This paper reviews issues and early findings in the cross-linguistic study of alphabetic spelling development. The primary focus is on the effects that differences in orthographic consistency might have on the process of learning to spell across alphabetic writing systems. General characteristics of alphabetic writing systems are summarized, and various indicators of orthographic consistency are discussed for one consistent (Czech) and two inconsistent (English, French) orthographies. Then, against a model of spelling development in English, the results of several studies of spelling development in relatively more consistent orthographies are considered. Together, the current findings suggest that the core component skills underlying spelling development, namely, phonological awareness and letter knowledge, are similar across alphabetic languages. However, the degree of consistency of an orthography seems to play an important mediating role in determining the rate of learning to spell. The extent to which consistency interacts with the processes underlying spelling development cannot yet be determined, however current data suggest that the early learning process is fundamentally similar across alphabetic orthographies.
The region of West Africa is of interest for the study of the origin and development of writing because a number of scripts were created there for several local languages during the 19th and 20th centuries, especially for the Mande family (the Vai, Mende, Kpelle, Looma, and Bamana syllabaries). In 1949 the Guinean enlightener Soulemayne Kanté developed the N'Ko alphabet for the Manding (Manden) languages, which belong to the Mande family and include, in particular, Bamana (Bambara), Jula (Dyula, Dioula), and Maninka. The name "N'Ko" originates from the phrase N ko 'I say' in Manding languages. This script is predominantly used in Guinea for Maninka (Maninka-Mori), which is native to more than 3.5 million people in Guinea, Mali and Sierra Leone. The N'Ko alphabet is also widely used in Liberia, the Côte d'Ivoire, and the African diaspora (mainly in Nigeria and Egypt) by a hundred thousand to a million persons. This article provides information about studies of various aspects of the N'Ko alphabet. First of all, the complexity of the graphic forms of each of the 27 letters is calculated according to certain principles. For example, the point corresponds to 1, the straight line segment is 2, and the arc is 3; also certain weight is given to various types of connections and crossed lines. A frequency analysis of the distribution of letters is undertaken in the corpus of Maninka texts written in N'Ko, with more than 3.1 million words. This made it possible, in particular, to trace the extent to which the complexity of the graphic form of the signs correlates with their frequency. It appears that such a correlation is not very significant: the correlation coefficient is –0.38, whereas, for example, for the Morse code in English texts it reaches –0.82. The full inverse correlation, when simpler characters are always used to represent more frequent letters, corresponds to –1. It has also been shown that frequency analysis can serve as a further justification for certain orthographic principles in N'Ko, particularly of tone notation. The next task was to calculate orthographic uncertainty: in an ideal alphabet, where there is a one-to-one correspondence between phonemes (sounds) and graphemes (signs), this uncertainty is equal to zero. In the N'Ko alphabet, its values are quite small: 0.37 without taking into account the tone notation, and 0.22 with tone notation. For comparison, the values corresponding to some "old" writing systems are as follows: in the Ukrainian alphabet, it equals 1.12, while a slightly simpler Italian orthography provides uncertainty at the level of 0.56. The results obtained in this study can be useful for studying phonotactics, prosodic elements, and the history of writing and lexicography, as well as in comparative and contrastive studies.
In this article we examine, from a predominantly sociolinguistic perspective, the writing systems created throughout time for the graphic rendering of the variety of Romanian spoken by the Vlachs of Eastern Serbia. We especially investigate what influences the choice of a script (Latin or Cyrillic), of orthographic conventions and of a writing system, and how this choice correlates with the ideological attitude (reintegrationist or independentist) of the proponents. To this end, we analyse the writing systems used for rendering the vernacular in "Vorba noastră", the first publication in the local variety (1945–1948), and the systems put forward in the last 20 years by the members of the community engaged in political and linguistic debates (Paun Es Durlić, Dragomir Dragić, Slavoljub Gacović, Ljubiša lu Boža Kići, the "Gergina" Association). The analysis and the comparison of the systems attest to the importance of the ideological, social and political factors in creating and imposing an orthography for an unwritten idiom.
In: Iran and the Caucasus: research papers from the Caucasian Centre for Iranian Studies = Iran i kavkaz : trudy Kavkazskogo e͏̈tìsentra iranistiki, Band 7, Heft 1, S. 250
ISSN: 1573-384X
AbstractThe article-a revised version of the authors' contribution to the International Symposium "Bilingualism in Iranian Cultures" held 1992 in Bamberg (Germany)-deals with the problem of the introduction of new, or the reforming of already existing alphabets. It tries to illustrate how collective bi- and multilingualism, i. e. the use of different languages within a certain social community, affects the development of writing-systems, and how, on the other hand, these systems affect certain aspects of multilingualism. This is shown on the example of Tajik-Persian, Baluchi, Shughni and Jaghnobi, spanning the time from the beginning of the 20th century until the end of the Soviet Union. The related tables concern: 1) The introduction of the Latin script for the Iranian languages of the Soviet Union, 2) its abolishment; 3) the vowels of Baluchi language; 4) the vowels of Shughni language; 5) the vowels of Jaghnobi language; 6) Examples of the Latin script for Tajik-Persian language as introduced in 1928; 7) Examples of the Latin script for Baluchi language as introduced in 1933; 8) Examples of the Latin script for Shughni language as introduced in 1930.
Preliminary Material -- Invention and Borrowing in the Development and Dispersal of Writing Systems /Alex de Voogt -- 27–30–22–26 – How Many Letters Needs an Alphabet? The Case of Semitic /Reinhard G. Lehmann -- Nubian Graffiti Messages and the History of Writing in the Sudanese Nile Basin /Alex de Voogt and Hans-Jörg Döhla -- About "Short" Names of Letters /Konstantin Pozdniakov -- Early Adaptations of the Korean Script to Render Foreign Languages /Sven Osterkamp -- Han'gŭl Reform Movement in the Twentieth Century: Roman Pressure on Korean Writing /Thorsten Traulsen -- The Character of the Indian Kharoṣṭhī Script and the "Sanskrit Revolution": A Writing System Between Identity and Assimilation /Ingo Strauch -- Symmetry and Asymmetry Chinese Writing in Japan: The Case of Kojiki (712) /Aldo Tollini -- Writing Semitic with Cuneiform Script. The Interaction of Sumerian and Akkadian Orthography in the Second Half of the Third Millennium BC /Theo J.H. Krispijn -- Old Wine in New Wineskins? How to Write Classical Egyptian Rituals in More Modern Writing Systems /Joachim Quack -- Subject Index -- Language (Group) and Script Index -- Author Index.
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Intro -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- List of tables -- Abbreviations and names of minorities in China -- Map 1 Distribution of minority nationalities and languages in China -- Map 2 China: Autonomous regions and prefectures -- Chapter 1 Minorities and minority languages in China -- 1.1. Historical developments of the Han and non-Han peoples -- 1.2. Official classification of the non-Han peoples -- 1.3. Distribution of minority communities -- 1.4. The classification and distribution of minority languages -- 1.5. Current status of minority languages -- 1.6. The organization of this book -- Chapter 2 The politics of minority language policy, 1949-2002 -- 2.1. Development of the CCP minorities policy before 1949 -- 2.2. Theoretical foundation of the CCP minorities policy and later changes -- 2.3. The first pluralistic stage: 1949-1957 -- 2.4. The Chinese monopolistic stage: 1958-1977 -- 2.5. The second pluralistic stage: 1978-2002 -- Chapter 3 The politics of the status of writing systems: Official, experimental, or unofficial -- 3.1. Status of writing systems: The first pluralistic stage (1949-1957) -- 3.2. Status of writing systems: The Chinese monopolistic stage (1958-1977) -- 3.3. Status of writing systems: The second pluralistic stage (1978-2002) -- 3.4. Issues in China's minority language policy -- Chapter 4 Choices of scripts and theories of writing systems: East vs. West -- 4.1. Western linguistics and the initial writing reforms for minority languages in the PRC -- 4.2. Modeling after the Soviet Union -- 4.3. Roman, IPA, and Cyrillic scripts: Conflicts and compromises -- Chapter 5 The politics of vernacular writing systems -- 5.1. The Soviet model and proliferation of vernacular writing systems -- 5.2. Vernacular writing systems: Consolidation and withdrawal -- 5.3. Vernacular writing systems: Consolidation and proliferation.
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Abstract: Unlike China's earliest readable texts, the late Shāng 商 (13th-11th c. BCE) 'oracle bone inscriptions', preserved mostly on water turtle plastrons and bovine shoulder blades (jiǎgǔwén 甲骨文), which were largely forgotten until their rediscovery at the turn to the last century, bronze inscriptions (jīnwén 金文), attested from the 12th century BCE onwards, seem to have been always known and were occasionally mentioned throughout the classical period. They were first systematically cataloged during the Northern Sòng 宋 dynasty (960-1127). It was already during this initial phase of scholarship already that several authors noticed that some of the most archaic bronze texts include graphs with a strongly "pictograph" character, often clearly distinct in position, size and ductus from the more linear and abstract graph shapes encountered in the texts which they accompany. The famous Chinese paleographer and writer Guō Mòruò 郭沫若 (1892-1978) first called these graphs "lineage symbols" (zú huī 族徽) in a study published in 1930, where he argued that they represent quasi-totemic identity markers of ancient Shāng lineages and polities and stressed their status as proto-writing. While Guō's theory continues to receive wide support in Western and Chinese studies on the subject, there is no lack of controversies about whether they should be classified and analyzed as "glottographic" writing sensu strictu or rather as "emblems", i.e. non-linguistic symbol systems, functioning somewhat like heraldic signs or "coats of arms" in various Europan traditions. Nor is there any clear consensus, whether they represent names of individuals, kin-, lineage- or exogamy-based groups, or even other social and political entities. Proceeding from the most recent catalog and study of these signs (Hé Jǐngchéng 2009), I will first introduce the extant corpus some 900 simplex graphs, summarize the recent Chinese and Japanese scholarship on their archaeological contexts, distributional patterns and possible relationship towards ...
The use of writing in the development of Greek law was unique. In this comparative study Professor Gagarin shows the reader how Greek law developed and explains why it became so different from the legal systems with which most legal historians are familiar. While other early communities wrote codes of law for academic or propaganda purposes, the Greeks used writing extensively to make their laws available to a relatively large segment of the community. On the other hand, the Greeks made little use of writing in litigation whereas other cultures used it extensively in this area, often putting written documents at the heart of the judicial process. Greek law thereby avoided becoming excessively technical and never saw the development of a specialised legal profession. This book will be of interest to those with an interest in the history of law, as well as ancient historians
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Intro -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Marxism and Philosophy -- Everyday Life -- The Country and the City -- History, Time and Space -- Politics -- Introduction: Coming to Terms with Lefebvre -- Presence and absence -- Receiving Lefebvre -- The present work -- Mode d'emploi – ways to use this book -- Marxism and Philosophy -- Introduction -- Retrospections -- Unity of the Doctrine -- Prolegomenas -- Table of forms, systems and structures -- Praxis -- Poiesis -- Mimesis -- Irreducibles -- Marxian Thought and Sociology -- Beyond Structuralism -- Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche -- Triads and Dyads -- Table of triads (grouped together) -- Presence and absence -- Twelve Theses on Logic and Dialectic -- State -- The political or politics [le ou la politique] -- The State and political power -- A brief history of the State -- Becoming and the Historical -- The Critique of Everyday Life -- Introduction -- Mystification: Notes for a Critique of Everyday Life -- The unity of bourgeois culture -- Bourgeois values -- Death of the bourgeois revolutionaries -- A critique of sincerity -- Mystification -- Fetishism, alienation, mystification -- Elucidations -- The Social Text -- The End of Modernity? -- On Vulgarity -- Myths in Everyday Life -- The Country and the City -- Introduction -- Perspectives on Rural Sociology -- Preface to the Study of the Habitat of the 'Pavilion'1 -- Levels and Dimensions -- The Other Parises -- The Paris of knowledge? -- Political Paris? -- The Paris of business, commerce and production? -- History, Time and Space -- Introduction -- The Inventory -- Time and History -- 16. The concept of time -- 20. On the event -- 25. On worldwide history ('Weltgeschichte')1 -- 26. The period of transition and the exit from history -- 29. The overcoming of history -- 34. Appropriation
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In: Bunčić, Daniel (2017). Factors Influencing the Success and Failure of Writing Reforms. Studi Slavistici, 14. S. 21 - 47. FIRENZE: FIRENZE UNIV PRESS. ISSN 1824-7601
The Russian spelling reform of 1917-1918 was very successful - so successful that many young Russians, when confronted with a pre-1917 Russian text, do not know how to read , or . However, many reforms of writing systems have not met with success. Among them are the 1930 attempt to convert Russian to the Latin alphabet; the Second Chinese Character Simplification Scheme of 1977, which the PRC government had to withdraw in 1986; the French spelling reform of 1990, which is still ignored by most of the public; and the Latinization of Uzbek of 1993-1995, gether fifteen years, has not been implemented by newspapers and magazines. This paper examines a range of writing reforms (script reforms, spelling reforms, and glyphic reforms) - mainly from the Slavic and post-Soviet area - to determine which factors influence the success or failure of a reform and to what extent. Among the factors considered are the orthographic principles touched by the reform; the motivation for it; the scientific arguments put forward in the discussion; the semiotic values associated with the reformed writing system; the timing; the political system of the country; and the literacy rate of the speech community. The results of this analysis might be a bit disillusioning for us as linguists because linguistic factors turn out to play a very minor role compared to extralinguistic factors. In fact, the most decisive factor seems to be timing.
This miscellaneous volume collects contributions on nineteen projects dealing with Digital Epigraphy – they are diversified in geographic and chronological context, for script and language, and for typology of digital output. The objective is to point out the methodological issues which are specific to the application of information technologies to epigraphy, with a focus on data modelling and text annotation, lexicography and interoperability.
In: Bunčić, Daniel orcid:0000-0002-1090-8907 (2017). Factors influencing the success and failure of writing reforms. Studi Slavistici, 14. pp. 21-46. ISSN 1824-7601
The Russian spelling reform of 1917-1918 was very successful – so successful that many young Russians, when confronted with a pre-1917 Russian text, do not know how to read 〈ѣ〉, 〈ѳ〉 or 〈ея〉. However, many reforms of writing systems have not met with success. Among them are the 1930 attempt to convert Russian to the Latin alphabet; the Second Chinese Character Simplification Scheme of 1977, which the PRC government had to withdraw in 1986; the French spelling reform of 1990, which is still ignored by most of the public; and the Latinisation of Uzbek of 1993-1995, which, even twenty years later and after the end of the twice extended 'transitional period' of altogether fifteen years, has not been implemented by newspapers and magazines. This paper examines a range of writing reforms (script reforms, spelling reforms, and glyphic reforms) – mainly from the Slavic and post-Soviet area – to determine which factors influence the success or failure of a reform and to what extent. Among the factors considered are the orthographic principles touched by the reform; the motivation for it; the scientific arguments put forward in the discussion; the semiotic values associated with the reformed writing system; the timing; the political system of the country; and the literacy rate of the speech community. The results of this analysis might be a bit disillusioning for us as linguists because linguistic factors turn out to play a very minor role compared to extralinguistic factors. In fact, the most decisive factor seems to be timing.