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.
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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, …
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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
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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
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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
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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 Hieroglyphic
3. Mesoamerica: Mayan glyphs
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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.
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Old Persian Logograms
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
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Old Persian Syllabic Writing System
• used in the cuneiform inscriptions of Achaemenian dynasty
and the vernacular of the Achaemenian elite
• 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
•
signs that represent what they mean
•
phonograms: signs that represent sounds
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Egyptian Hieroglyphic Ideograms
Sign
General Meaning
man, person
people, mankind, Egyptians
Source: http://www.egyptvoyager.com/hieroglyph_lesson2.htm
Source: http://www.egyptvoyager.com/hieroglyph_lesson2.htm
Egyptian Hieroglyphic Ideograms (Phonograms)
A (long a)
a glottal stop unknown in most
western languages
j (y as in yes) Normally used under specific
conditions in the last syllable
of words
w (w or u)
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Mayan
Logographs
Mayan Glyphs
Source: http://www. halfmoon.org /.syl/emblem.gif
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Vowels
Mayan
l, m, n, p
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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
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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:
Chinese Characters: 1945 kanji
2 syllabaries
Katakana is used for foreign words & onomatopoeic words
less rounded symbols
Hiragana is used for native words
hiragana affixes may co-occur with kanji root
• Japanese is more suited to syllabic writing than languages
with a complicated syllable structure
• all words can be represented by about 100 (CV) syllables
• there are 2 syllabaries, each with 46 characters kana
• supplemented by diacritics to represent 100+ syllables
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Japanese Sounds
Romanization
Hiragana
Katakana
Alphabetic
Consonantal (Arabic)
• only consonants are fully developed symbols
• k t b forms root associated with write
Alphabetic
• sound writing, better described as phonemic
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
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Writing and Speech
Unrestrictive Relatives
1. The Greeks, who were philosophers, loved to talk a lot.
The Greeks were philosophers & they loved to talk a lot.
Restrictive Relatives
2. The Greeks who were philosophers loved to talk a lot.
Among the Greeks, it was the philosophers who loved
to talk a lot
Written language
• is more conservative than spoken language
• uses more vocabulary
• uses more complex syntactically
• is more prescriptive
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
fuse, use
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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 not so apparent after 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 all occurred in a play)
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
[I] ⇒ [ay]
hide and hid
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 for night
thru for through
any serious attempt to an orthography based on
1-to-1 sound symbol correspondence would
would introduce dialectal differences into
orthographic system (spelling) neither
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English orthography
• is largely morphophonemic
• spelling often ignores pronunciation differences, so
morpheme can have the same or nearly the same
spelling in different contexts.
electric
electricity
please
pleasant
• another morphologically constrained rule:
•Conversion of a post-consonantal y to i in front of
a suffix
carry
carried
beauty
beautiful
• spelling can influence pronunciation
Worcester [wUst«r] in England
[wUrc Est«r] in Canada & U.S.
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
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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
• although English alphabetic system has complex
orthographic system, but children learning to read
in languages with more regular alphabetic orthographies
also have problems
• why: syllables seem easier to recognize than phonemes
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
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