WRITING SYSTEMS

INTRODUCTION: WRITING SYSTEMS

1\.    Children learn to speak naturally through exposure to language without formal teaching



2\.    Before the invention of writing, useful knowledge had to be memorized



3\.    Writing permits a society to permanently record its literature, its history and science, and its technology



4\.    By writing is meant any of the many visual(nongestural) systems for representing language, including handwriting, printing, and electronic displays of these written forms

HISTORY OF WRITING

1\.    Before single word was written, uncountable billions were spoken



2\.    The invention of writing comes relatively late in human history



3\.    Its development was gradual

PICTOGRAMS & IDEOGRAMS

1\.    Petroglyphs: cave drawings

\-       Portrayals of life at that time

\-       Aesthetic expressions

2\.    Pictograms: picture writing

\-       Each picture or pictogram is a direct image of the objects it represents

\-       Not have any direct relation to the language spoken

→ The pictures represented objects in the world, not the linguistic names given to these objects, not represent the sound of the spoken language

3\.    Ideograms: ideas attached to the picture

\- Its meaning was extended to attribute of that object, or concepts associated with it

Differentiate pictograms & ideograms

Pictograms: literal



Ideograms: less direct representation

CUNEIFORM WRITING

1\.    Of the Sumerian- the oldest one known 17-volume dictionary



2\.    The pictography was simplified and conventionalized and was pressed into soft clay tablets



3\.    Logographic: (word writing): cuneiform script came to represent words of the language



4\.    Logograms: (the symbols of a word-writing system) ideograms that represent in addition to the concept, the word or morpheme in the language for that concept



5\.    A syllabic writing

REBUS PRINCIPLE

1\.    A phonographic symbol: the sound that represent the word -> a single sign can then be used to represent all words with the same sound ---> homophones of the language

2\.    Rebus is a representation of words by pictures of objects whose names sound like word

3\.    Not efficient because in many languages words cannot be subdivided into sequences of sounds that have meaning by themselves

HIEROGLYPHICS

1\.    By the Egyptians, a similar system to the Sumerian’s pictography

2\.    Represent both the concept and the word for the concept

3\.    Logographic writing system

WEST SEMITIC SYLLABARY

1\.    By the Phoenicians

2\.    22 characters, stood for consonants alone

3\.    The reader provided the vowels, and hence the rest of the syllable, through knowledge of language

→ Both a syllabary and a consonantal alphabet

ALPHABETIC WRITING

1\.    By the Greeks

2\.    A system where both consonants and vowels were symbolized

3\.    Greeks couldn’t borrow the Phoenician writing system because they required that vowels have their own independent representation

→ Used the left over symbols of the Phoenician to represent vowel sounds