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