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Language and Orthography

Language and Orthography. Instructor: Tsueifen Chen. Orthography, Script, and Writing System. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_system A writing system is a symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language . . What is orthography?.

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Language and Orthography

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  1. Language and Orthography Instructor: Tsueifen Chen

  2. Orthography, Script, and Writing System • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_system • A writing system is a symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language.

  3. What is orthography? • Orthography describes or defines the set of symbols (graphemes and diacritics) used, and the rules about how to write these symbols. • Most natural languages developed as oral-aural languages, and writing systems have usually been crafted or adapted afterwards as representations of the spoken language.

  4. Introduction to English and Chinese • English, Italian, Finnish as alphabetic languages • Chinese as an morpho-syllabic language • Alphabetic languages: Grapheme-phoneme correspondences (letter-sound correspondences)—the relationships between letters and sounds • Morpho-syllabic languages: morpheme-syllable http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_orthography

  5. English orthography • English as an alphabetic language • What is alphabetic language? • Phoneme • Grapheme • Phoneme-grapheme correspondences

  6. Phonemes • Phoneme: a phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a language which can distinguish two words. e.g. cat vs. bat /k/ vs. /b/ • English has 26 letters, 40 phonemes (25 consonant sounds and 15 vowels) • See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_orthography

  7. Graphemes • Grapheme: a grapheme is a minimal unit in a writing system • Graphemes are the letters and letter combinations forming patterns found in words e.g. /i/: e (me), e-e (scheme), ee (greet), ea (seat), ie (thief), y (lady), ey (alley), ei (ceiling)

  8. Phoneme-Grapheme Correspondences • One-to-one correspondence e.g. • One-to-two correspondence (a single phoneme with two graphemes): digraphs e.g. • One-to three correspondence (a single phoneme with three graphemes): trigraphs Some exceptions: “box” has 4 phonemes /b/ /a/ /k/ /s/ and 3 graphemes; some say 4 phonemes and 4 graphemes

  9. Exercise Group assignment: (1)find out the 40 phonemes of English, (2) give students some words and ask them to figure out how many phonemes are there in those words.

  10. Chinese orthography • Chinese as a morpho-syllabic language • What is morpho-syllabic language • Morpheme • Syllable • Character • Word

  11. Chinese orthography continues… • Definition of morpheme • Definition of syllable • What is a character? • One-character word; two-character word; three-character word

  12. Exercise • Ask students to think of some Chinese words that are one-character, two-character, three- character, and four-character.

  13. Learning Chinese and English • How many English words are there? • How many Chinese words are there? • How many English words do we have to know? • How many Chinese words do we have to know?

  14. Comparisons between English and Chinese • Chinese as a dead language • Literacy requirement: knowing 4000 Chinese characters is basic, while in English… • Writing difference: the layout is different (spacing, square, etc.) • 1.5 Chinese character = 1 English word

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