CLCIV Midterm WN23

writing

conventional system of marks used to represent symbols/structures of language

pictogram

using a picture/drawing to represent a word

ideograms/logograms

represents a concept or idea (often a word) \-- pictograms are a subset of ideograms/logograms

phonogram

represents one or more speech sound(s) (ex. letters)

syllabogram

represents a syllable (subset of phonograms)

alphabet

writing system in which each phonogram represents a single speech sound

syllabary

writing system that consists of syllabograms

proto-writing

any set of written symbols that record information but are not systematically related to language

Mesopotamia

"land between the rivers" (Tigris to the east and Euphrates to the west); mostly modern day Iraq; early views thought birth of writing was here and only once (an idea that was nixed later); the "Fertile Crescent" or "Cradle of Civilization"; four regions are Assyria, Akkad, Babylonia, and Sumer

Uruk

center of early writing; 5,000 of the 6,000 oldest tablets found here; ~3000 B.C.

Darius I the Great

Persian king at the height of Persian Empire(550-486 BC); name means "he who uphold the good"; an inscription about him is on a wall near Behistun; Grotefend used his name and others to being the decipherment of Old Persian; made Aramaic official language of Persian Empire in the west

cuneiform

writing systems of wedge-shaped symbols impressed into wet clay used to write numerous languages (Mesopotamian cuneiform system most famous)

stylus

utensil used for writing cuneiform; an inscription tool

Avestan

common Indo-European ancestor of Old Persian; Rawlinson used his knowledge of this language to produce a complete translation of the Old Persian inscription in Behistun

Old Persian

imitation of Mesopotamian/Sumerian cuneiform system (but completely unrelated to Sumerian language \-- ancestor to modern Farsi); first used around 6th-4th century B.C.; partially alphabetic, syllabic. Darius I claimed to have invented it, but likely just commissioned it.

Behistun (Bisitun)

where Rawlinson copied down the inscription of Darius in cuneiform; Zagros Mountains of west Iran; three cuneiform inscriptions were there: Old Persian, Babylonian, and Elamite

Georg Grotefend

German scholar; used names of Persian kings (Darius, Xerxes, etc.) and knowledge of Persian custom to decipher Old Persian cuneiform; a lucky guess!; determined it was mostly alphabetic; he was wrong about most symbols but broke the ground for others

Sir Henry Rawlinson

English army officer; first to copy down the inscriptions at Behistun; deciphered Old Persian by comparing it to his knowledge of Avestan; generally credited with the decipherment of Babylonian cuneiform; but never explained how he did it

Sumerian

Earliest identifiable language of cuneiform docs; Unrelated to any ancient or modern language we know; likely spoken during or before 5th millennium B.C. until ~2000 B.C.; writing system outlived it until 100 B.C. (Post-Sumerian); as such, most documents not written by native speaker

Akkadian

Semitic language; later varieties of Mesopotamian cuneiform (2600 BC); cultural contact with Sumerian speakers; influence brought in new values for signs, expanded syllabographic potential (i.e. symbols had phonetic value of both Sumerian and Akkadian words), continued to use original Sumerian logographic value ("sumerograms") as shorthand; famous literature: creation and flood myths (Eridu Genesis), law code of Hammurabi (Babylonian). Eventually split into Assyrian and Babylonian

Difficulties of adapting Sumerian cuneiform to Akkadian

Unrelated languages, grammatically and phonologically very different \-- Sumerian agglutinative & inflection heavy (long words); Akkadian \-- three-consonant roots with infixes

Semitic

a group of languages; Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, Akkadian, Babylonian, and related languages

rebus system

system of writing where the symbols resemble the sounds they represent; used in the transition from pictograms to syllabary in Sumerian cuneiform (ex: "ti" is the word for arrow, used in "til" which means life; eventually the sign for arrow used as the syllabogram with phonetic value "ti") \-- associated with Akkadian more than Sumerian

Hammurabi

king of Babylon (18th century BC); wrote Akkadian/Babylonian law code inscribed on a stele (longest Babylonian text) \-- code "eye for eye" but early example of presumed innocence, punishments changed based on social status, half of laws were commercial, other half religious, familial, military

Hittite

oldest preserved Indo-European language; of Anatolia, modern day Turkey (2nd millennium BC); 30,000 clay tablets found, one bronze; Mesopotamian cuneiform; empired rivaled Ramesses II's Egypt; cannibal text; inherited cuneiform style went from Sumerian to Akkadian to them (meaning that any given symbol could stand for a Sumerian word, a syllable in a Sumerian word, a syllable in an Akkadian word, and/or a symbol in a Hittite word)

phonetic complements

combined sumerogram (for semantic value) with symbol including phonetic information (similar to English ordinals 1st, 2nd, 3rd)

cuneiform - aesthetic & technological changes

obvious pictograms written w/ pointed stylus -\> 90 degree rotation counterclockwise written w/ reed stylus, simplification and abstraction of symbol meanings

Epic of Gilgamesh

An Akkadian story spanning 12 tablets from late 2nd millennium B.C., based on earlier Sumerian elements going back a millennium further

hieroglyphs

writing style characterized by seemingly pictographic symbols; assumed to be just pictograms, or "pure thought", but represented both sounds and words; most famous are the Egyptian (earliest nd of 4th millennium or early 3rd millennium B.C.); not sure if syllabic because no vowels were indicated; not for everyday use (decorative, memorial, secular texts, later confined only to priests); peak of 750 signs (2000-1650 BC) and a revival to 5000 signs (40-50 BC, Ptolemaic period); killed off in 394 AD by Christianity

origin of Egyptian hieroglyphs

debated; various structural similarities to Sumerian (determiners, phoeneticizations of word-signs, abstract symbols from rebus and combinations) but no symbols are identical and there are no syllable signs in hieroglyphs

hieratic

a derivative of hieroglyphs; script for everyday use; more cursive-like for brushes/ink on smooth surfaces; developed at the same time as hieroglyphs (oldest continuous texts we have are in it); spelling is more standardized; continued only for religious use after 660 BC, died out by early 2nd century AD

Athanasius Kircher

Learned Coptic, claimed it was last descendant of ancient Egyptian. Many translations wrong, but pioneered serious study of hieroglyphs

Thomas Young

invented term "Indo-European"; proposed Egyptian hieroglyphs were phonetic

Jean-François Champollion

deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs, concluded mixed ideographic/phonographic script

phonographic nature of hieroglyphs

unsure if syllabic or sound-based since no vowels indicated; one, two, three-consonant signs; some vowel symbols developed for foreign loanwords

Coptic

descendent of Ancient Egyptian (latest ancestor Demotic) starting 2nd century A.D. to 17th century, thereafter replaced by Arabic (still used as liturgical text in Coptic Church). Alphabet mostly greek with a few Demotic characters

papyrus

thin, paper-like material; used by Egyptians for writing various scripts like hieratic

use of hieroglyphs

not for everyday use; decorative monumental script known by higher statuses (officials, priests, craftsme, doctors); originally peaked with ~750 signs, Ptolemaic revival led to \> 5000 signs (really used only by priests at this point, intentionally complicated script so unavailable to general public); eventually killed off by Christianity

demotic

even more simplified version of hieratic; mostly phonetic (replaced hieratic for secular texts ~600 B.C); gradually declined during Greco-Roman period

Rosetta Stone

an ancient Egyptian stele; inscription is in three scripts: Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic, and Greek; deciphered by Champollion

stela (stele)

a tall, stone or wooden slab; used to commemorate important events, people, doctrines, etc. (ex: Rosetta Stone, Law Code of Hammurabi)

cartouche

used in Egyptian hieroglyphs, an oval with a horizontal line at one end that indicates that the text enclosed is a royal name

Meroitic

alphasyllabary/abugida script; monumental style inherited from hieroglyphs and cursive style inherited from demotic; still not completely understood

Linear B

script (NOT a language!); used 1400-1200 BC; found in Minoan palace by Sir Arthur Evans (1900) from 2nd millennium BC; later found more tablets in a Mycenaean (Greek) site; the first known writing system used for Greek language; used nearly a half-millennium before the earliest alphabetic Greek; texts were "boring" (ex. inventories); likely only small group of people knew how to write it (only around one hand per discovery site); mixed syllabograms and ideograms

Attic

Greek dialect; became standard in Athens during the Classical Greek period (480-323 BC)

Koine

"common"; mix of Attic and Ionic dialects; continued in written form until 500 A.D.; ancestral to almost all varieties of modern Greek (pushed out other dialects like Doric)

Greek during Roman Period

became first/second language in most parts of Empire, language of early Christian church

Determining pronunciation of dead languages

foreign loanwords, poetry, modern descendants, other iterations of writing system, spelling variations/errors, jokes/puns, comparative evidence (ex. Ancient Greek zeta \-- Greek poetry based on "heavy" and "light" syllables \-- short vowels before double consonants are heavy, and vowels in front of zeta were used as heavy consonants. Also, zeta used to spell Persian loanword Auramazda)

Homeric epics

Iliad, Odyssey; not originally written, but culmination of ancient oral tradition

oral-formulaic poetry

Partially memorized and partially improvised (or re-composed) poetry, orally transmitted, built largely out of formulae

formulae

Pre-fabricated building blocks that can be slotted into particular parts of a line of poetry

Milman Parry

French student; 1902-1935, recorded illiterate South Slavic bards singing traditional songs and epics in Bosnia, studying their compositional techniques, longest being 13,000 verses; proved that Homeric epics were composed in the same way (oral-formulaic poetry)

dactylic hexameter

used in Homeric epics; each line has six "feet", each of which is composed either of dactyl or a spondee (last is always spondee)

dactyl

long short short

spondee

long long

Sir Arthur Evans

(1851 - 1941): British archeologist who unearthed the remains of the Minoan civilization (Knossos) on the island of Crete., excavated Knossos; responsible for its (somewhat problematic) restoration. In palace, thousands of tablets inscribed in Linear A and Linear B. First to see syllabic, writing direction (right to left), and inflectional nature of script

Alice Kober

American Classicist; worked on deciphering Linear B for 20 years; died before she could finish the job, but made substantial progress; made 180,000 hand-cut lips on Linear B; assumed Evans was right about the language being inflectional, deduced relationships between some vowels and consonants and made a grid of 10 signs

Michael Ventris

British amateur linguist and cryptologer who broke the linear B code - he worked from the idea that the signs stood for whole syllables and that the language might be Greek, not Minoan. Proved that 1) Greek was language of Myceneans 2) Myceneans had adapted the Cretan Linear A script to their own Greek language for the same purpose as the Minoeans had 3) Myceneans were ruling in Crete by the 15th century; created a larger, more complete grid of symbols and their relationships to each other than Kober; used Cypriot (Greek dialect of Cyprus) to "bootstrap" his way through the entire decipherment; Started by creating a larger and more complete grid of the symbols and their relationship to one another (without yet knowing any of the true values)

Mycenaean Greek

oldest preserved dialect of Greek; written in Linear B; had labiovelars

labiovelars

consonants that combine k-sounds with w, basically "qu" in English; the only Greek dialect that had these was Mycenean (transliterated as "q"); direct evidence for construction of common ancestors of language

alphabet

system of writing in which individual symbols represent individual speech sounds, not combinations of sounds; classified according to whether/how vowels are represented

abjad

has consonant letters but no vowel letters (some may have optional diacritics to represent vowels, or use consonant letters to represent vowels

abugida

aka alphasyllabary; consonant letters represent consonant plus a basic vowel (other combinations/pure consonants represented with additional symbols/marks)

acrophonic principle

representing a sound by a picture of an object whose name begins with the sound to be represented (ex. B comes from a picture of a house, bēt in early Semitic languages)

true alphabet

in this alphabet, vowels are represented on a par with consonants, i.e. with their own letters; sometimes a letter can represent a combination of sounds (like "X" in English)

Wadi el-Hol

Egyptian village; Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions found; cliffside graffiti dates to 2000 BC; earliest known alphabet (?)

Proto-Sinaitic

alphabetic, Semitic script (abjad) (1500 BC) argued to be the predecessor to Phoenician; inscriptions found in turqouise quarry in Sinai of an Egyptian temple of goddess Hathor (mid-2nd millennium BC) by POWs; not fully deciphered.

Byblos

alphabetic script (1700-1400 BC), only ten inscriptions, still undeciphered; probably a syllabary rather than an alphabet based on the number of signs; connections to trade with Egypt

Ugaritic

Cuneiform alphabetic script (1500-1300 B.C.), modeled visually on Mesopotamian cuneiform (two alphabetic orders: alef-beth and h-l-ḥ-m).

Proto-Canaanite

alphabetic script (1400-1050 BC); descendant of Proto-Sinaitic after it was brought eastward out of Sinai into the Levant; after 1050 BC, we call the script (and language) "Phoenician"

Phoenician

Semitic people living in and around modern Lebanon; they were widely traveled merchants, colonized Mediterranean same time as the Greeks; their script (earliest dating back to 1050 B.C.) was borrowed by the Greek and adapted to the Greek language in the 8th century B.C.

West Greek alphabet

Greek alphabet that was brought to Italy, what will ultimately become ours:
H was used for "h"
F was used for "w"
X was used for "ks"
Qoppa still in use by time it reached Italy

East Greek alphabet

Greek alphabet that became standard (403-402 BC);
H for long "e" (eta)
no F (only ph)
X for "kh"
Qoppa used as k in front of o/u, eventually dropped it

Etruscan

alphabet transmitted from the Greeks (also 8th century BC); the "Western Greek"; language has no known relatives; had highest level of civilization in Italy before the spread of the Romans; differences from Greek:
no voiced stops (b,d,g), so used gamma for "k" (which eventually became a C)
had w sound, so used F for w (like in West Greek)
had f sound (Greek had aspirated ph) \-- used FH
had no z sound, used Z for "ts"
had no o sound
had three k's: K before A, Q before U, Gamma before E, I

Roman alphabet

(7th century B.C.) In contact with Greeks and Etruscans, drawing from both alphabets (ex. B, D, O from Greek, Q, K, C from Etruscans \-- eventually stopped using K). Had g sound but used C for that for a while. Borrowed Etruscan FH and dropped the H, also used Etruscan V for u and w; dropped Z but got reintroduced to it later; borrowed Y and Z from Greek to write Greek loanwords

Gothic alphabet

a descendant of Greek alphabet; 4th century AD; used by Goths (Germanic) who settled many of the territories of the declining Roman empire; devised by Bishop Wulfilas who translated New Testament into their language; used mostly Greek letters, some Latin (not runes bc runes were pagan)

Glagolitic alphabet

a descendant of Greek alphabet; one of the two alphabets traditionally ascribed to the brothers Constantine and Methodius, sent to Christianize the Slavs in 860 AD; probably the older of the two; origin unknown but at least in part Greek (same sounds, different symbols)

Cyrillic alphabet

a descendant of Greek alphabet; one of the two alphabets traditionally ascribed to the brothers Constantine and Methodius, sent to Christianize the Slavs in 860 AD; Greek letters plus additional ones to represent Slavic sounds. Shows how Greek sound values had changed by time of spread (ex. beta now [v], eta now [i])

Greek alphabet predecessors

Proto-Sinaitic (possible Wadi el-Hol) -\> Proto-Canaanite (-\> Old South Arabian -\> Ethiopian) -\> Phoenician -\> Greek

Descendents of Greek alphabet

Etruscan (-\> Latin), Coptic, Gothic, Georgian, Armenian, Cyrillic

serif

intentional stylistic feature of letters that started as a product of flat-nibbed pen and brush strokes; flaring at the beginning of strokes that became intentional; adopted in inscriptional styles of writing

manuscript hand

a particular style of handwriting, or a particular person's handwriting; from late antiquity, letters become more rounded and varied in size (ascenders + descenders)

majuscule

capital letters, equivalent to Roman capitals; all about the same size

Minuscule (Half-uncial)

evolves from majuscule; variation in letter height and vertical orientation (no functional differences for many, many centuries); various letters permanently acquired ascenders or descenders; relative size of letters becomes fixed (b, d, l \-- c, e); most letter-shapes identical to our modern lowercase printed letters; gradual separation of lowercase and uppercase letter (pay attention to N, G, D)

Square Capitals

a manuscript hand; attempt to reproduce monumental capitals from stone inscriptions using a pen; has an "important" look; used for special editions of works; died out probably in the 4th century, and very few examples survive; characterized by:
tall initial letter
lack of cross-stroke in A
taller L and F (avoid confusion with I and T)

Rustic Capitals

a manuscript hand; pen held with the nib perpendicular to the direction of writing, so the vertical strokes are thin and horizontal strokes are thick (opposite of square capitals and modern writing); more fluid, looks less like an imitation of stone carvings; used mostly from 4th-6th centuries (pay attention to Ls/Is/Ts \-- very thin)

Uncials

a manuscript hand; dispensed the use of serifs; guiding principle was the economy of movement: use as few strokes as possible; change from papyrus to parchment leads to more rounding; graceful and dignified script, lots of white space; used from 4-9th centuries
beginning of development of ascenders and descenders
larger letters open paragraphs
(pay attention to G, N, D)

Charlemagne

King of the Franks (r. 768-814); emperor (r. 800-814). Hired Alcuin, Anglo-Saxon monk from York to develop Carolingian minuscule

Carolingian minuscule

a lightly modified and standardized minuscule; reformed legible book hand ordered by Frankish king Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor from 800-814; invented by monk Alcuin; used until around 1200
balanced and proportional horizontally and vertically (horizontal spacing and 2:1 ratio between ascenders/descenders and short letters)

Book of Kells (Insular majuscule)

Irish illuminated manuscript from c. 800; mostly Uncial but somewhat like minuscule. Style influenced Carolingian minuscule

Black Letter (Gothic, Gothic minuscule)

wider pen nibs -\> thicker strokes; not as much space between lines, leading to black letter hand (grew directly out of Carolingian minuscule). Less time/material consuming because of spatial efficiency, popular among new emerging secular fields (Gothic meant to be derogatory by fans of Carolingian minuscule) \-- however, lack of clarity w/o tittles. Also where we start to see fairly consistent word breaks

Johannes Gutenberg

invented printing press with movable type; figured out best alloy for type and developed mold for mass production (earlier in Asia, moveable type was also invented, but too inconvenient due to thousands of characters)

Roman typeface

During Renaissance was thought that Carolingian minuscule was invented by Romans \-- wanting to imitate Romans, they modeled it after minuscule, combined with Roman capitals. Later added serifs and made diagonal strokes vertical

Sanskrit

an Indo-European, Indic language, in use since c1200 b.c. as the religious and classical literary language of India (similar to how Latin is used); the "refined" way of speaking (deriving from saṃskṛta, meaning put together, well formed). Put into writing after Prakrits (seen as too religiously sacred to write for a while)

Rig Veda

a collection of 1,017 Sanskrit hymns composed about 1500 BC or earlier; Hinduism's oldest sacred text; partly oral-formulaic in nature (some of the same formulae even found in Homer); probably orally composed in late 2nd millenium B.C.

Mahabharata

8 times as long as Iliad and Odyssey combined! Stories within stories within stories.

Panini

Indian grammarian of 4th century B.C. who codified rules for what we now call Classical Sanskrit; Recognized abstract underlying forms like roots, from which surface forms are derived by rules; extremely precise phonetic & phonological descriptions

Sandhi rules

(pronounced "sundy"), from Sanskrit saṃdhi 'putting together, juncture'. Describe phonological changes in connected speech

Brahmi script

abugida script; originally used for Prakrits, earliest writing from Rock of Ashoka; by the time Sanskrit was allowed to be written, Brahmi scripts had already differentiated to adapt to different Prakrits/dialects \-- meaning Sanskrit has no primary association with any script, but rather could be written by any Brahmi script (eventually standardized to devanagari)

Devanagari script

an alphabetic writing system (abugida); currently used to write Hindi and Sanskrit, among other languages of India. Standardized for Sanskrit starting 19th century