Writing Systems (Languages And Linguistics) Research Papers (original) (raw)

Revised AWLL11 programme + abstracts

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- Writing Systems & Decipherment, Psycholinguistics, Reading, History of Reading and Writing

This article focuses on a linked pair of " documents " from mid-seventeenth-century coastal Peru. The analysis first examines a revisita (an administrative " revisit ") carried out in 1670 in settlements around the town of San Pedro de Corongo, in the lower Santa River Valley. The revisit describes a census of the population of what are described as six pachacas (" one-hundreds ") administrative/census units that usually coincided with ayllus (the Andean clanlike sociopolitical groups). The document identifies 132 tributaries distributed across the six ayllus, all but two of whom are identified by name. Tribute is assessed on this new census count. The information in the revisit is then compared to the organization of a group of six khipus (knotted-string recording devices) that were said to have been recovered from a burial in the Santa Valley. The six khipus are organized into a total of 133 color-coded groups of six cords. The knot values on the first cords of the six-cord groups total the same value as the tribute assessed in the revisit document, and it is argued on these grounds that the khipus and the revisit document pertain to the same administrative procedure. The attachment knots of the first cords of the six-cord groups vary in a binary fashion by attachment type (i.e., tied either " verso " or " recto "). It is argued that this construction feature divides the tributaries identified in the revisit into moieties; therefore, the khipus constitute a gloss on the social organization of the population identified in the revisit document. It is suggested that the names of the tributaries may be signed by color coding in the khipus.

L’Afaka est un syllabaire créole originaire du Surinam. Il a été développé en 1900 par Afaka, un membre du peuple Ndjuka, pour le langage du même nom. Découverte à partir de 1910, elle est au cœur d’enjeux à la fois politiques et culturels au sein du peuple Ndjuka, et de leurs relations extérieures. Comme beaucoup de jeune écritures d’Afrique qui lui sont contemporaines, le contexte (post-)colonial influence les conditions de la création de ces formes. Cette recherche questionne le contexte social et historique de ces écritures, et son influence sur la genèse de leur création, de leur usage, de leur diffusion... Au sein de programme Missing Script et dans un souci de valorisation de ces systèmes d’écriture absents de l’Unicode, les recherches se penchent également sur les usages actuels de ce système d’écriture, afin d’en déterminer la forme typographique.

- by Emilie Aurat and +1
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- Writing Systems (Languages And Linguistics), Typeface Design, Non Latin Typeface Design, History of Writing Systems
- by Aaron Butts and +1
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- Semitic languages, Writing Systems & Decipherment, Arabic Language and Linguistics, Comparative Semitic Linguistics

The relation between Chinese cultural identity and the use of Chinese characters is frequently discussed by historians of China. The study of Dungan cultural identity is crucial to this issue, especially since the Dungan language (Dōnggānyǔ) comprises a number of Northern Chinese "Mandarin" dialects spoken by a mixed population with a strong unified sense of a local Chinese cultural identity all of its own. The primacy of speech versus writing is a central theme in general linguistics. Here again, the case of Dungan cyrillic pinyin versus Chinese character literacy provides absolutely crucial evidence of a unique case in which the spoken language of a highly literate Chinese population is profoundly affected by a radical change of writing system. In separating themselves from the traditional Chinese writing system and the traditional literature transmitted in that medium, the Dungan people provide unique evidence that the generally accepted thesis on the primacy of spoken versus written language is profoundly flawed: Dungan independence from the traditional Chinese writing system had profound and pervasive effects on the use of so-called shūmiànyǔ vocabulary, of traditional colloquial proverbs on the one hand, and very importantly on the use of chéngyǔ and yànyǔ which is so widespread within those Chinese communities in which the use of Chinese characters continues to prevail. Yuen Ren Chao is said to have complained that speakers of Mandarin Chinese were trying to speak shūmiànyǔ. It seems to me to be profoundly significant that no such complaint could ever be made of the Dungans speaking their language. The status of the written language is not the same as that in the case of Standard Mandarin Chinese. The abandonment of Chinese characters to supplement the Korean hangul alphabet has had closely similar profound gradual effects on the usability and comprehensibility of a wide range of Chinese loan words and classical Chinese proverbial idioms of all kinds in modern Korean. The foreign language of reference is no longer classical Chinese. It is English. Again, when it comes to the comparative study of the cultural and even political implications of writing systems, the case of the Dungans can be very usefully compared with that of a

There is no comparable survey written by a top specialist with the purpose of revealing structural similarities in language encoding by
writing systems and dispelling several key misconceptions along the way. Its conclusions are thought-provoking and consequential. This book is a must-have, although its actual audience is somewhat narrower than
intended. As a course textbook, however, it requires contextualization and extra readings

This paper focuses on three language systems: the Greek, the English and the German languages, which we will examine as to their transparency. This contrastive analysis was undertaken in the context of my doctoral research with the subject "Teaching spelling to learners with dyslexia learning German as a second foreign language in primary education" (Tsakalidou, 2020). These language systems were analysed in detail, due to the fact that we examined the spelling difficulties of learners with dyslexia and created the theoretical framework as to the three languages involved in the research. The learners, who took part in this research (95 learners between the ages of 10 and 11 years, 20 of who had dyslexia), had Greek as their first (mother) language, English as their first foreign language and German as their second foreign language. Research of various language systems has shown that dyslexia is recorded equally in all language systems, however, the difficulties that dyslexic learners face are increased in opaque orthographic systems (for example English).

- by Sofia Tsakalidou
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- Phonology, Phonetics, SpLD/dyslexia, Writing Systems (Languages And Linguistics)

Variation in writing is highly frequent at both the visual and the functional levels. However, as of yet, the associated notion of allography has not been systematically described. In this article, two major types of allography are proposed: graphetic allography, conceptually comparable to allophony, depends on visual similarity and captures how concrete units are associated with visual abstractions, i.e., how three graphs in are instances of the basic shape |a|. Graphematic allography, conceptually closer to allomorphy, does not depend on visual similarity but groups together units that share the same function, i.e., represent the same linguistic unit (phoneme, syllable, morpheme, etc.) and are complementarily distributed, meaning there exist no contexts in which they contrast. An example is the positionally conditioned alternation between |σ| vs |ς| for the Greek grapheme <σ>. By means of a number of criteria, subtypes of graphetic and graphematic allography are proposed and examples are given from different writing systems. A special case that is discussed is the complex phenomenon of capitalization. Additionally, examples of variation phenomena that are not included in the concept of allography are given, and orthographic variation is addressed as a marginal case of variation dependent on the norm rather than the system.

Naturalness Theory (NT) is founded on the notion of naturalness and claims that when a linguistic phenomenon can be processed by humans with little effort, both sensomotorically and cognitively, it is deemed more natural compared to other, more complex phenomena. Drawing on evidence such as language change, language acquisition, and language disorders, various parameters of naturalness (e.g., biuniqueness, constructional iconicity) have been postulated, which focus on the phonological and morphological subsystems of language. This paper offers an outline of how naturalness can be extended to grapholinguistic phenomena. Comparative graphematics (cf. Weingarten 2011), extended to comparative grapholinguistics, is assessed as a method that can be used to reveal naturalness parameters which apply to both material (graphetic) and linguistic (graphematic) aspects of writing. The reduction of extrinsic symmetry across various scripts will be discussed as an example. By integrating these preliminary theoretical ideas into the framework of NT, it is demonstrated that so-called Natural Grapholinguistics could offer promising new insights as well as a tertium comparationis method for future comparative analyses of scripts and writing systems.

- by Angela Bianchi
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- Languages and Linguistics, Historical Linguistics, Writing, Linguistics

In this study, I extended input methods for the Japanese language to Egyptian hieroglyphics. There are several systems that capable of inputting Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. However, they do not allow us to directly input hieroglyphs, for instance, into MS Word. The new Egyptian hieroglyphic input system being reported here, developed using technology used for inputting Japanese writing, is quite unique and allows the direct input of hieroglyphs, for example, into MS Word. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and the Japanese writing system (with its mixture of hiragana, katakana and kanji) share basic graphemic characteristics. For instance, Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic logograms are functionally similar to Japanese kanji logograms (Chinese characters), whereas Egyptian hieroglyphic phonograms are functionally similar to Japanese hiragana and katakana syllabic phonograms. The input technology for Japanese makes it possible to input a mixture of logograms and phonograms, and phonetic complements. This technology is a well-organized and handy tool to input Japanese writing into computers, having been used by over 100 million people. I applied this technology to Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic inputting and created a new intuitive hieroglyphic inputting system using Google Japanese Input. Using this method, anyone can directly write Egyptian hieroglyphic writing into software like MS Word. If the transcription of an ancient Egyptian word is entered, the correct hieroglyphs are generated by this system. If there are multiple options for any phonemic combinations that use other combinations of phonetic complements or determinatives, a dropdown window with a list of several combinations of glyphs appears and the user can choose the desired combination.

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.

- by Raj Bhat
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- Writing Systems (Languages And Linguistics)

Writing is an eclectic phenomenon whose many facets are studied by the young interdisciplinary field of grapholinguistics. Linguistically, writing is a system of graphic marks that relate to language. Under the lens of processing, it is a method of producing and perceiving utterances with our hands, eyes, and brains. And from a communication theoretical and sociolinguistic perspective, it is an utterly personal medium that allows users not only to convey messages to others but also to associate themselves with cultures or ideologies. These perspectives must merge to become the foundation of a functional theory of grapholinguistics that aims not only to describe how writing systems are built but to explain why they are built that way. Starting with a unified framework that allows the description of all types of writing systems with comparative concepts (such as grapheme) and moving towards the incorporation of evidence from disciplines such as psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics to arrive at explanations, this book establishes the cornerstones of such a functional theory of writing. The Nature of Writing is a collection of ideas about writing, a status report about relevant research, a discovery of desiderata, and a new perspective. It is a start, but most importantly, it is an invitation.

- by Jean Pacquement and +1
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- History of India, Writing Systems (Languages And Linguistics), Indo-Aryan Linguistics, Writing systems

تشير نظرية أنظمة الكتابة التي نشأت في نهايات القرن التاسع عشر، وطورها Gelb وغيره من اللغويين والدارسين في هذا الحقل العلمي إلى تصنيفات مختلفة ثنائية وثلاثية وأكثر. وتعتمد – ككل الدراسات التصنيفية اللاحقة – على جوهر العلاقة بين الصوت وتمثله الكتابي حرفاً أو رمزاً. ومن هنا تأسست التصنيفات المعتمدة على وجود العلاقة الصوتية-الحرفية في الأساس كالكتابة الألفبائية والكتابة المقطعية على اختلاف أنواعهما، أو على انعدام تلك العلاقة الصوتية-الحرفية كالكتابة الصورية Pictography والشعارية Logography. وفي ظل التشتت الكبير الذي يعاني منه هذا الحقل مما يجعل البحث في العلائق والعوائق بين تلك الأنظمة الكتابية في العالم مهمة صعبة، فإن الحاجة إلى تصنيف علمي معتمد لأنظمة الكتابة يبدو ملحاً.
يضم نظام الكتابة العربية - ككل الأنظمة الساميّة – غَناء في تمثيل الصوامت وفقراً في تمثيل الصوائت. ومن هنا فقد اختلف عدد من الدارسين لأنظمة الكتابة في تصنيف الكتابة العربية، وتأسيس ذلك التصنيف منطقياً على أساس علمي. ووصل ذلك الاختلاف إلى أن أطلقت الأدبيات المهتمة بأنظمة الكتابة عدداً من الأوصاف المختلفة على نظام الكتابة العربية ومنها: الكتابة المقطعية، والكتابة الهجائية، والأبجدية، والصوامتية... إلى غيرها من الأوصاف والتصنيفات والتعريفات. بل ذكر بعضهم عجزاً خاصاً بالنظام الكتابي العربي والساميّ يحول دون تصنيفه. وكانت مهمة هذا المبحث مراجعة أهم تلك الأوصاف في مقابل الخصائص الصوتية والصورية (الكتابية) لنظام الكتابة العربية.
بعد فحص دقيق للمحاولات التصنيفية لنظام الكتابة العربية، وجدنا أن أفضل توصيف لنظام الكتابة العربية هو النظام الأبجدي بمعناه التقني الصوامتي في علم أنظمة الكتابة كما شرحناها في هذا المبحث، لأسباب متعددة كتطور الخط الكتابي، والخصائص الإملائية، وجذور الكلمات، وتركيب الأحرف وأشكالها وتغيراتها، بالإضافة إلى العلاقة الصوتية-الحرفية في هذا النظام الكتابي العريق.

Details of a lecture give at an International Lettering Arts Conference in 2013 about a unique alphabet invented by two young men from the Fulani Tribe of Guinea. With their tribe over 90% illiterate, they set out to create a writing system that better represented the sounds of their speech. From its creation, this alphabetic writing system has made great strides in literacy for their tribe, and has been set up for a Unicode release in 2016.

During the last two millennia, a large corpus of texts was produced in the Ethiopic script. This ancient African writing system is peculiar to the Ethio-Eritrean region at the Horn of Africa, particularly to the Ethiosemitic language Gǝʿǝz. The present paper is concerned with the origin, linguistic modification and spread of the Ethiopic script, as well as its socio-cultural connotation vis-à-vis other scripts in the region. For this purpose, previous studies related to these topics have been assessed and summarized in a comprehensive description.

The presence of Italo-Romance local languages on the Web, and particularly on social networks, compels local language promoters to create (or to choose one of the pre-existing) writing systems for these traditionally and eminently spoken-only varieties.
As for Lombardy (north-western Italy), a proper regional koinè never existed, nor existed a unitary supra-regional script (Sanga 1999). Nonetheless, on the Internet Lombard is one of the most used Italian regional varieties (Tavosanis 2011, Miola 2014) and on the Lombard webpages several different orthographies may be found: among them, the milanesa classega (Classical Milanese orthography), the urtugrafia muderna (modern orthography), the insübrica ünificada (unified Insubric orthography, with Insubric being an ad-hoc sovra-local variety elaborated for online uses), the orthography called Scriver Lombard.
This paper will investigate in depth the scripts used on the Wester Lombard wikipedia (http://lmo.wikipedia.org/) and for posting on the Facebook open group Per quei che parla milanes (‘For those who speak Milanese’, http://www.facebook.com/groups/273487396077585/, recently renamed Per quei che parla lombard, ‘For those who speak Lombard’).
After discussing these scripts along the lines of Iannàccaro and Dell'Aquila’s (2008) framework for sociolinguistic analysis of graphic systems, I will, at least tentatively, answer the following questions:
a) which script(s) are preferred by Lombard internet users on their dialect webpages?
b) Are top-down graphic revisions or editings imposed on these webpages?
c) Which role the writing systems of contact languages and of real or “desired” Dachsprachen play in this connection?

In East Asia, the relationship between script and language is determined to a great extent by the typological character of the languages involved. This is particularly so because sinographic writing generally relies on the syllable as the smallest unit of sound expressible. However, many languages that have adapted Sinitic writing throughout history display complex syllable structure not easily expressible by the monosyllabically inclined sinograph. Moreover, some languages have even displayed changing syllable structure throughout documented history. This article examines the so-called "monosyllabicization" of the Vietnamese language, and its impact on the history of the sinographic vernacular script known as Chữ Nôm. I argue that by the 17th century, the emergent monosyllabic character of Vietnamese was remarked upon by elites as a new justification for embracing vernacular writing, previously considered uncouth.

This paper provides a detailed review of the principal assumptions, theoretical orientations, and working methodologies of archaeological decipherment, indicating how these perspectives have guided ongoing work in script comparison, stimulated investigations into the origins, development, and demise of writing systems, and served as a yardstick against which to measure proposed decipherments. The principles are then applied to Maya hieroglyphic writing in a detailed case study of the decipherment of the Maya phonetic sign /me/. The evidence in support of this particular decipherment measures up well against the aforementioned general principles, and is additionally supported by controlled contexts (sufficient in number and variety to allow testing), by the reconstructed grammatical rules and orthographic conventions of Classic Maya writing, and, not least, by the critical presence of biscripts and similar script-external constraints. Following determination of the sign’s function (a CV phonetic sign) and canonical reading value (me), its iconic origins are explored and determined to have arisen acrophonically from the Eastern Ch'olan term /mech/ “snail shell”. Contributions of this study include a nuanced analysis of the Relación de las cosas de Yucatán (a critical sixteenth-century biscript), the addition of several ‘new’ Classic Mayan lexemes and grammatical morphemes (including the /-em/ perfect participle), and the recognition of conventionalized markings for ‘shell’ in Maya and wider Mesoamerican art and writing. Most importantly, the study contributes to a broader theory and methodology of decipherment, and urges the application of comparative grammatological principles to the lesser-known scripts of Mesoamerica.

- by Jean Pacquement and +1
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- History of India, Writing Systems (Languages And Linguistics), Hindi/Urdu, Writing systems

A discussion of the origins of Mesopotamian writing, from proto-cuneiform down through the development of the syllabary. In particular, the article presents an analysis of arguments presented by proto-cuneiform specialist Robert Englund and myself for a non-Sumerian, non-Semitic language in Uruk-period Southern Mesopotamia.
It is argued that an early Indo-European-speaking community shared the multilinguistic landscape and had a decisive role in the early development of writing. It should be noted that the article does not suggest that Englund endorses these arguments, but rather demonstrates that his ideas are compatible with them.

Entwurf für Kapitel 6 für die »Einführung in die Linguistik der slavischen Sprachen«

Cycle de conférences en ligne,
organisées dans le cadre de l'Institut des langues rares (Ilara) de l'École Pratique des Hautes Études-PSL

In this revised and extended version of the lecture I presented at the 64th RAI in Innsbruck 2018, I aim to apply modern invention theory to the early history of the alphabet. The modern theory illuminates, as we will see below, a few... more