THE HISTORY OF WRITING

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Some languages lack writing system - they are only spoken.

Precursors of writing:

1. Cave drawings - petroglyphs - 20 000 years ago. We can assume that those drawings were created as aesthetic expression

2. Clay tokens - used for bookkeeping (księgowanie) - 10 000 years ago.

3. Alphabetic script - inscriptions dating 3000 years ago (1000 B.C.)

Much of the evidence used in reconstruction of ancient writing systems comes from inscriptions on stone or tablets found in the rabble of ruined cities.

PICTOGRAMS - “picture writing”.

Written signs represents entities (sth that exist in the real world - istota). Entity is often an object.

Nonarbitrary (niesamowolny) relationship between the form and the meaning - “picture-like” forms.

Easily understood because pictograms resemble objects they represent, we don't need to know particular language to recognize them. They are language independent and literal.

There ancient and modern pictograms.

IDEOGRAMS

“Idea picture”, “idea writing”. Symbol represents a concept. Ideograms are more abstract, not so easy to understand. Less direct, derived forms (formy pochodne). We rather have to learn their meaning.

Both pictograms and ideograms neither represent sounds nor words. Only objects or ideas.

LOGOGRAMS

Symbols used in word-writing system or logographic writing system. Logograms represents words in a language. Logograms and ideograms represent concept and a word (or morpheme) which stands for that particular concept.

When symbol becomes logogram?

When relationship between entity and idea becomes sufficiently abstract. Entity must be arbitrary (without any plan, idea, conventional), relationship between symbol and entity must be hard to grasp (rozumieć, pojmować). It have to be abstract enough.

For example letters in word “dog” are hard to associate with animal, they do not resemble its shape or anything. We simply have to learn their meaning by heart.

MODERN LOGOGRAMS

Modern system is to some extent Chinese. Chinese symbols or characters are used as representation of the meaning of words and not the sounds.

It has been in use for 3000 years (without any breakes!). system can solve communication problems between people speaking different dialects, because they can always refer to writing and they will understand each other. Unfortunately there is also a minus: there are over 7000 symbols (2000 are enough to communicate).

This represents a substantial (znaczny) memory load and there has been tendency to go from symbols representing words to symbols representing sounds (phonographic system).

SUMERIANS - southern part of modern Iraq. 5000-6000 years ago (4000-3000 B.C.).

Sumerian system of writing is oldest one known.

Initially they used pictograms, but later symbols simplified and became abstract.

1. Cuneiform writing (pismo klinowe) - wedge-shaped (tool: stylus-rylec)

2. Wedge was used to make inscriptions on clay tokens

REBUS WRITING

We have symbol for one entity, but we can use it whenever we have the same sound in another word. Thanks to that number of signs became smaller. For example picture of a bee can be used to represent word `be' or sound /b/.

Word ba represented by ideogram.

2 ideograms - word `baba' (father).

1. Reduction of symbols

2. Advantage: sizeable reduction in the numbers needed in writing system

3. Disadvantage: not in all languages we can divide words into smaller units that have meaning by themselves - sometimes they don't and we have no way to write it using rebus writing.

JĘZYKOZNAWSTWO - WYKŁAD - 23.02.2012

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