ABSTRACT
The nature of the script changes depending on whether a writing system’s graphemes correspond to phonemes, syllables, morphemes, or some other units of speech. In a phonemic writing system, a grapheme corresponds to a phoneme. The Roman alphabet is perhaps the most widely used phonemic writing system – and the most widely used writing system in the world – in terms of the variety of languages it conventionally encodes. In a phonographic writing system, a grapheme may also correspond to a single syllable in the language. Unlike phonographic scripts, which represent speech sounds only, the character-based writing system for Mandarin Chinese consists of symbols that do involve meaning. A logographic script is thus a writing system in which a grapheme typically represents a word or a phrase. It is also possible for a grapheme of a phonographic script to represent a speech unit whose size is between a single speech sound and a syllable.
