Variant: macaw

·    Subvariants (3):

o Full:

§ The head of a macaw, with.

§ A circle of touching dots with a central dot, signifying the eye and markings around it.

o Reduced:

§ Just the eye of the macaw.

o Snake:

§ This could be viewed as the reduced variant, with a snake emerging from the centre of the eye.

§ There are additional radial arcs from the centre to the outer edge.

§ MHD views this variant as (only) a logogram MO’ whereas TOK.p11.r3.c2 views it as (only) a syllabogram mo. This is the well-known situation where both interpretations can be equally valid. If there is such a snake glyph, then there may or may not be a syllabogram o following it, when writing the word mo’ = “macaw”:

·      With o following:

o    MO’-o: a logogram spelling of mo’, with a redundant end phonetic complement.

o    mo-o: a syllabogram-only spelling of mo’.

·      Without o following:

o    MO’: a logogram spelling of mo’, without end phonetic complement.

o    mo: a syllabogram-only spelling of mo’ with underspelled final consonant (=glottal stop).

It’s only if we see the snake glyph before or after other syllabograms, writing words which have nothing to do with mo’ = macaw, that we know that it’s functioning as a syllabogram. Similarly, if we see the snake glyph before or after a logogram starting with m- or ending in -m and having nothing to do with mo’ = macaw, then we also know that it’s functioning as a syllabogram, this time as an initial or final phonetic complement. Outside of these situations (i.e. in connection with writing mo’ = “macaw”, it’s equally valid to view the glyph as a logogram or syllabogram). In theory, a similar doubt could arise for the full (bird-head) form and the reduced (eye only) form. But these occur in so many non-macaw contexts that there’s no doubt that