Peter Constable wrote:
> > of "featural" is probably refering to this
> > feature of Hangul of grouping letters into square syllables.
>
> No, that is definitely *not* what was meant. In the taxonomy
> devised by
> Gelb and promoted by Daniels, Hangul is described as a
> "featural" script
> because the description of the script prepared under King Seychong's
> administration described the shape of certain jamos (e.g. k, t, m) as
> being iconically related to the corresponding points of articulation.
The *letters*, especially the consonants are "featural" in that sense.
However, the syllables aren't "featural" in *that* sense. A syllable
blocks just consists of the letters of the syllable. That would
be a quite different sense of "featural". Latin is a "featural" script,
since the letters are grouped into words (rather simplistically and
linearly, but that's a different matter)...
/kent k
