Principles toward Optimization of Characters in a Semantic-Writing System

Abstract

Semantic characters such as for ‘skiing’ represent meaning rather than sound. For centuries, great minds such as Descartes, Leibniz, Francis Lodowyck, and Rev. John Wilkins have called for the creation of a writing-system comprised completely of semantic characters. Such a writing-system must possess enough characters to represent the universe; But too many characters will pose a challenge for users to learn and remember. This article argues for principles limiting the number of basic, non-derived characters (“radicals”) while maximizing the expressive power coaxed from them. I advance three primary strategies here: First, use of the arrow or other Paul Lance New, Jr. ESL-Instructor, MA Linguistics, University of Texas El Paso, USA Email: paulnew@paulnew.com Received 27 June, 2022; Revised 1 August, 2022; Accepted 24 September, 2022 Copyright © 2022 Language Research Institute, Sejong University Journal of Universal Language is an Open Access Journal. All articles are distributed online under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 24 Principles toward Optimization of Characters in a Semantic-Writing System selector to derive related meanings from one radical (e.g., for ‘skier’ as opposed to (no arrow) for ‘skiing’); Second, a series of “radical-disqualifiers” requiring most concepts or notions to be derived from one or more radicals, rather than being represented by one radical. Finally, constructing radicals from smaller elements whose meanings are consistent across them (e.g., if we designate the single-shafted arrow to mean ‘change’, then it should appear with that meaning in all radicals dealing with change.). Ample visual examples illustrating these points are given, applying these principles to Egyptian, Chinese, Mayan and some modern constructed systems.