Chapter 15: Writing Systems

Writing, Language, and Culture

• Writing is not language
• Writing systems are largely $arbitrary$
• Writing and culture $influence$ each other
• Five classes of writing systems:
    * Orthographies- the vast majority of writing systems
    * Pedographies- writing systems designed for learners
    * Technographies- scientific tools designed and used by a specialized field
    * Shorthands- written faster than orthographies, designed to be fast enough to record speech verbatim
    * Cryptographies- codes designed to conceal information

Types of Writing Systems

• Writing can represent $sound and/or meaning$
• Phonographic systems- system that rely predominantly on the representation of sound
    * Syllabic writing systems- uses characters to represent particular sequences of sounds
    * Phonemic writing systems- uses characters that represent individual sounds or segment
      * Alphabet- systems that represent all sounds
      * Abjads- systems that represent consonants but not vowels
      * Abugidas- systems that represent the consonants with full graphemes and the vowels with extra marks
• Morphographic systems- systems that rely predominantly on a correspondence between a written grapheme and a particular morpheme
    * Pictograms- pictures drawn to express ideas
    * Rebus principle- borrowing a symbol only for the phonemic value that it encodes

The Historical Evolution of Writing Systems

• Writing can be @@developed and invented@@, a @@new script can be created@@ for a language, or a @@writing system can be borrowed and adapted@@
• $Morphographic$ writing systems were developed @@first@@
• It is thought that $phonographic writing systems were developed from morphographic writing systems$