A morphogram is the representation of a
morpheme
A morpheme is any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this ...
by a
grapheme
In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system.
The word ''grapheme'' is derived from Ancient Greek ('write'), and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other emic units. The study of graphemes ...
based solely on its meaning.
Kanji
are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script, used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are ...
is a
writing system
A writing system comprises a set of symbols, called a ''script'', as well as the rules by which the script represents a particular language. The earliest writing appeared during the late 4th millennium BC. Throughout history, each independen ...
that makes use of morphograms, where
Chinese characters
Chinese characters are logographs used Written Chinese, to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represe ...
were borrowed to represent native morphemes because of their meanings. Thus, a single character can represent a variety of morphemes which originally all had the same meaning. An example of this in
Japanese would be the grapheme 東
ast which can be read as ''higashi'' or ''azuma'', in addition to its
logographic
In a written language, a logogram (from Ancient Greek 'word', and 'that which is drawn or written'), also logograph or lexigraph, is a written character that represents a semantic component of a language, such as a word or morpheme. Chinese c ...
representation of the morpheme ''tō''. Additionally, in Japanese, the logographic (Chinese-derived) reading is called the ''
on'yomi'' reading, and the morphographic reading (native Japanese) is called the ''
kun'yomi'' reading.
See also
*
Logogram
In a written language, a logogram (from Ancient Greek 'word', and 'that which is drawn or written'), also logograph or lexigraph, is a written character that represents a semantic component of a language, such as a word or morpheme. Chine ...
References
* Smith, J.S. (1996). Japanese Writing. In P.T. Daniels & W. Bright (Eds.), ''The World’s Writing Systems'' (pp. 209–217). New York, NY: Oxford University Press, Inc.
Graphemes
Logographic writing systems
Linguistic morphology
{{Logographic-stub