LING 325 Writing Systems

Writing

- Systematic (grapheme-phoneme relationships, internal organization) use of graphic marks to represent specific linguistic utterances

- Grapheme-sound sequences are mainly linear

- Representation of language, not language itself

- Must understand a language to understand its writing system

- Autonomy of graphic system

- Principle of interpretability (meant to be understood)

- Principle of historicity

Stimulus diffusion

When a language borrows the idea of writing w/ systematic symbols and rules, but not the symbols themselves

Allograph

- A non-contrastive grapheme, i.e. different ways of writing the same grapheme (e.g. vs )

- Often due to style of handwriting/printing, but sometimes to internal rules (e.g. capitalizing first letter in sentence and of proper nouns)

- Can be sorted into classes (e.g. printed, cursive, upper-case, lower-case, different typefaces (e.g. Arial), different styles (e.g. italic))

Diacritic

Bound graphemes which occur only in combination with other graphemes (e.g. accents in French)

Bound vs free grapheme

Graphemes that respectively cannot and can be printed by themselves (e.g. <~> vs in Spanish)

Diglossia (e.g. Chinese or Arabic)

- Sociolinguistic situation where the same society systematically uses two quite distinct language varieties or different languages in certain situations (e.g. formal/literary situations vs informal situations/conversation)

- E.g. Chinese diglossia - wényán (classical chinese based on Old Chinese), used among historical administrators and used in classical texts vs. modern standard chinese pǔtōnghuà which is where chinese writing and connection to classical texts cuts off. Close to 20th century beijing dialect of mandarin

Digraph/polygraph/polyphone

- Digraph: a sequence of two graphemes that represent a single phoneme (e.g. in EN). May be disjoint (e.g. = /u/ in "Luke" and "nuke").

- Polygraph: a sequence of graphemes that represent a single phoneme (e.g. = /k/ in "pique")

- Polyphone: a single grapheme that represents a sequence of 2+ phonemes (e.g. = /ks/ in EN). Rare in alphabetic systems, but the norm in moraic ones.

(Heterographic) homophony

Different spellings for the same sound.

Orthographic distinctions are neutralized phonologically.

(e.g. and both = /hju/, e.g. , , , in "cake, hay, hey, eh" all = /eɪ/, e.g. <eye> and <I>)

(Heterophonic) homography

Different pronunciations of the same spelling.

Phonological distinctions are neutralized orthographically.

(e.g. = /tiɹ/ or /tɛɹ/, e.g. <ough>)

Heterophonic heterography

Different spellings w/ different pronunciations

(e.g. <cat> vs <dog>)

Homographic homophony

Two words with the same orthographic forms and phonological forms

(e.g. "mouse" the animal or for a computer)

Ligature

A grapheme created by joining together 2+ other graphemes

(e.g. <æ>)

Non-structural ligature

• Ligature that does not represent a single phoneme or affect orthographic ordering despite being physically combined.

• Done for aesthetic reasons only.

• Not considered a single grapheme, but a sequence of graphemes.

• (e.g. shit touching when you handwrite)

(Structural) quasi-ligature

• 2+ graphs NOT physically connected, but represent a single phoneme

• affect orthographic ordering

• seen as a single grapheme and NOT a polygraph

• (e.g. <ll> in traditional Spanish orthography)

Structural ligature

• Ligature that represents a single phoneme and affects orthographic ordering.

• Unless otherwise specified, the original graphemes are conjoined.

• Treated as a single grapheme. (e.g. <æ> in Danish)

Phonographic vs morphographic system

Phonographic system: each grapheme represents a phoneme or syllable, or both (although no pure phonographic systems exist). Graphemes primarily represent sounds, not meanings.

Morphographic system: each grapheme represents a morpheme, i.e. has meaning. Not based on sound, but each grapheme still has a corresponding phonetic form.

Cranberry morpheme

Morpheme that has lost or does not have its independent meaning and cannot now be used independently/productively (e.g. "cran," "kempt")

Pictogram (and ideogram)

A pictorial representation of something (e.g. the original Chinese pictogram for sun was a circle with a dot in the middle, or mountain was a literal mountain)

Ideograms are abstract pictograms (e.g. using a single horizontal stroke to mean "1")

Phonetic extension

Taking a symbol used to represent a more concrete, easy-to-draw object and using it to represent more abstract/harder-to-draw words with similar pronunciations

essentially creating more words with new meaning but the same character and similar pronunciation. concrete meaning and easy drawing to represent abstract meaning and harder drawings

result of rebus principle through the writing system

(e.g. extending the symbol for "horse" in Chinese to "mother, scold," etc.)

Semantic extension

Taking a symbol used to represent a more concrete, easy-to-draw object and using it to represent more abstract/harder-to-draw words with related meanings

essentially using characters to represent more abstract, similar concepts but with different pronunciations

(e.g. using the symbol for some nouns in Chinese to represent the corresponding verbs)

Differentiation

Adding another semantic/phonetic character to a character that has been phonetically or semantically extended in order to distinguish b/w different readings/meanings (words)

(e.g. adding character for "sun" to "moon" character to denote the semantically-extended "bright")

Radical (Chinese)

Typically the part of a Chinese character that hints at its meaning (the semantic component). More generally, the component used to sort characters. Aka determinative. E.g. Character for "tree" w/in the character for "plum"

Semantic-semantic compound (Chinese)

Character composed of two semantic components, which both contribute to the meaning of the character overall; neither components contribute to the pronunciation of the character. (Result of differentiation)

Semantic-phonetic compound (Chinese)

Character composed of both a semantic and a phonetic component, which act as semantic and phonetic hints respectively (result of differentiation)

Phonetic/semantic kun-reading (Japanese)

Native Japanese reading for a kanji. Chinese meaning preserved, unless phonetically extended. E.g. /ka/ for the Chinese hanzi for "fire" (Cf. Chinese /huǒ/).

Phonetic/semantic on-reading (Japanese)

Reading for a kanji based on the Chinese pronunciation adapted to Japanese phonology. Chinese meaning preserved, unless phonetically extended. E.g. /hi/ for the Chinese hanzi for "hand" (Cf. Chinese /huǒ/).

Semantic complement

an element in a phrase or sentence that is essential for the meaning of the head word (such as a verb, noun, or adjective) and cannot be removed without changing the sentence's core meaning

Phonological complement

a phonetic symbol used to disambiguate word characters (logograms) that have multiple readings, in mixed logographic-phonetic scripts such as Egyptian hieroglyphs, Akkadian cuneiform, Linear B, Japanese, and Mayan.

eg the <nd> in <2nd> “second” to distinguish it from it’s stand-alone <2> “two”

Katakana

Side/fragmentary kana based on shorthand fragments of man'yogana.

Borrowed phonetic value, but not meaning.

Represent morae.

Modernly used for foreign (non-chinese, although sometimes used for recently borrowed chinese words and names) pronunciations of loan words and names

Hiragana

Plain kana that arose as cursive abstractions of man'yogana. Borrowed phonetic value, but not meaning. Represent morae.

Man'yogana

Precursor of Japanese kana. Non-standardized use of Chinese characters for their sound values, i.e. multiple kanji could be used for the same sound. Chinese meaning discarded. Used to write Japanese phonetically instead of writing it in Kanbun. A step toward japanese having it’s own unique writing system distinct from chinese

Kanji

Chinese characters borrowed into Japanese (with their meaning). May have an on and/or kun reading. Includes kokuji, which were created for use in Japanese, but never existed in Chinese.

Kokuji

Kanji (morphographic signs) that were based on Chinese characters, but never actually existed in Chinese. Therefore they only have Japanese readings.

Kanbun

First Japanese writing system in which Japanese was written as its Chinese translation using Chinese characters

Sumerian

The first language to use cuneiform

No known relatives

two variants of digir and dimmir

Lang features included: SOV, agglutinative morphology

Akkadian

Adopted Sumerian cuneiform

replaced the spoken sumerian language

semitic language with dialects including babylonian and assyrian

Cuneiform

The earliest known writing system,

which evolved out of pictographic clay tokens to line drawings to wedge drawings

Underwent a 90 degree rotation and lots of abstraction.

abstraction resulted in 5 basic strokes

Used both morphographically and phonographically to varying degrees

Monoconsonantal/biconsonantal/triconsonantal grapheme (Egyptian) (aka uni/bi/tri-literal)

Signs rep'ing 1, 2, or 3 phonemes (consonants).

Can be combined w/ each other and morphograms to disambiguate or accentuate pronunciation.

Uniconsonantal glyphs = abjad and are acrophonic.

E.g. If ! = p, @ = pr, # = prm respectively

Determinative (Sumerian cuneiform or Egyptian hieroglyphs)

Signs that aren't pronounced, but disambiguate meanings of signs w/ multiple pronunciations (i.e. otherwise homographs). Refer to classes of Ns/Vs. E.g. Egg glyph in Egyptian relates to women.

Hieroglyphic/hieratic/demotic (scripts)

Hieroglyphic: mixed morphographic and phonographic script used for writing Old Egyptian. Very iconographic w/ flexible writing direction.

Hieratic: semi-cursive script that arose at the same time as hieroglyphs (not a derivation or abbreviation of it). Linear, right to left.

Demotic: cursive script adapted from hieratic. Extensive ligatures. Right to left. Included morphograms w/ determinatives, and phonograms.

Cartouche

"an oval or oblong enclosing a group of Egyptian hieroglyphs, typically representing the name and title of a monarch"

Proto-Sinaitic

A language whose writing system (abjad) was the result of using acrophony to get phonemes from Egyptian hieroglyphic (or hieratic) morphograms, but based on Semitic pronunciations.

Acrophony

A symbol that depicts an object is used to represent the initial sound of that object. Lets you get phonemes from morphograms.

E.g. Using a pic of a tooth to represent /t/.

Abjad

Completely phonographic writing system that originally only had graphemes for consonants (e.g. Arabic)

Matres lectionis (Hebrew or Arabic)

Using glide consonant symbols to represent (long) vowels in a writing system that otherwise generally doesn't represent vowels. Result of semivowel diphthongs becoming long vowels.

Pointed script (Hebrew)

The use of vowel diacritics in the Hebrew abjad to represent short, long, and reduced/shortened vowels. Aka nikud/niqqud. Also includes dagesh (allophonic diacritic to distinguish b/w stops--w/ dagesh--and fricatives--w/o--as well as to indicate geminate consonants.

Yiddish

Form of German spoken by Jews in North-Eastern Europe. Words from both Aramaic and German. Uses New Hebrew script.

Alphabet

phonographic systems which have distinct (non-bound) graphemes

for both vowels and consonants