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, …
Pre-Writing Petroglyphs: Cave drawings
Deep within a forest northeast of Peterborough is the
largest concentration of aboriginal rock carvings in North
America. Chiselled into white marble rock face 1,200 years
ago, the 900 petroglyphs depict turtles, snakes, birds and
humans.
Hawaii Petroglyphs
An apparent hunting scene
with 13 men (women did not hunt),
a dog, a horse, and the object of
the hunt which seems to be a cow
or exaggerated pig.
(Detail has been highlighted to
enhance visibility)
Source:http://www.alohafriends.com/Lanai_petroglyphs.html
Modern Pictographs
Road sign for
Canadian 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 stand
for sounds or words
The Rebus Principle
Sign 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.
kahki
car
key
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
Source: http://www.upenn.edu/museum/Games/cuneiform.html
Sumerians created cuneiform script over 5000 years ago. It was the
world's first written language. The last known cuneiform inscription
was written in 75 AD.
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 into
a mixed writing system
•
logorams: signs that represent what they mean
(morphemes)
•
phonograms: signs that represent sounds
•
determinatives: help with meaning of group of signs
that precedes them
 logogram indicator
Egyptian Hieroglyphic Ideograms
plural
people, mankind, Egyptians
Source: http://www.egyptvoyager.com/hieroglyph_lesson2.htm
Egyptian Hieroglyphs
Logograms
Source: http://www.egyptvoyager.com/hieroglyph_lesson2.htm
Egyptian Hieroglyphic Ideograms (Phonograms)
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
Mayan
Logographs
Mayan Glyphs
Source: http://www.halfmoon.org/.syl/emblem.gif
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 mutual
unintelligibility
 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
Source:http://logos.uoregon.edu/explore/orthography/chinese2.html#pict
sun
Xi - happiness
Source: http://chineseculture.about.com/library/picks/aatp_luckysymbols.htm
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 Simplified
Chinese
Chinese
Japanese Meaning Comment
house,
home
not simplified
simplified differently
to
transmit in Mainland China and
Japan
story
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
Cherokee Syllabary
Source: http://www.manataka.org/page81.html
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
photograph
photography
/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 Relatives
1. The Greeks who were philosophers loved to talk a lot.
Among the Greeks, it was the philosophers who loved to talk a lot
Unrestrictive Relatives
2. 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 same
bear-animal
bear- to carry
• Same sound, different spelling
aye, buy, by, die, hi, Thai, height, guide
• Different sound, same spelling
thought, though, Thomas
• Silent letters
listen, gnome, psychology, honest, bomb
• Missing letters
f_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 Reading
Logographic 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 all
items 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 morphemes
Logographic 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 Demands
Japanese patients with Broca’s aphasia retain mastery of
kanji, the logographic system, but lose ability to use
hiragana and katakana