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#4109. The grapheme as a universal basic unit of writing

August 2026	publication date
Proposal available till	24-05-2025
4 total number of authors per manuscript	0 $

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Journal’s subject area:

Language and Linguistics; Linguistics and Language;

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Abstract:
The grapheme appears to be a central concept of grapholinguistics. When the concept is defined, it is interpreted either as a written unit which refers to a phoneme (this is termed the referential view), or as a written unit that is lexically distinctive (analogical view), which is tested via written minimal pairs such as phonological minimal pairs which can be used to discover phonemes. A problem of these two views is that they are restricted to alphabets. A universal conception of the grapheme inclusive of all types of writing systems would make possible the uniform description and, consequently, the comparison of diverse writing systems. Such a conception is proposed here: Graphemes are units of writing which are (1) lexically distinctive, (2) have linguistic value (mostly by referring to phonemes, syllables, morphemes, etc.), and are (3) minimal. These criteria are characterised in detail, and examples from writing systems such as Arabic, Chinese, German, and Japanese highlight their cross-linguistic applicability.
Keywords:
comparative concept; graphematics; Grapheme; grapholinguistic terminology; grapholinguistics

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