Download - Chapter 9 Writing: The ABCs of Language
Chapter 9
Writing: The ABCs of Language
What is Writing?
The World’s Writing Systems. Peter T. Daniels“Writing is a a system of more or less permanent marks used to represent an utterance in such a way that it can be recovered more or less exactly without the intervention of the utterer”
The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Writings Systems,
Florian Coulmas“A set of visible or tactile signs used to represent units of language in a systematic way, with the purpose of recording messages which can be retrieved by everyone who knows the language in question and the rules by virtue of which its units are encoded in the writing system.
A History of Writing, Steven Roger Fischer
Criteria for a complete writing system:• A complete writing must have as its purpose communication
• A complete writing must consist of artificial graphic marks on a durable or electronic surface
• A complete writing must use marks that relate conventionally to articulate speech (the systematic arrangement of significant vocal sounds) or electronic programming in such a way that communication is achieved.
Development of Writing Systems
Pre-Writing: petroglyphs – cave drawings
Pictograms: “picture writing” each sign means what it represents disadvantage: can only be used to refer to material things
Ideograms: “idea pictures” meaning of pictogram extended came to represent ideas rather than just objects
eg. picture of sun comes to represent heat, light, …
Deep within a forest northeast of Peterborough is thelargest concentration of aboriginal rock carvings in NorthAmerica. Chiselled into white marble rock face 1,200 yearsago, the 900 petroglyphs depict turtles, snakes, birds and humans.
Pre-Writing Petroglyphs: Cave drawings
Source:http://www.alohafriends.com/Lanai_petroglyphs.html
An apparent hunting scenewith 13 men (women did not hunt),a dog, a horse, and the object ofthe hunt which seems to be a cowor exaggerated pig.(Detail has been highlighted to enhance visibility)
Hawaii Petroglyphs
Modern Pictographs
Road sign forCanadian Canoe museum
Blissymbolics (semantography)• a contemporary sophisticated pictographic system• less than 200 basic symbols represent basic ideas and objects• re-combinable symbols represent basic units of meaning
Source: http://www.symbols.net/blissdex/index.html
The Evolution of Writing Systems
Pictographic: objects
Ideographic: ideas
Linguistic Symbols: symbols that represented ideas standfor sounds or words
The Rebus PrincipleSign represents sound of word it originally represented
eg. From Naxi, a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in China (Yunnan)
Source: http://www.ancientscripts.com/naxi.html
eye can sea ewe
I can see you.
car key
kahki
Types of Writing Systems
Logographic symbols are referred to as logograms word writing system in which each symbol represents a
morpheme or word
Syllabic Symbols represent syllables Words are written syllable by syllable May retain residue of whole word symbols Best suited to languages with a simplified syllable structure
Alphabetic Typically, each symbol represents a sound primarily phonemic, (not phonetic) Symbols represent consonants and/or vowels
Early Writing Systems
1. Mesopotamian Cuneiform: Sumerian language
2. Egyptian Hieroglyphics
3. Mesoamerica: Mayan glyphs
Cuneiform Writing
• “wedge-shaped” from Latin cuneus – wedge
• created by Sumerians over 5000 years ago
• very copious records – 17 volume dictionary
• elaborate pictography along with system of “tallies”
• pictograph was simplified and conventionalized
• became symbols rather than representations
• symbol stands for both word and the concept
•a logographic or word writing system
Sumerians created cuneiform script over 5000 years ago. It was theworld's first written language. The last known cuneiform inscriptionwas written in 75 AD.
Source: http://www.upenn.edu/museum/Games/cuneiform.html
Syllabic Writing Systems
• Babylonians, Assyrians and Persians adopted the cuneiform writing system
• They used them to represent the sounds of syllables, and the cuneiform writing system evolved into a syllabic writing system
Old Persian Logograms
Old Persian Syllabic Writing System
• kept cuneiform appearance, but shape of signs was original• Old Persian was spoken in southwestern Persia,• belongs to the Iranian branch or the Indo-Aryan family
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/opcuneiform.htm
Hieroglyphics
an Egyptian pictorial writing system that developed intoa mixed writing system
• logorams: signs that represent what they mean(morphemes)
• phonograms: signs that represent sounds
• determinatives: help with meaning of group of signsthat precedes them
logogram indicator
Egyptian Hieroglyphic Ideograms
Source: http://www.egyptvoyager.com/hieroglyph_lesson2.htm
people, mankind, Egyptians
plural
Egyptian Hieroglyphs
Logograms
Egyptian Hieroglyphic Ideograms (Phonograms)
Source: http://www.egyptvoyager.com/hieroglyph_lesson2.htm
j (y as in yes) Normally used under specific conditions in the last syllable of words
w (w or u)
biconsonantal
• Hieroglyphs were borrowed by many people, including the Phoenicians, a Semitic people.•The Greek and Hebrew alphabets are thought to have developed from the Phoenician alphabet.
Source: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/phoenician.htm
Coptic
Greek
American Scripts
• in Mesoamerica, more than 18 writing systems have been discovered• Mayan symbols are called glyphs• some symbols were logograms• use of rebus principle• some glyphs mixed syllabic writing with logographic representation
MayanLogographs
Source: http://www.halfmoon.org/.syl/emblem.gif
Mayan Glyphs
Vowels
Mayan
l, m, n, p
Modern Writing Systems
Logographic
Syllabic
Alphabetic
Logographic: Chinese
pictograms came to represent morphemes or words works for Chinese as spoken Chinese has little affixation many monosyllabic words are represented logographically with 1 symbol, BUT the majority of characters have 2 parts there are tens of thousands of symbols, but only need to
know about 5,000 to read a newspaper calligraphy: writing is traditionally a respected art
• Writing permits communication even with mutualunintelligibility
Pinyin: writing Mandarin with a modified Roman alphabet• used for street signs, brand names, and IT• used for teaching children to pronounce sounds
The Evolution of Chinese Pictograph Characters
moon
sun
Source:http://logos.uoregon.edu/explore/orthography/chinese2.html#pict
Source: http://chineseculture.about.com/library/picks/aatp_luckysymbols.htm
Xi - happiness
Syllabaries: Japanese
Japanese has 3 scripts:1. Kanji: 1,945 Chinese characters
• These characters can be read in 2 ways,an on reading and a kun reading
Traditional Chinese
Simplified Chinese
Japanese
Meaning
Comment
house,home
not simplified
to transmit story
simplified differently in Mainland China and Japan
Japanese
2. Kana – Syllabaries• each has 48 characters rather like syllables• with diacritics, this increases to 71
Hiragana• used for native words and for affixes and grammatical words (this)• characters are written in a curving flowing style
Katakana• used for foreign words, techinical terms and characters are more angular
3. Romanjii (Roman) used for trademarks and advertising
Source: http://www.manataka.org/page81.html
Cherokee Syllabary
Sample of Cree Syllabics Chart
Source: http://www.storm.ca/~jspence/whatis.htm
Alphabetic
Consonantal (Arabic)• only consonants are fully developed symbols• k t b forms root associated with write• letters may have multiple forms depending upon where they occur in a word
Source: http://www.ancientscripts.com/ws_types.html
Hangul• Korean alphabet developed by King Seijong 1417-1450 phonemic
• Korean has /l/ and /r/ sounds, but they are represented by a single letter• consonants are drawn to represent place of articulation
Hangul Consonants
Hangul Vowels and Dipthongs
Alphabetic
Cyrillic
Alphabetic
Anglo-Saxon Futhorc
Source: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/runic.htm
Alphabetic Writing Systems
• each symbol represents a single phonological segment• in English there is an imperfect match between segment (about 38 phonemes) and grapheme (26 letters)
/boks/ box• phonetic: each allophone has a unique symbol
caps caabz• phonemic: each phoneme has a unique symbol
caps cabz• morphonemic: each morpheme has a unique representation
photo photographphotography
/foto/ /fotə/ /fota/English orthography is largely morphophonemic
Writing and Speech
Written language
• is more conservative and prescriptive than spoken language
• uses more vocabulary
• is syntactically more complex
Some characteristics of the English writing system
PUNCTUATION: capital letters, periods, “ ”, ?, …
COMMA:Restrictive Relatives1. The Greeks who were philosophers loved to talk a lot. Among the Greeks, it was the philosophers who loved to talk a lotUnrestrictive Relatives2. The Greeks, who were philosophers, loved to talk a lot. The Greeks were philosophers & they loved to talk a lot.
APOSTROPHE:1. My cousin’s friends (one cousin)2. My cousins’ friends (more than one cousin)
Spelling (Irregularities)
differences between graphemes (letters) and phonemes (sounds represented)
• Homographs: different words spelled identically, lead –to lead lead-metal
and possibly pronounced the samebear-animal bear- to carry
• Same sound, different spellingaye, buy, by, die, hi, Thai, height, guide
• Different sound, same spellingthought, though, Thomas
• Silent letterslisten, gnome, psychology, honest, bomb
• Missing lettersf_use, _use
Historical Factors Contributing to Spelling Irregularities
Sound Change• OE: sound-symbol correspondence was fairly regular• Current spelling based on late Middle English pronunciation (Chaucer) and Early Modern English (Shakespeare)• OE used same symbol for long [i:] & short vowels [i], but current spelling does not always reflect the Great Vowel Shift
[i:] [aj] hid and hide
Introduction of Printing Press• many early printers not native speakers of English• lack of consistency (I, ay, aye in Shakespeare’s plays)
Spelling Reformers• overzealous – use of Latin & Greek to reflect etymologies
• added b where Latin had a b dette -> debt
Current English Orthography
• Primarily based on earlier pronunciations
• OE used same symbol for long & short vowels
• late 1500s and early 1600s, a number of spelling rules were formulated and published
• English orthography became more or less fixed
• use of silent e to indicate a preceding long V
• some attempts at respelling: nite, thru
• any serious attempt to an orthography based on 1-to-1 sound symbol correspondence would introduce dialectal differences into orthographic system neither
Writing and ReadingLogographic Systems• 1 grapheme represents a morpheme or word• reading simplified when number of symbols is limited• reading difficult with increased number of symbols
Chinese: children can readily recognize symbols, but it takes years to learn enough to write and read allitems in their vocabulary
Japanese: 1945 kanji (Chinese) characters for daily use 996 Kanji during 6 yrs. of elementary school+949 in 3 yrs. of juniour high
Writing and Reading (cont’d)
Syllabic and Alphabetic Systems• lesser inventory of symbols• can be learned and used to write and read new words in a couple of years• children learning syllabaries are reported to have less difficulties learning to read•why: syllables seem easier to recognize than phonemes
• although English alphabetic system has complex orthographic system, children learning to read in languages with more regular alphabetic orthographies also have problems
Neurological Demands of Writing Systems
Broca’s Aphasia: a language deficit in which production and syntactic competence are diminished; loss of function words and inflectional morphemesLogographic Systems• patients with Broca’s Aphasia typically don’t lose ability to read and write logograms
Syllabic and Alphabetic Systems• ability to use these systems is severely disrupted• very difficult for the deaf to acquire
Different Neurological DemandsJapanese patients with Broca’s aphasia retain mastery of kanji, the logographic system, but lose ability to usehiragana and katakana