Punctuation in pictographic alphabets

[nq:1]What role does punctuation play in pictographic alphabets such as Chinese or Japanese?[/nq]
Let's clear up a few things first. Alphabets are not pictographic, and pictographs are not alphabetic. Moreover, the Chinese and Japanese writing systems are neither. Finally, punctuation marks are part of a writing system, but they are not part of an alphabet, syllabary, abjad, or pictographic or

[nq:1]In the Chinese and Japanese writing systems, punctuation plays the same role as in European writing systems. They've got periods, commas, colons, brackets, quotation marks, and so on, though they may not look the same way as ours.[/nq]
I can't say anything about Chinese, but in Japanese, periods are used a bit differently in certain situations (they can be left out if they are within a q

[nq:2]In the Chinese and Japanese writing systems, punctuation plays the ... though they may not look the same way as ours.[/nq]
[nq:1]I can't say anything about Chinese, but in Japanese, periods are used a bit differently in certain situations (they can be left out if they are within a quotation in certain contexts). Colons and semi-colons are basically non-existent.[/nq]
It's interesting

[nq:2]What role does punctuation play in pictographic alphabets such as Chinese or Japanese?[/nq]
[nq:1]Let's clear up a few things first. Alphabets are not pictographic, and pictographs are not alphabetic. Moreover, the Chinese and ... but they are not part of an alphabet, syllabary, abjad, or pictographic or logographic system. They are auxiliary to them.[/nq]
Of course there's no reason

On 28 Apr 2004 14:04:47 -0700, (Email Removed) (howard richler) posted the following:
[nq:1]What role does punctuation play in pictographic alphabets such as Chinese or Japanese?[/nq]
In Japanese (which does not have a "pictographic alphabet", but that's beside the point), punctuation was not used until fairly recently. Even now it's used less than in Western languages. The most common pun

[nq:2]Let's clear up a few things first. Alphabets are not ... or pictographic or logographic system. They are auxiliary to them.[/nq]
[nq:1]Of course there's no reason an alphabet couldn't be pictographic; "pictogram" refers to the appearance of a character, "alphabet" to the way a character relates to the language it's representing.[/nq]
Is a pictogram still a pictogram when adopted for

[nq:2]I can't say anything about Chinese, but in Japanese, periods ... quotation in certain contexts). Colons and semi-colons are basically non-existent.[/nq]
Western-style punctuation is a modern addition to the Chinese langauge. Traditional materials were completely unpunctuated. Readers parsed sentences based on grammatical particles, sentence structure, etc. Some ambiguity was unavoidable,

[nq:2]I can't say anything about Chinese, but in Japanese, periods ... quotation in certain contexts). Colons and semi-colons are basically non-existent.[/nq]
[nq:1]It's interesting you would say that, because, in order to check on the actual range of punctuation marks used in ... to be a site there), and it's full of colons. Granted, these are in listings; maybe they're unusual in sentences.[

[nq:2]Of course there's no reason an alphabet couldn't ... the way a character relates to the language it's representing.[/nq]
[nq:1]Is a pictogram still a pictogram when adopted for use to represent a phoneme? I thought "pictogram" implied "in use to represent the thing of which it is a picture".[/nq]
Then you couldn't call Proto-Sinaitic pictographic! Wouldn't your sense be equivalent to

[nq:1]In the Chinese and Japanese writing systems, punctuation plays the same role as in European writing systems. They've got periods, commas, colons, brackets, quotation marks, and so on, though they may not look the same way as ours.[/nq]
I look through my glasses most of the time, and both ways when crossing the street. Do the Chinese punctuation marks not do the same?

Bob Lieblic