have a weird definition of "featural"?

You misunderstood. I just doubted the "mouth shape" notion about Hangul; I did not mean to doubt its featurality. I do think that Hangul is a featural script; this has nothing to do with the fact that the basic letter forms do not really show tongue positions or anything like that. It suffices that each of them denotes a particular place of articulation, and that the phonation types are consistently indicated by an extra stroke (for aspiration) or doubling the letter (for glottalization). Actually, there are degrees of featurality; it is not a "black or white" matter, as the European examples I have cited show.

Ah, gotcha. I still don't get why it's being brought up in the same breath as the question of whether or not the script itself is featural.

Because some people have this idea that symbols somehow resembling "mouth shapes" makes something "featural", if that term had any real meaning to begin with.

[WeepingElf]

Imagination is sometimes strong when it comes to seeing "mouth shapes" in letter shapes; I once came across a 17th or 18th century treatise which claimed that the letters of the (obviously non-featural) Hebrew abjad depicted the shapes the tongue takes when uttering the relevant consonants (I don't remember who claimed that; it may be mentioned in Umberto Eco's The Search for the Perfect Language, but as I don't have that book here ATM, I can't check). Of course, that's utter bullfrogs.

[KathTheDragon]

You misunderstood. I just doubted the "mouth shape" notion about Hangul; I did not mean to doubt its featurality. I do think that Hangul is a featural script; this has nothing to do with the fact that the basic letter forms do not really show tongue positions or anything like that. It suffices that each of them denotes a particular place of articulation, and that the phonation types are consistently indicated by an extra stroke (for aspiration) or doubling the letter (for glottalization). Actually, there are degrees of featurality; it is not a "black or white" matter, as the European examples I have cited show.

Ah, gotcha. I still don't get why it's being brought up in the same breath as the question of whether or not the script itself is featural.

Because some people have this idea that symbols somehow resembling "mouth shapes" makes something "featural", if that term had any real meaning to begin with.

"Featural" makes perfect sense to me, though, as denoting a script where each glyph is made up of components corresponding to the denoted phoneme's features, and in particular where components are common (up to modifications to accomodate them) to all phonemes with that feature. So there might be a component that means "labial" and is shared across all labial consonants.

Edit: this is probably a bit imprecise for a proper definition, as non-component modifications like doubling are also perfectly licit.

[Travis B.]

Because some people have this idea that symbols somehow resembling "mouth shapes" makes something "featural", if that term had any real meaning to begin with.

"Featural" makes perfect sense to me, though, as denoting a script where each glyph is made up of components corresponding to the denoted phoneme's features, and in particular where components are common (up to modifications to accomodate them) to all phonemes with that feature. So there might be a component that means "labial" and is shared across all labial consonants.

Edit: this is probably a bit imprecise for a proper definition, as non-component modifications like doubling are also perfectly licit.

I would agree with this definition - and this definition has nothing to do with "mouth shapes" in the first place.

[bradrn]

On page 1 of this thread, some features of Japonic languages were helpfully and kindly laid out, as were features held in common by Japonic and Koreanic languages. What would be some features found in the Koreanic languages but not in Japonic?

Thank you.

Could we get an answer to this? I’d be interested too.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

That would be interesting.