Phonetic complement

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

A phonetic complement is a phonetic symbol used to disambiguate word characters (

Akkadian cuneiform, Japanese, and Mayan. Often they reenforce the communication of the ideogram
by repeating the first or last syllable in the term.

Written English has few logograms, primarily numerals, and therefore few phonetic complements. An example is the nd of 2nd 'second', which avoids ambiguity with 2 standing for the word 'two'. In addition to numerals, other examples include

Xianity, and Xing for Christmas, Christianity
, and Crossing – note the separate readings Christ and Cross.

In cuneiform

In

Sumerian cuneiform
was adapted (known as orthographic borrowing) for writing Akkadian, this was ambiguous because both words were written with the same character (𒆳, conventionally transcribed KUR, after its Sumerian pronunciation). To alert the reader as to which Akkadian word was intended, the phonetic complement -ú was written after KUR if 'hill' was intended, so that the characters KUR-ú were pronounced šadú, whereas KUR without a phonetic complement was understood to mean mātu 'country'.

Phonetic complements also indicated the Akkadian

case endings to Sumerograms and Akkadograms
.

Phonetic complements should not be confused with

gods, as LUGAL (𒈗) does for kings
. It is believed that determinatives were not pronounced.

In Japanese

Main article: Okurigana

As in

Chinese, designed for a very different language. The Chinese phonetic components built into these kanji (Japanese: 漢字) do not work when they are pronounced in Japanese, and there is not a one-to-one relationship between them and the Japanese words
they represent.

For example, the kanji 生, pronounced shō or sei in

inflectional endings (verbs/adjectives and adverbs), the end of the stem
is written phonetically:

as well as the hybrid Chinese-Japanese word

  • 生じる [生jiru] shō-jiru 'occur'

Note that some of these verbs share a kanji reading (i, u, and ha), and okurigana are conventionally picked to maximize these sharings.

These phonetic characters are called okurigana. They are used even when the inflection of the stem can be determined by a following inflectional suffix, so the primary function of okurigana for many kanji is that of a phonetic complement.

Generally it is the final syllable containing the inflectional ending is written phonetically. However, in adjectival verbs ending in -shii (-しい), and in those verbs ending in -ru (-る) in which this syllable drops in derived nouns, the final two syllables are written phonetically. There are also irregularities. For example, the word umareru 'be born' is derived from umu 'to bear, to produce'. As such, it may be written 生まれる [生mareru], reflecting its derivation, or 生れる [生reru], as with other verbs ending in elidable -ru.

In Phono-Semantic Characters

Main article:
Phono-semantic

In Chinese

radical'), which may not exist independently, and a phonetic complement indicates the approximate pronunciation of the morpheme. However, the phonetic element is basic, and these might be better thought of as characters used for multiple near homonyms, the identity of which is constrained by the determiner. Due to sound changes over the last several millennia, the phonetic complements are not a reliable guide to pronunciation. Also, sometimes it is not obvious at all where the phonetic complements reside, for instance, the phonetic complement in 聽 is 𡈼, in 類 is 頪, and in 勝
is 朕, etc.

In Vietnamese

Chữ Nôm of Vietnamese is almost all constructed as phono-semantic characters, whose phonetic component and semantic component are usually individual unabridged Chinese characters (like the Chữ Nôm 𣎏 and 𣩂), instead of often radicals as in Sinographs.

In Korean

A handful of

gukja are also constructed as phono-semantic characters, such as 乭
(pronounced as 돌, dol) whose phonetic complement is the bottom 乙.

In Japanese

Some of Japanese Kokuji are phono-semantic characters, like 働, 腺, 鑓, whose phonetic complement is 動, 泉, 遣 respectively.

In the Maya Script

Main article: Maya script § Structure

The

Classic Maya, BALAM): thus, though pronounced "BALAM", the word for "jaguar" was spelled "BALAM-m(a)". Disharmonic spellings also existed[3] in the Maya Script.[4]

Two different ways of writing the word bʼalam 'jaguar' in the Maya script – first, as a logogram representing the entire word with the single glyph bʼalam, and then, phonetically using the three syllable signs bʼa, la, and ma
Sinographs with okurigana in Japanese, and Sumerogram
in Akkadian.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on May 15, 2008. Retrieved January 17, 2011.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  2. ^ DISHARMONY IN MAYA HIEROGLYPHIC WRITING: LINGUISTIC CHANGE AND CONTINUITY IN CLASSIC SOCIETY
  3. ^ http://www.famsi.org/research/pitts/MayaGlyphsBook1Sect1.pdf [bare URL PDF]
  4. ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on August 20, 2018. Retrieved January 17, 2011.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
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