Well, what is the definition of "linguistic material"?
Under Crystal's definition, absolutely yes.
EDIT: actually I'm not sure. The difference between "
@Limbo Pete" is a poo-slinger" and "
@Limbo Pete is a poo slinger" is that the second is ungrammatical. I'm not sure that the hyphen can initiate a change in meaning.
I noticed that Crystal included special characters like '^' though. It's not clear to me how that character could change the meaning of a sentence. Maybe in online-speak.
The stroke that turns an 'F' into an 'E' is not a hyphen. They look similar, but they are not the same. Similar to how "hypehn" and "dash" are not the same thing. There are actually multiple dashes of different lengths as well.
That's my hypothesis, and the fact that a single stroke in Chinese (a much smaller unit than a character) can cause a change in meaning seems good evidence for this hypothesis, assuming Crystal's definition is the best one.
I just thought of another example from simplified Chinese (not applicable in traditional). Here are two very common characters.
点 占
The first can be used to order food at a restaurant, to mean "to light" as in fire, to mean "o'clock", or to denote a dot. The second is a verb that means "to occupy".
The characters are written exactly the same, except that the first finishes up with a "four dot base" (not sure how to say this in English but the point is clear). That "four dot base" is common in characters that relate to fire.
So is the "four dot base" a "grapheme"? Removing it can cause a change in meaning from "to ignite" to "to occupy". By Crystal's definition perhaps it should be a grapheme, but it's not a character.
