scholarly journals The Emergence of Written Language: From Numeracy to Literacy

2020 ◽  
pp. 25-36
Author(s):  
Hye K. Pae
Keyword(s):  
Written Language ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
Sign System ◽  
Greek Alphabet ◽  
Chinese Writing System ◽  
Chinese Writing

Abstract This chapter reviews how written signs first emerged and developed into systematic writing systems. The first sign system appeared to fulfill accounting purposes for the preservation of private properties in antiquity. Initial written signs, including plain tallies, complex tokens, and tokens in clay envelopes, are reviewed. Written signs before the emergence of the Greek alphabet, such as cuneiforms and hieroglyphs, are also reviewed. As agricultural culture and urbanization took place, writing systems became more multifaceted and systematized. The characteristics of true alphabets are discussed. For a comparison purpose, the Chinese writing system is briefly mentioned. The chapter ends with a discussion of the transition from numeracy to literacy.

scholarly journals Neurocognitive Basis of Dyslexia in Different Writing Systems

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Liu ◽  
James R. Booth
Keyword(s):  
Developmental Dyslexia ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Chinese Writing System ◽  
Chinese Writing ◽  
Alphabetic Writing

An important issue in dyslexia research is whether developmental dyslexia in different writing systems has a common neurocognitive basis across writing systems or whether there are specific neurocognitive alterations. In this chapter, we review studies that investigate the neurocognitive basis of dyslexia in Chinese, a logographic writing system, and compare the findings of these studies with dyslexia in alphabetic writing systems. We begin with a brief review of the characteristics of the Chinese writing system because to fully understand the commonality and specificity in the neural basis of Chinese dyslexia one must understand how logographic writing systems are structured differently than alphabetic systems.

A typology of readings of Chinese characters in traditional Zhuang manuscripts

2009 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
David HOLM ◽  
David HOLM
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Character ◽  
Southern China ◽  
Chinese Characters ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
Chinese Writing System ◽  
Standard Chinese ◽  
Chinese Writing

The Old Zhuang Script is an instance of a borrowed Chinese character script. Zhuang is the current designation for the northern and central Tai languages spoken in Guangxi in southern China. On the basis of a corpus of traditional texts, as recited by traditional owners, this article presents a typology of Zhuang readings of the standard Chinese characters in these texts. While some categories represent phonetic or semantic readings of Chinese characters, others correspond neither semantically nor phonetically to Chinese graphs, and often involve serial borrowing. The implications of this typology for the study of writing systems, and the Chinese writing system in particular, would seem to be considerable.

The Chinese Writing System

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Imre Galambos
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Script ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Warring States Period ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Warring States ◽  
System P ◽  
Archaeological Materials ◽  
Chinese Writing System ◽  
Chinese Writing

The Chinese script is one of the major writing systems of the world and has over three thousand years of recorded history. Native accounts of its origin have been extremely influential and remain part of the general discourse, even though newly discovered archaeological materials in many cases challenge the traditional view. The earliest known examples of Chinese characters survive on oracle bones, and these are essentially ancestral to all modern forms of written Chinese, even though the script went through great changes during the following millennia. One of the most important such changes was the Qin-Han transition from the scripts of the Warring States period to that of the dynastic era. In the medieval period, the Chinese script was adopted for other languages in East and Central Asia, and in some cases was modified to create new Sinoform scripts (e.g., Khitan, Jurchen, and Tangut).

Deviant writing and youth identity

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jin Liu
Keyword(s):  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Dominant Strategy ◽  
Written Language ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Youth Identity ◽  
Visual Style ◽  
Chinese Writing System ◽  
Standard Chinese ◽  
Youth Language ◽  
Chinese Writing

This paper examines the emergence of the representation of dialect with Chinese characters (fangyan wenzihua) on the Internet. The online dialect writing is primarily identified as a subject of Internet language and youth language study. The CMC discourse as a hybrid register mixing spoken and written language features facilitates the written use of oral dialect on the Internet. Deviating from the standard Chinese writing system, the Internet-savvy youth transcribe their native dialects on an ad hoc basis, which celebrates multiplicity, creativity, individuality and resists uniformity, standardization, and institutionalization. Taking the SHN website (www.shanghaining.com) as a case study, the paper discusses how the written Shanghai Wu words are explored to mark a distinct visual style and to articulate a distinct local youth identity. Furthermore, this paper examines the dominant strategy of phonetic borrowing in dialect transcription on the Internet. It is argued that diachronically, the youth’s phonocentric obsession tapped into the May Fourth tradition of the baihua vernacular movement that was heavily influenced by the European logocentrism; and synchronically, the celebration of dialect sound on the Internet echoes the contemporary soundscape of local dialects formed in the mass media in recent years.

scholarly journals On Sino-Turkic, a First Glance (北俗初探)

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 436-476
Author(s):  
An-King Lim ◽  
林安 慶
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clause ◽  
National Language ◽  
List Type ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Free Relative ◽  
Chinese Writing System ◽  
Chinese Writing

When Turkic-speaking Tabghatch conquered China in 386 ce and ruled her for nearly 200 years, they, being minority rulers, elected to take up Chinese writing system and language as the official means of communication with its subject population. They also ended up adopting the writing system to script the Turkic language for their Turkic population resulting into a Xianbei National Language (xnl). This work describes 7 cases of Turkic-rooted Sinitic functional expressions, all featuring the word 的 [d-], supported with historical citations in Chinese documents, believed to be cultural continua of the xnl: 1) The constative preterite -dI, -dXŋ → the constative 的 [də], 底 [di], 端 [duan] 2) The nominalizer -dOk+ in free relative clause → Sinitc 的 [də], 底 [di], 得 [də] in free relative clause 3) The nominalizer -dOk+ in bound relative clause → Sinitic 底 [di], 的 [də] in bound relative clause 4) The adverb of manner suffix +tI/+dI → the adverb of manner suffixes 地 [di], 底 [di], 的 [də] 5) The locative-ablative case suffixes +dA/+tA → the locative suffixes 底 [di], 頭 [tou], 的 [də] 6) The perfect participle -dOk → the perfect participles 得 [də], 的 [di] 7) The completive perfect formative ïd- → the completive perfect formatives 得 [də], 的 [di]

scholarly journals Writing systems as modular objects: proposals for theory design in grapholinguistics

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Neef
Keyword(s):  
Solution Space ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
Specific Level ◽  
Language System ◽  
The Status ◽  
Pertinent Question ◽  
Typical Component ◽  
Notational System

AbstractThis paper gives an outline of the Modular Theory of Writing Systems by answering the question: what are the elements or modules that are necessary for a writing system to work? A writing system is a notational system for a natural language. Based on this characterization, it is obvious that a necessary component of a writing system is a specific language system. What eventually constitutes a writing system in addition to this language system is a device that, put simply, relates units of a language system to units of a script. This component is termed ‘graphematics’ in the present framework and is regarded as a necessary module of a writing system. Above that, another typical component of writing systems, namely ‘systematic orthography’, applies to the ‘graphematic solution space’ and restricts the spelling possibilities of specific words in accordance to their belonging to a specific level of the vocabulary of the language. Supplemented by reflections on the status of scripts as well as of IPA as a writing system, an answer is finally given to the pertinent question how spoken language and written language are related to each other. The answer is that this relation is of a considerably indirect nature.

scholarly journals Emergence of Writing Systems through Multi-Agent Cooperation (Student Abstract)

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (10) ◽  
pp. 13941-13942
Author(s):  
Shresth Verma ◽  
Joydip Dhar
Keyword(s):  
Recent Literature ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Artificial Agents ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
Language System ◽  
Two Agents ◽  
Multi Agent ◽  
Emergent Language

Learning to communicate is considered an essential task to develop a general AI. While recent literature in language evolution has studied emergent language through discrete or continuous message symbols, there has been little work in the emergence of writing systems in artificial agents. In this paper, we present a referential game setup with two agents, where the mode of communication is a written language system that emerges during the play. We show that the agents can learn to coordinate successfully using this mode of communication. Further, we study how the game rules affect the writing system taxonomy by proposing a consistency metric.

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