> But let me try my hand at something for a minute... let's break down the
> "pieces" into "parts of pieces". A component of a written Chinese
> character is usually not a single geometric shape. I could contend that
> in the same way that geometric shapes are combined to make the
> component, which has a meaning, so too can we combine "shapes" of
> signwriting to make a meaning that's a component part of the total
> symbol. "Don't know" in signwriting, starts with "know", which has it's
> parts. We add to it to get "don't know", which is a single signwriting
> symbol(?).
Now we are looking at this on a morphology level. THis is a negation
(don't know), and other words such as "brother" is a compound word. If
you seperate the word, you get two different words. If you have a
compound word, it is considered as a single unit with a meaning of its
own. If you have a negation, you add the negative bound morpheme to the
word, "know", and this is not considered as a single unit. This is not on
the phonology level.
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