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Ass#1-Applied Linguistic

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25 views4 pages

Ass#1-Applied Linguistic

Uploaded by

Rotana Chun
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Kingdom of Cambodia

Nation Religion King

Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Foreign Languages

Department of English

Major: English

Subject: Applied Linguistics

Assignment#1

Topic 16: Writing Language.

Submitted to: Mr. KEO Narith ID: 58857

Student’s name: ID:

Ms. CHUN Rotana 57699

Batch 24/Year 4/ Semester 1

Shift: Evening

Academic: 2023-2024
Applied Linguistics

Topic 16: Writing Language

Writing is a symbolic representation of language using graphic signs, a system that


requires conscious effort and learning. It is a relatively recent phenomenon, with human attempts
to represent information visual dating back to cave drawings and clay tokens. The earliest
writing, known as "cuneiform," was marked on clay tablets around 5,000 years ago. An ancient
script with a connection to writing systems in use today has evolved over thousands of years.
Cave drawings, often used to record events, are not considered linguistic messages but part of a
pictorial art tradition. Modern pictograms, which are language-independent, can be understood in
various languages and can be understood with the same conventional meaning. Furthermore,
Images in writing systems are often interpreted as symbols of objects rather than objects
themselves. Symbols like "sun" and "heat" are part of a system of idea-writing, or ideograms,
which are more "picture-like" forms. They do not represent words or sounds in a particular
language. Pictograms and ideograms have their origins in pictographic or ideographic
representations, such as Egyptian hieroglyphics and Chinese writing. However, these symbols
are more abstract and do not represent words or sounds in a specific language. For example, the
ideogram for water in early Egyptian writing was used for the actual word "water," and later, the
derived symbol for the word "water" was used. When symbols are used to represent words in a
language, they are described as examples of word-writing or "logograms."

Firth, Logographic writing, an early example of writing, originated from the Sumerians
around 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia. Cuneiform writing, a type of cuneiform writing, was
created by pressing a wedge-shaped implement into soft clay tablets, creating permanent
symbols. Modern logograms in English are forms like $, 8, &, and @, representing one word. A
more elaborate writing system based on logograms is found in China, where many Chinese
characters represent the meaning of words or parts of words, rather than the sounds of spoken
language. This system allows two speakers of different dialects to read the same text. However,
it requires a large number of different written symbols, which can be memory-intensive. To
transition from logographic writing to phonographic writing, a principled method is needed to
transition from symbols representing words to sounds.

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Applied Linguistics

Second, the transition from pictographic representation to logographic writing, even


among Sumerians, involved using symbols based on similar sounds. Gelb (1963) demonstrates
this process, with arrows for "arrow" and reeds for "reimbursement" being used for similar
pronunciations. This development, known as phonographic writing, allowed symbols to
represent word sounds. The rebus principle is a process where a symbol for one entity is used as
the symbol for the sound of the spoken word used to refer to that entity. This process reduces the
number of symbols needed in a writing system, allowing for a wide range of meanings. For
example, the English word "eye" can be represented as "I" or "+" by combining the form with
other logograms. In contemporary English texting, the symbol "2" is used as a number and the
sound of other words or parts of words.

Third, Syllabic writing is a writing system that employs a set of symbols representing the
pronunciation of a syllable. Modern Japanese uses hiragana, a set of single symbols representing
spoken syllables, and is often described as having a partially syllabic writing system. Cherokee
inventor Sequoyah invented a syllabic writing system in the early nineteenth century, which was
widely used within the Cherokee community. Ancient Egyptian and Sumerian writing systems
evolved to use logographic symbols to represent spoken syllables. The Phoenicians, who lived in
Lebanon between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago, used a fully developed syllabic writing system,
adopting many symbols from earlier Egyptian writing. The direction of writing is from right to
left, as seen in modern Arabic. Moreover, an alphabet is a set of written symbols representing a
single sound or phoneme in a language. Semitic languages like Arabic and Hebrew have
developed a consonantal alphabet, which is the basis of most other alphabets. The early version
of Semitic alphabetic script, originating from the Phoenicians, is the basic source of most other
alphabets. Modified versions can be traced to the East into Iranian, Indian, South-East Asian
writing systems, and to the West through Greek. The Greeks took the alphabetizing process a
step further by using separate symbols to represent vowel sounds as distinct entities, creating a
single-sound writing or "alphabet." This revised alphabet passed to Western Europe through the
Romans and Eastern Europe, where Slavic languages were spoken, and is the basis of the writing
system used in Russia today. The alphabetic writing system's origins may explain the frequent
mismatch between written English and spoken English sounds. Other languages, like Italian and
Spanish, have more consistent alphabetic writing systems. However, English is not always

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Applied Linguistics

consistent, with variations in how each sound is represented in writing, such as vowel and
consonant sounds.

In summary, English orthography is influenced by historical influences on the form of


written English. The spelling of written English was largely fixed in the form used when printing
was introduced into fifteenth-century England. Conventions regarding the written representation
of words were derived from forms used in writing other languages, notably Latin and French.
Early printers were native Flemish speakers, making it difficult to make consistently accurate
decisions about English pronunciations. Since the fifteenth century, the pronunciation of spoken
English has undergone substantial changes, including the inclusion of "silent letters" indicating
older pronunciations. Older written English words were "recreated" by sixteenth-century spelling
reformers to align their written forms with Latin origins. This mismatch between written and
spoken forms becomes clear as more changes in North American English spelling conventions
are illustrated in Task D.

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