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Language and Writing Professor Julia Nee Comparative Linguistics Spring 2014

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Language and Writing. Professor Julia Nee Comparative Linguistics Spring 2014. Differences/Similarities. Language. Writing. Writing is a recent cultural development Learned with deliberate effort Arbitrary link between symbol and sound. Language ability is as old as man - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Language and Writing

Language and Writing

Professor Julia NeeComparative Linguistics

Spring 2014

Page 2: Language and Writing

Differences/Similarities

Language• Language ability is as old as

man• Acquired without specific

formal instruction• Arbitrary link between

sound and meaning

Writing• Writing is a recent cultural

development• Learned with deliberate

effort• Arbitrary link between

symbol and sound

Page 3: Language and Writing

Types of Writing

• Logographic writing: symbols represent morphemes or entire words– Oldest type of writing– Examples?– Logograms within our own systems?

• Is it useful to write in a purely logographic system?

• What is difficult to represent with logograms?• Pros/Cons of logographic writing?

Page 4: Language and Writing

Types of Writing

• Phonographic writing: symbols represent syllables or segments

Page 5: Language and Writing

Phonographic Writing

•Syllabic writing: signs represent syllables (a set of syllabic signs is called a syllabary)– What types of languages are easy to write this

way?• Alphabetic writing: represents consonant and

vowel segments– Generally ignore nonphonemic phenomena– ‘Pan’ and ‘nap’ are written with the same ‘p’ even

though they’re different sounds in IPA

Page 6: Language and Writing

The Early History of Writing

• Prewriting: earliest stage of developing a written language; language represented through objects.

• Prewriting appeared about 12,000 years ago• Not strictly linguistic – may have served as a

way of communicating, as part of religious practices, or as artistic expression

Page 7: Language and Writing

The Early History of Writing

Page 8: Language and Writing
Page 9: Language and Writing

The Early History of Writing

• Writing may have developed from record-keeping

• Used clay tokens to represent goods made impressions of the tokens rather than carrying the tokens around

• Idea that objects can be represented symbolically

Page 10: Language and Writing

The Early History of Writing

• Pictograms: picture writing; object or concept represented in drawing; no clues to pronunciation

• Necessary to understand the conventions of the author

Page 11: Language and Writing

The Early History of Writing

Page 12: Language and Writing

The Early History of Writing

• Do we use pictograms today?

Page 13: Language and Writing

The Early History of Writing

• Yes!• What purpose do they serve?

• Blissymbolics: system developed by Charles K. Bliss

Page 14: Language and Writing
Page 15: Language and Writing

Blissymbolics

• Why don’t you just teach a child to spell out what they want in English/Spanish/French/etc.?

• “Kids whose communicative worlds had been defined by the options of pointing to a picture of a toilet, or waiting for someone to ask the right question, started talking about a car trip with a father, a brother’s new bicycle, a pet cat’s habit of hiding under the bed.” ~Arika Okrent

Page 16: Language and Writing

Blissymbolics

• Bliss broke the world down into “essential elements of meaning”

• Assigned each element a sign

• Complex ideas were combinations of signs• Why didn’t this language become universal?

Page 17: Language and Writing

Blissymbolics

• “The simple, almost self-explanatory picturegraphs of Semantography can be read in any language”

!

Page 18: Language and Writing

Blissymbolics

• aUI (John Weilgart) creates shame as:

• Why haven’t we created a system of universal symbolic communication?

• We don’t all have the same ideas about what is ‘basic’ or what images inherently represent what concepts

Page 19: Language and Writing

Blissymbolics

• Bliss’s symbol for water is Weilgart’s symbol for sound

• Weilgart says that water is not a simple concept, but a complex one: even + matter + quantity

Page 20: Language and Writing

Blissymbolics

• Don’t conceptualize things into the same categories

• Chinese encyclopedia of the “Celestial Empire of benevolent Knowledge” says that animals are divided into:

Belonging to the emperor, Embalmed, Tame, Suckling pigs, Sirens, Fabulous, Stray dogs, Included in the present classification, Frenzied, Innumerable, Drawn with a very fine camelhair brush…

Page 21: Language and Writing

The Early History of Writing

• Are pictographs writing?• Why not?– Don’t represent language (sounds, words,

segments, etc.)– Don’t follow the language’s word order– May be interpreted in multiple ways

Page 22: Language and Writing

The Evolution of Writing• Pictographic writing began in Sumeria and

spread from there• Ambiguous pictograms came to represent

abstract ideas and related concepts– ‘fire’ ‘inflammation’– ‘foot’ ‘go’, ‘move’, ‘go away’

• Combine images to create abstract meanings– Head + fire = anger

Page 23: Language and Writing

The Evolution of Writing

• Rebus principle: use a symbol to stand for any word that is pronounced like the word whose meaning it originally represented

• Bear / Bare / Bear

Page 24: Language and Writing

The Evolution of Writing

• Quickly (500-600 years), rebus principle evolved into syllabic writing

• Ex: Tree + Son = ?• Ex:

• Why is it useful to have ‘i’ repeated here?

Page 25: Language and Writing

The Evolution of Writing

• Cuneiform: Sumerian writing system

• Used with Akkadian, Hittite, and Old Persian

Page 26: Language and Writing

The Evolution of Writing

• Hieroglyphics: Egyptian written sign system• At first represented objects, but then became

logographic• Mixed system of word symbols and phonographic

symbols• Didn’t represent vowels• Acrophonic principle: sounds represented by

pictures of objects whose pronunciation begins with the sound to be represented

Page 27: Language and Writing

The Evolution of Writing

• ‘horned viper’ f(V)t

• ‘pleasant’ fen

Page 28: Language and Writing

The Evolution of Writing

• Began in the Middle East• Phonecian alphabet• Phonecians were traders

Page 29: Language and Writing

The Greek Alphabet

• Adapted Phonecian writing• One phoneme per sign• Each phoneme of the language was represented• Represented vowels• Used names for letters that came from Phonecian: ?

aleph > alpha; beth > beta; etc.• Symbols and names no longer represented words at

all• Boustrophedon: writing that goes both RL and L R• Alpha-bet

Page 30: Language and Writing

The Roman Alphabet

• Greeks went to southern Italy• Modified by Etruscans who lived there• Romans spread their alphabet• Subtle changes made as alphabet spread• Examples of changes?

Page 31: Language and Writing

Writing and Reading

• Logographic systems, syllabaries, and alphabets represent different linguistic units

• Different systems different parts of the brain• EX: People suffering from Broca’s aphasia can

use logograms• EX: People who are born deaf have difficulty

learning to read syllabaries and alphabets Why?

Page 32: Language and Writing

Writing and Reading

• Logographic systems easy to recognize individual words, difficult to learn how to read a text

• Advantage of sound-based writing systems: fewer symbols to learn

• Easier to learn syllabaries than alphabets• Why don’t we all use syllabaries?

Page 33: Language and Writing

Your Project

• In teams of 4-5, choose an orthographic system.

• Describe the system (logographic, syllabary, alphabet, combination, etc.)

• Describe it’s historical development (how did it form into what it is today?)

• What languages are written in it? Do their systems differ at all?

Page 34: Language and Writing

Your Project

• Work in class on Thursday, May 15• Present on Tuesday, May 21• Minimum of 10 minutes per presentation• 17 minutes maximum per presentation!• Choose writing systems:

Cyrillic, Arabic/Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Cherokee, Cree, Devanagari, Thai

Page 35: Language and Writing

1. Is each example below analogical leveling, analogical extension, immediate analogical chance, hypercorrection, or back formation?

A. Divertir:divertido::imprimir:imprimido (impreso > imprimido)B. dies lunae / dies martis / dies mercuri / dies jovis / dies

veneris > lunes / martes / miércoles / jueves / viernesC. Cactus (plural) > cactu (singular)D. Divertir:divierto::inventar:inviento (invento > inviento)

2. Correct the sentence: Sound change is an irregular change that causes irregularity; analogy is a regular change that causes regularity.

3. Define three types of semantic change (widening, metaphor, taboo replacement, narrowing, etc.)

Page 36: Language and Writing

In the Land of Invented Languages

• Why do you think that people want to invent a language?

• Solve the “defects” of natural language• Remove irregularities• Remove ambiguities• Make communication universal• Create peace• Have fun

Page 37: Language and Writing

In the Land of Invented Languages

• 1600s – language of truth– Scientific revolution– Latin losing use what were scientific papers to be written

in?• Notational inventions in mathematics inspired

language-inventors• “In right-angled triangles the square on the side

subtending the right angle is equal to the squares on the sides containing the right angle.”

• a2+b2=c2

Page 38: Language and Writing

In the Land of Invented Languages

• John Wilkin’s created a hierarchy• Similar to genus-species organization of animals• Each branch and sub-branch of the table is given

a symbol so that the word is composed of all of it’s component meanings

• EX: motion purgation from ‘gross’ body parts of vomiting

• Cepuhws• Shit

Page 39: Language and Writing

In the Land of Invented Languages

• Two main difficulties:• What is the true essence or meaning of a

word?• What do you want to say?• Having ambiguity makes it much easier to talk!• Benefit of a hierarchy of word meanings?

Page 40: Language and Writing

In the Land of Invented Languages

• IT’S A THESAURUS!

Page 41: Language and Writing

In the Land of Invented Languages

• 1800s – Language of Peace• Esperanto (Ludwik Zamenhof)• Zamenhof grew up in Poland

Page 42: Language and Writing

In the Land of Invented Languages

“[my hometown] marked the way for all my future goals. In Bialystok the population consisted of four different elements: Russians, Poles, Germans and Jews. Each of these elements spoke a separate language and had hostile relations with the other elements. In that that city, more than anywhere, a sensitive person might feel the heavy sadness of the diversity of languages and become convinced at every step that it is the only, or at least the primary force which divides the human family into enemy parts.”

Page 43: Language and Writing

Kara-a amik-o!Mi present-as al mi kia-n viza^g-o-n vi far-os post la ricev-o de mi-a leter-o. Vi rigard-os la subskrib-o-n kaj ek-ri-os: “^Cu li perd-is la sa^g-o-n? Je kia lingv-o li skrib-is? Kio-n signif-as la foli-et-o, kiu-n li aldon-is al si-a leter-o?” Trankvi-i^g-u, mi-a kar-a! Mi-a sa^g-o, kiel mi almenaû kred-as, est-as tut-e en ordo.

Al – to kaj – and sa^g – wise don - giveKia – what kind ek – out je – in si - selfViza^g – face li – he kio – what i^g - causeFar – to makeperd – lose kiu – which kiel – asU – imperative almena^u – at least

Page 44: Language and Writing

In the Land of Invented Languages

Dear Friend,I can only imagine what kind of face you will make after receiving my letter. You will look at the signature and cry out, “Has he lost his mind? In what language did he write? What’s the meaning of this leaflet that is added to the letter?” Calm down, my dear. My senses, at least as far as I believe, are all in order.

Page 45: Language and Writing

In the Land of Invented Languages“A Swede who speaks English with a Korean and a Brazilian feels that he is a Swede who is using English; he does not assume a special identity as “a speaker of English.” On the other hand, a Swede who speaks Esperanto with a Korean and a Brazilian feels that he is an Esperantist and that the other two are also Esperantists, and that the three of them belong to a special cultural group. Even if non-native-speakers speak English very well, they do not feel that this ability bestows an Anglo-Saxon identity on them. But with Esperanto something quite different occurs.” ~Claude Piron

Page 46: Language and Writing

In the Land of Invented Languages

• Why learn a language?• Use it for a particular purpose• Use it as a way to participate in a group!

Page 47: Language and Writing

In the Land of Invented Languages

• Modern Hebrew• Extinct as a spoken language by about AD 200• Used for religious purposes and in writing

Page 48: Language and Writing

In the Land of Invented Languages

• Zionist movement Jews should establish a homeland in Palestine

• Jews moved to Palestine from:– Europe (speaking Yiddish)– North Africa (speaking North-African Arabic)– Mediterranean (speaking Judeo-Spanish)– Palestine (speaking Palestinian Arabic)

• Ben-Yehuda called for all Jews to adopt Hebrew as a unifying language

Page 49: Language and Writing

In the Land of Invented Languages

• Ben-Yehuda looked for words in religious texts• “telegraph” from Psalm 19:4-5: “There is no

speech, there are no words, neither is their voice heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world.”

• Made lots of words up himself!• 1914 Hebrew was made the official language

of schools

Page 50: Language and Writing

In the Land of Invented Languages

• 1900s – language of logic• The Whorfian Hypothesis – language shapes the

way that we think• “users of markedly different grammars are

pointed by their grammars toward different types of observations and different evaluations of externally similar acts of observation, and hence are not equivalent as observers but must arrive at somewhat different views of the world.”

Page 51: Language and Writing

In the Land of Invented Languages

• James Cooke Brown Loglan• His idea was: teach the language to users,

then ask them questions to see if their culture affected their thought

• EXTREMELY COMPLEX• Tried to remove all ambiguity• “I woke up and ate breakfast.”