Chapter 9 Writing: The ABCs of Language

1. Chapter 9 Writing: The ABCs of Language

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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, …

5. 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.

6. 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

7. Modern Pictographs Road sign for Canadian Canoe museum

8. 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

9. The Evolution of Writing Systems • Pictographic: objects • Ideographic: ideas • Linguistic Symbols: symbols that represented ideas stand • for sounds or words

10. 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

11. eye can sea ewe I can see you. kahki key car

12. 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

13. Early Writing Systems • MesopotamianCuneiform: Sumerian language • Egyptian Hieroglyphics • Mesoamerica: Mayan glyphs

14. 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

15. 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.

16. 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

17. Old Persian Logograms

18. 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

19. 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

20. Egyptian Hieroglyphic Ideograms plural people, mankind, Egyptians Source: http://www.egyptvoyager.com/hieroglyph_lesson2.htm

21. Egyptian Hieroglyphs Logograms

22. 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

23. 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

24. Coptic

25. Greek

26. 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

27. Mayan Logographs

28. Mayan Glyphs Source: http://www.halfmoon.org/.syl/emblem.gif

29. Vowels

30. Mayan l, m, n, p

31. Modern Writing Systems • Logographic • Syllabic • Alphabetic

32. 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

33. 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

34. Syllabaries: Japanese • Japanese has 3 scripts: • Kanji: 1,945Chinese characters • These characters can be read in 2 ways, • an on reading and a kun reading

35. 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

36. Cherokee Syllabary Source: http://www.manataka.org/page81.html

37. Sample of Cree Syllabics Chart Source: http://www.storm.ca/~jspence/whatis.htm

38. 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

39. 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

40. Alphabetic Cyrillic

41. Alphabetic Anglo-Saxon Futhorc Source: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/runic.htm

42. 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

43. Writing and Speech • Written language • is more conservative and prescriptive than spoken • language • uses more vocabulary • is syntactically more complex

44. 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)

45. Spelling (Irregularities) • differences between graphemes (letters) and • phonemes (sounds represented) • Homographs: different words spelled identically, • lead –to leadlead-metal • and possibly pronounced the same • bear-animalbear- 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

46. 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

47. 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

48. 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

49. 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

50. 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