Classifying Undeciphered Writing Systems (original) (raw)

The Linguistics of Writing Systems and Hieroglyphic Writing Systems: A Thematic Lexicon

Writing systems contrast with iconography, "mnemonic symbol systems", sign languages, and natural language itself. All writing systems feature signs which are assigned semantic and phonetic values. Most signs were originally pictures of tangible things. The key attributes of a sign are identity, frequency, visual form, semantic and phonetic values. The "etymological sign" is the key to writing system etymology and all logographic systems should have a transliteration system reflecting this.

Quantitative methods for classifying writing systems

Proceedings of the Human Language Technology Conference of the NAACL, Companion Volume: Short Papers on XX - NAACL '06, 2006

We describe work in progress on using quantitative methods to classify writing systems according to Sproat's (2000) classification grid using unannotated data. We specifically propose two quantitative tests for determining the type of phonography in a writing system, and its degree of logography, respectively.

The significance of the morphographic principle for the classification of writing systems

Written Language & Literacy, 2011

The significance of the morphographic principle – by which the orthographic units of a writing system primarily represent morphemes – has been seriously undervalued within the study and classification of writing systems in general and in comprehending kanji within the Japanese writing system in particular. This paper argues for a re-evaluation of the importance of the morphographic principle and suggests that the shift in focus that comes with fully acknowledging that the term morphographic ismore precisethan the widely (mis)used term logographic has profound consequences for how we think about writing systems and writing, as well as for the kinds of questions that we ask about the nature and organization of the mental lexicon in literate language users. Keywords: morphographic principle; logographic; writing system classification; Japanese writing system; kanji; psycholinguistics; mental lexicon

2015: Logography and the classification of writing systems: a response to Unger

2015

In response to Unger (2014), I argue that Chinese does not merely lie along one end of an undifferentiated continuum of writing systems plotted according to the degree of phonological representation found in its graphs. Rather, two features of Chinese writing make it categorically distinct from even orthographically “deep” alphabetic writing systems like English: (1) the high prevalence of graphs that represent distinct meaningful linguistic units (i.e. morphemes) and (2) the use of graphic components (variously termed significs, determinatives, taxograms, classifiers, radicals) to represent the general semantic domains of those represented morphemes. These features have implications for how Chinese writing is processed in the brain, how it changes over time, and how it has been adapted for the written representation of other languages. For these reasons we should recognize that Chinese writing is distinct from phonographic systems of writing. Any dispute over which term is most appropriate for characterizing Chinese and the other writing systems of its type—logographic, morphographic, morphosyllabic, etc.—is secondary in importance to the recognition of the validity of this categorical distinction.

Graphology of a writing system

-- Graphemes of ‘pictorial motifs’ and ‘signs’ are combined to convey messages -- M-712 fuses a spoked wheel on the throat of the bovine tsarkh ‘potter’s wheel’ (Pashto) + melqe ‘throat’ (Maltese) rebus: arka melaka ‘copper company’ -- K51 links a Sign 59 ‘fish’ grapheme to Sign 241, Sign 51 graphemes; ayo ‘fish’ rebus: ayas ‘alloymetal’ + Sign 241 kampaṭṭam ‘coin, coinage, mint’ + Sign 51 śrēṣṭhin khār ’guild-master blacksmith’