Dear James Myers, We regret to inform you that your abstract entitled The influence of Chinese character form regularities on other orthographic systems has not been accepted for presentation at xxx. (The remarks by the reviewers are included in this message.) We nevertheless hope that you will be able to join us. Please consult the conference website for regular updates: xxx Thank you for your interest in xxx. Best wishes xxx Organizing committee ----------------------- REVIEW 1 --------------------- PAPER: 42 TITLE: The influence of Chinese character form regularities on other orthographic systems AUTHORS: James Myers Overall evaluation: -3 (strong reject) ----------- Overall evaluation ----------- The reviewer fails to see what the topology of strokes in Chinese characters and elsewhere can tell us about language in general and about Chinese, in particular. As the author states her/himself in the last paragraph "many of the similarities discussed here seem arbitrary". The ensuing parallel between orthographies and language is completely articifial and incorrect. There is no parallel between orthographies, created by man and to be learnt/taught explicitly, on the one hand, and human language, which is precisely acquired by any child without explicit learning/teaching. "Universal constraints can give rise to similarities across orthographies (Morin, 2017), perhaps including the preference for horizontal over vertical doubling. However, many of the similarities discussed here seem arbitrary, showing how orthographies, like spoken language, can borrow abstract formal generalizations even when they are not directly functional." ----------------------- REVIEW 2 --------------------- PAPER: 42 TITLE: The influence of Chinese character form regularities on other orthographic systems AUTHORS: James Myers Overall evaluation: -2 (reject) ----------- Overall evaluation ----------- This paper does not deal with linguistic matters, it only dicusses graphic and orthographic points.