INTRODUCCIN A LAS

CIENCIAS LINGSTICAS
PARA ANGLISTAS
2014/2015

Dr. Juan Ramrez Arlandi

Writing
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Introduction

The palest ink is the sharpest memory

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Introduction
The palest ink is the sharpest memory

Legends about the invention of writing:

Greek
Chinese
Icelandic
Babylonians
Egyptians
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Writing
Definition

any of the many visual systems

for representing language,
including handwriting, printing,
and electronic displays of these
written forms

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Writing
Precursors
Cave drawings [20,000]
Clay tokens [10,000]
Cuneiform [5,000-6,000]
Alphabetic script [3,000]

Lack of evidence

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Pictograms and Ideograms

Pictograms
Iconic, picture-like

Ideograms
More symbolic

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Pictograms

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Ideograms

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Pictograms and Ideograms

Difference
the more picture-like forms are
pictograms
the more abstract forms are ideograms

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Pictograms and Ideograms

Similarity
Both do NOT represent words or sounds
in a particular language.
They are language-independent and can
be understood with much the same basic
conventional meaning in a lot of
countries.

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Logograms
Graphemes represent words

Symbols are used to represent words in a

language

It is a word-writing system > It is arbitrary

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Logograms

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Logograms

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Logograms
Cuneiform writing system
It means wedge-shaped because
the inscriptions used by the
Sumerians were produced by
pressing a wedge-shaped
implement into soft clay tablets.

It was borrowed by Babylonians

and later by Persians who changed
it into a syllabic writing system.
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Logograms

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Logograms
The best known case is Chinese.

The great Chinese dictionary contains

nearly 50.000 characters, but most of
these are archaic or highly specialised.

In the modern language, basic literacy

requires knowledge of some 2.000
characters.
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Logograms
Chinese is a modern writing system
based on the use of logograms.

Many Chinese written characters

are used to represent words or
parts of words and not sounds of
the spoken language.
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Logograms
Advantage for the users:
two speakers of very different
dialects of Chinese could read the
same text, even if they might have
great difficulty understanding each
other in a conversation.

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Logograms
Disadvantage:
The large number of different written
symbols required within this type of
writing.
The official list of modern Chinese
characters is limited to 2,500, although
other lists contain up to 5,000
characters. Thats a lot for anyone to
learn and remember!!!

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Rebus writing
The logogram for an entity is
adopted for the sounds of the spoken
word which refer to that entity

> sun /sVn/

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Rebus writing
Then that logogram is used
whenever that sound/s occur.

> sun /sVn/

My lives in Paris

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Rebus writing

A rebus is a representation of
syllables and words by pictures
of objects whose names sound
like the intended syllables

Great reduction
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Rebus writing

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Rebus writing

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Syllabic writing

When a writing system uses a set of

symbols each representing the
pronunciation of a syllable

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Syllabic writing
Developments
Both the ancient Egyptian and the
Sumerian writing systems evolved to the
point where some of the earlier
logographic symbols were used to
represent spoken syllables.

The Phoenicians were the first to use a

fully syllabic writing system. Many of their
symbols were taken from Egyptian writing.

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Syllabic writing
Developments

By about 3,000 years ago, the

Phoenicians had stopped using
logograms and had fully developed a
syllabic writing system

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Syllabic writing
Developments

There are no pure syllabic writing

systems in use today, but modern
Japanese can be written with a
set of symbols representing spoken
syllables.

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Syllabic writing
Developments

In Japanese all words can be represented by

means of 100 syllables, mostly of the
consonant/vowel type.

-There are no consonant clusters

-There are two syllabaries
katakana (syllabic writing) is used for
loan words
hiragana (word writing) is used for native
words using Chinese characters.
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Syllabic writing

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Alphabetic writing

An alphabet is essentially a set of

written symbols, each one
representing a single type of sound

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Alphabetic writing
Antecedents
Semitic languages such as Arabic and
Hebrew largely consist of symbols for the
consonant sounds in the word, with the
appropriate vowel sounds being supplied
by the reader.
This type of writing system is sometimes
called a consonantal alphabet.
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Alphabetic writing
Antecedents

The earliest known alphabet was the

North Semitic, which developed around
1700 BC in Palestine and Syria. It
consisted of 22 consonant letters.

The Hebrew, Arabic, and Phoenician

alphabets were based on this model
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Alphabetic writing
Further developments
Around 1000 BC, the Phoenician
alphabet was itself used as a model by
the Greeks, who added letters for vowels.

The early Greeks took the alphabetizing

process a stage further by also using
separate symbols to represent the vowel
sounds as distinct entities.
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Alphabetic writing
Further developments

This change produced a distinct symbol

for each vowel to go with existing symbols
for consonantal sounds, giving us
single-sound writing or an alphabet.

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Alphabetic writing
Further developments

From the Greeks, this revised alphabet passed to

the rest of Western Europe through the Romans
and it was adapted to fit the requirements of the
spoken languages encountered.

Another line of development took the Greek

writing system into Eastern Europe where Slavic
languages were spoken. The modified version,
called Cyrillic alphabet is the basis for the
writing system used in Russia today.

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Alphabetic writing

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Alphabetic writing
Direct correspondence between graphemes and
phonemes
Alphabets are devised on phonemic principles as
opposed to phonetic principles. Pin [ph i n]

In a perfectly regular system there is one

grapheme for each phoneme. However, most
alphabets in present-day use fail to meet this
criterion, either because the writing system has
not kept pace with changes in pronunciation, or
because the language is using an alphabet not
originally designed for it.

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Alphabetic writing
Direct correspondence between
graphemes and phonemes
Spanish
[These extra marks are diacritics]

Digraphs are two letters which

represent a single sound
// <sh> /t/ <ch>
// <-ing>

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Alphabetic writing
At one extreme we find such languages as
Spanish and Finnish, which have a very
regular system; at the other, we find such
cases as English and Gaelic, where there is a
marked degree of irregularity.

The extent to which there is a lack of

correspondence between graphemes and
phonemes is inevitably reflected in the
number of arbitrary spelling rules that
children have to learn.

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Alphabetic writing
There are also many alphabets where only certain
phonemes are represented graphemically.

These are the consonantal alphabets, such as

Aramaic, Hebrew, and Arabic, where the
marking of vowels (using diacritics) is optional.

There are also cases, such as the alphabets of India,

where diacritics are used for vowels, but the
marking is obligatory, with the diacritics being
attached to the consonantal letters.

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Alphabetic writing

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Alphabetic writing

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Relationship between writing and speech

Punctuation
Period
Semicolon
Colon

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Relationship between writing and speech

Comma

1) The Greeks, who were philosophers, loved to talk.

2) The Greeks who were philosophers loved to talk.

3) John said hes going.

4) John said, Hes going

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Relationship between writing and

speech
Parentheses and brackets
Dash
Quotation marks
Hyphen

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Relationship between writing and

speech
Features conveying meaning
Question marks
Exclamation marks
Apostrophe

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Relationship between writing and

speech
Special symbols (logograms)
+
- $
% #
@
Abbreviations

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Relationship between writing and

speech
Graphic contrasts
Italic, boldface, capitalization, colour

5) John whispered the message to Bill and then he

whispered it to Mary.

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Relationship between writing and

speech
Graphic contrasts
6) John kissed Bills wife
7) John kissed Bills wife
8) John kissed Bills wife
9) John kissed Bills wife

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Relationship between writing and

speech
Capitalization

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Differences between speech and

writing
Writing
-permanent

Speech
-transient

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Differences between speech and

writing
Writing
-permanent
-across time & space

Speech
-transient
-immediate interaction
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Differences between speech and

writing
Writing
-permanent
-across time & space
-more complex

Speech
-transient
-immediate interaction
-less elaborate

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Differences between speech and

writing
Writing
-permanent
-across time & space
-more complex
-punctuation, layout, colours

Speech
-transient
-immediate interaction
-less elaborate
-tone, volume...
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Differences between speech and

writing
Writing
-no immediate feedback
-specific grammatical
constructions

Speech
-implies dynamic interaction
-specific vocabulary (slang...)
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English orthography

Spelling > correct selection of graphemes

Spelling rules of a language +

Dialectal, stylistical or free variations

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English orthography

Reading and writing

complementary skills?

No one-to-one relationship

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Why is spelling so difficult?

Reading > it is possible partially

Spelling > deliberate & conscious process

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Why is spelling so difficult?

En difreetnes invesigtacinoes los cinefiticos
inlgeses descbureiron, que es de pcoa
impotrancia en que odern etsan las lertas en
las palbaras, lo mas improtnate,es que la
prirmea y ulimta lerta tieenn que esatr en su
luagr.
Lo del meido no es imoprtnate, aun asi pudees
leer.
Poruqe nosrotos lemeos las pablaras enetras y
no lerta por lerta
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Why is spelling so difficult?

Several graphemic alternatives >

phoneme

sheep *sheap *shepe

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Irregularity of English spelling

Frequent mismatch

The answer > history of English

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Irregularity of English spelling

Anglo-Saxon period
27 graphemes 40 phonemes

1066 Norman Conquest

French scribes respelled
qu for cw (queen)
gh for h (night)
c before e or i in circle and cell
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Irregularity of English spelling

Printing process (late XIVth century)
Dutch printers

Great Vowel Shift

Name sweet ride
Way house boot

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Irregularity of English spelling

Great Vowel Shift

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Irregularity of English spelling

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Irregularity of English spelling

Sound letters > silent
Know knight
Stone love
16th century Spelling reformers
Reign debt island
17th century loan words

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Spelling pronunciation
The use of a pronunciation that is based
on spelling rather than in accordance with
a word's conventional pronunciation

honest hour

habit heretic hotel

hospital herb
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The pros and cons

of a spelling reform

Advantages
Time-saving
Foreing learners of English

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The pros and cons

of a spelling reform

Disadvantages
Transition
Reluctant learners of the new
system
Reprint all books

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