Suchergebnisse

Despite the flourishing of epichoric studies on the Archaic Greek scripts in the 1960s, embodied by archaeologists Lilian Hamilton Jeffery and Margherita Guarducci, most scholarship on early alphabetic writing in Greece has focused on questions around the origin of 'the Greek alphabet' instead of acknowledging the diversity of alphabetic systems that emerged in Geometric and Archaic times. The present book proposes to bring back the epichoric approach by focusing on the different ways in which the earliest epigraphic evidence represents the spoken Greek dialects. However, instead of continuing the palaeographic methodology of previous studies, this analysis follows the latest trends in grapholinguistics, more specifically the methodology of comparative graphematics. By examining the grapheme-phoneme relationships across Greek-speaking regions, it is possible to recognize that diversity and to draw connections with neighboring contemporaneous alphabets, such as those for Phrygian, Eteocretan and Etruscan. This work, carried out within the Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) project, aims to contribute towards the conceptualization of the so-called epichoric scripts as independent alphabets, as well as their framing within the ecology of ancient Mediterranean writing systems. Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) is a project funded by the European Research Council under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 677758), and based in the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge.

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.

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 ...

"This volume offers a new and interdisciplinary treatment of syllabic writing in ancient Cyprus. A team of distinguished scholars tackles epigraphic, palaeographic, linguistic, archaeological, historical and terminological problems relating to the island's writing systems in the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age, from the appearance of writing around the fifteenth century down to the end of the first millennium BC. The result is not intended to be a single, unified view of the scripts and their context, but rather a varied collection that demonstrates a range of interpretations of the evidence and challenges some of the longstanding or traditional views of the population of ancient Cyprus and its epigraphic habits"--

This article concerns how writing, collaborative writing in particular, acts: how it moves, how it resists, how it does, the four humans writing alongside our co-authoring 'materials' – a guitar, for instance – and other more-than-human co-authors, such as affect, friendship, time. We explore writing against systems of oppression and writing through materials of resistance. Writing through can ignite the seething potentiality of a breaking through, and a writing towards the not-yet-known of other lives. We sense this as an unleashing that can act as a challenge to the self-perpetuating autopoieses that neoliberal autonomies and competitive frameworks require. Writing through materials of resistance offers an inducement to work towards the social capaciousness and the thinking with those collective orientations. Writing through refuses the surrender of freedom and offers, through practices of speculation, fabulation and experimentation, an animation of movement that can tap into the capacious fugitive energies of emergent and new collective futures.

The formation of the European Community puts pressure on the UK to address questions about the relationship between England & the other UK nations, as well as about general constitutional theory & the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy. These national & constitutional issues are linked, since discussion of constitutional issues will bring national issues to the public foreground. A model of a future constitution is emerging wherein Parliament will retain supremacy, but will be rebalanced via proportional representation & institution of an elected second chamber, with extended powers to replace the House of Lords. Difficulties in this proposed constitution with the representation of Scotland & Wales are discussed. Twelve innovations for a written constitution are proposed, based on the assumptions that the present executive is too powerful, & that general decentralization should take place. M. Pflum

Writing in the ancient Mediterranean existed against a backdrop of very high levels of interaction and contact. In the societies around its shores, writing was a dynamic practice that could serve many purposes – from a tool used by elites to control resources and establish their power bases to a symbol of local identity and a means of conveying complex information and ideas. This volume presents a group of papers by members of the Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) research team and visiting fellows, offering a range of different perspectives and approaches to problems of writing in the ancient Mediterranean. They focus on practices, viewing writing as something that people do within a wider social and cultural context, and on adaptations, considering the ways in which writing changed and was changed by the people using it.

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