From: John Hudson (john@tiro.ca)
Date: Sun Jan 11 2009 - 16:05:41 CST
David Starner wrote:
> So is resumé a precomposed glyph for resume? Is chat a French
> precomposed glyph for cat? Is w just a precomposed glyph for vv? That
> a picture of a dog is a precomposed glyph for the word dog is absurd.
It is absurd, but so is the contention that a pictorial representation
is semiotically equivalent to a word. The sequence of letters 'dog'
spells a particular word that has a particular meaning in a particular
language; it may, indeed, have some totally different meaning in a
different language. A picture of the animal known in English as a dog
has no such particular meaning, it is chien, hund, chó, собака, etc.
Familiarity with the spelling conventions of English, such as they are,
enables one to pronounce the name for this animal. A picture of a dog
tells you nothing about the pronunciation the name in any language.
All that said, if a dog's head emoji is encoded in Unicode, I vote for
the reference glyph to be a Wheaten Terrier.
JH
-- Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Gulf Islands, BC tiro@tiro.com The Lord entered her to become a servant. The Word entered her to keep silence in her womb. The thunder entered her to be quiet. -- St Ephrem the Syrian
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