Writing Systems Pictographs symbol looks like thing being

Writing Systems • Pictographs (symbol looks like thing being represented; no major role in current writing systems) • Ideographs (symbols represent words or concepts) • Syllabic writing (symbols represent syllables) • Alphabetic writing (symbols represent individual speech sounds) • Morphophonemic writing (variation on alphabetic writing – English spelling is mostly morphophonemic) 1

Important Note Before We Go Through Each Writing System There are no writing systems in use that are purely of any one type. For example: 1. Chinese characters are mainly ideographs, but with some characters specifying sound rather than a whole word. 2. Alphabetic characters in the writing system used for English mainly specify sound, but ideographs are also used (&, %, $, 4, =, ? …). 2

Pictographs What does this sign mean? The tree component only is a pictograph – meaning conveyed directly because it looks like thing it represents. Note: All four kinds or writing are used on this sign: (1) tree=pictograph, (2) “SALE”=alphabetic, (3) “ 4”=syllabic, (4) Exclamation point=ideograph. (More about this later. ) But the tree is a pictograph. 3

What does this pictograph mean? Mountains? Some particular mountains (Rockies, Adirondacks)? Scenic view ahead? Landscape mode (rather than portrait mode)? Who knows? 4

What picture do you draw for abstract concepts like sadden, hypothetical, creative, ambitious, or even verbs like stall (as in “My car stalled. ”) or fidget? What does this pictograph mean? 5

What do these pictures mean? How did you know? These are ideographs – meaning is assigned by convention; i. e. , we learn to interpret them in a particular way. In this case, the state compels us to learn them. Also called ideograms and logograms. 6

Other Ideographs ! @ # $ % & 1 2 3 4 … ? Ideographs may or may not be iconic (iconic = looks like thing being represented). The road signs were all iconic. The symbols above are not. Iconic or not, meaning is assigned by convention – we all agree that ‘%’ means “percent”, and that the squiggly arrow means “curvy road ahead. ” Ideographs provide no clues about pronunciation; i. e. , there is nothing in the numeral “ 2” that tells you to pronounce the symbol /tu/. 7

Ideographs Used in Chinese Writing • Any iconic elements are probably lost on most readers • Symbols represent whole words or concepts • No clues to pronunciation (usually) • Both concrete (sun, river, …) & abstract words (strength, good, peaceful) are represented 8

Chinese writing is not purely ideographic. Some characters represent broad semantic categories (e. g. , person, insect, metal) and others provide pronunciation clues. Writing systems derived from Chinese in use for Japanese (kanji), Korean (hanja). Downsides to ideographic writing. 1. Representation is (mostly) at the word level; character set is really huge. The number of symbols is in the many thousands (compare this number to the 26 Roman letters). 9

Downsides to ideographic writing (cont’d) 2. Clues are not provided to pronunciation (although Chinese is not purely ideographic). Encounter a new symbol? You’re stuck. Not true of alphabetic writing. What happened the 1 st time you encountered the word “bombastic”? 3. Place names, proper names, foreign words, etc. , can be a headache. 4. Specifying ideographs on a computer keyboard requires some creativity (a one-to-one key-tosymbol relationship would require an immense keyboard. 10

The upside: The writing system is language independent. Language independence means that anyone who knows what the ideographs mean can understand what is written – no matter what language they speak. This is a really big deal in China. “Standard” Chinese: Mandarin, but a large number of “dialects” which are more properly viewed as separate languages. Some of the mutually unintelligible “dialects”: Shanghainese, Cantonese, Southern Min, Hunanese, Northern Min, Eastern Min, Central Min, Dungan, … several others. 11

Why is language independence important? A newspaper article or book can be read equally well by speakers of all of these languages. This would not be true with an alphabetic writing system, or any other system that conveyed sound rather than meaning. This explains why China – with many mutually unintelligible languages – will probably never move to alphabetic writing. 12

Syllabic Writing Main idea is pretty obvious: Each symbol represents a syllable. 13

Key difference between syllable-based writing and logographs/ideographs: Syllabic symbols represent sound, not whole words. Symbol set for a syllable-based writing system is called a syllabary. Syllabaries are in use for several languages, including Japanese (two, in fact: Katakana and Hiragana), Korean (Hangul), Inuit, & Cherokee. 14

Syllabaries are a good choice for languages with a fairly small number of unique syllable types. Japanese has a small number of unique syllable types because: (1)It has a small phonemic inventory (~14 consonants, 5 vowels). (2)It has many constraints on permissible syllable types (I’ll tell you what this means soon). 15

Japanese: Under 100 unique syllable types. (Why? Japanese has just 5 vowels, a little over a dozen consonants, no consonant clusters. ) English: Many thousands of syllable types (~16, 000 by one estimate). Why? v English has ~3 times as many vowels (~15 vs. 5) as almost twice the number of consonants (~23 vs. 14) as Japanese. v English has lots & lots of consonant clusters (e. g. , sphinx, strength, etc. ) while Japanese has none. 16

Moral: Would syllabic writing be a good choice for English? Not impossible, but it would be cumbersome. 17

What Does All That Mean? It is not the case that alphabetic writing is better than syllabic writing – or vice versa. Some languages are well suited to syllabic writing (languages like Japanese with smallish syllabaries) while others are not (languages like English with very large syllabaries). 18

Misc. Notes v English does not have more syllables than Japanese; it has more unique syllable types. Those are not the same thing. * v The words English and Japanese are proper nouns. They are not spelled english or japanese. *Imagine that you record a Japanese and an English speaker talking for one minute each. Count the number of syllables spoken by each speaker. The syllable counts will be very similar. Now count the number of unique syllable types (the number of different syllables) uttered by each speaker. The number will be much smaller for the Japanese speaker. 19

Alphabetic Writing Sound is represented rather than whole words, but sound is represented at the phoneme level, not the syllable level. “Ideal” alphabetic system: 1 letter = 1 sound. No system in use meets this ideal, but some are fairly close. English is not one of the close ones. (Big surprise, eh? ) There are many alphabets in use in the world (Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew/Aramaic, …). English writing system uses the Roman alphabet. 20

Roman Alphabet English (along with many other languages) is written using the Roman alphabet. Lineage (i. e. , where the alphabet come from): (1) Hieroglyphics -> West Semitic Syllabary (Phoenicians – hence the word phonetics) Hieroglyphics was a mix of ideographs & syllabic symbols; The Phoenicians ditched the ideographs and kept a 22 -symbol syllabary. (2) West Semitic Syllabary -> Greek Alphabet Greeks added some vowel symbols and turned the syllabary into an alphabet. 21

Origin of Roman Alphabet (cont’d) (3) Greek Alphabet->Roman Alphabet Romans added a few symbols for sounds that did not occur in Latin and redefined others to suit the phonetic inventory of Latin. Quick Summary 1. Hieroglyphics (mix of ideographs & syllabic symbols) 2. W. Semitic Syllabary (keeping syllabic symbols only) 3. Greek alphabet (switch from representing sound at the syllabic level to the phoneme level) 4. Roman alphabet (a few changes to better fit the phonetic inventory of Latin) 22

English Spelling Stinks Big Time English is not the only spelling system that is problematic due to inconsistent letter-tosound relationships. All spelling systems suffer from this problem to some degree. But English gets the prize as the worst, at least here on earth. Check out this link: http: //redux. com/stream/item/1831091/Dumb-English-Spelling (This link no longer works. I’ll try to find another one. ) 23

Why English Orthography Stinks 1. Roman alphabet is poorly suited to English for a very simple reason: The sound inventories of the two languages are very different, especially the vowel inventories. Latin: 5 monophthongs, no diphthongs English: ~12 monophthongs, 3 diphthongs = 15 How do you represent 15 vowels with 5 symbols? NOTE: The poor fit of the Roman alphabet to the phonetic inventory of English is the 1 st item on this list, but IT IS FAR FROM THE MOST IMPORTANT PROBLEM. (More to come. ) 24

Problem with the Roman alphabet could be dealt with by consistently using combinations of letters to represent sounds. A lot of this is done: met–meat, bit-beat, lid–lead, cot–coat, . . . But: it isn’t done w/ much consistency. Letter-tosound associations are all over the place. /i/: ski, flee, meat, people, physiology, fetus, . . . Same problem with consonants: /f/: foam, phone, rough, etc. Many other examples. G. B. Shaw: “fish” = ghoti (gh as in cough, o as in women, ti as in nation) 25

2. There are sounds in some words that could easily be represented with the Roman alphabet but, for one reason or other, they are not. beauty: What speech sound follows the [b]? user: What speech sound begins this word? union: What speech sound appears twice in this word but is not represented at all in the spelling? The “stealth” sound is [j] in each of these words ([bjuɾi], [juzɚ], [junjən]), but English spelling provides many other examples of sounds that could be represented with the Roman alphabet, 26 but are not.

Moral: The big problem isn’t really the Roman alphabet. The alphabet wasn’t designed for English, but the liabilities could be dealt with – but they aren’t. How’s come? The Real Culprits 1. Spelling standardization is surprisingly recent, and IT WAS NEVER DONE IN A SYSTEMATIC WAY. As recently as the 19 th C even educated writers spelled (NOT spelt) however they felt like. When spelling was finally standardized, it was done in a haphazard way. So, spelling was standardized but not systematized. Systemizing spelling is what was really needed, but this wasn’t done. 27

Quick note: On exams I sometimes ask students to list and explain the most important problems with English spelling. Q: What is wrong with the answer “spelling standardization” (which I get quite often)? A: It does not answer the question. Suppose I had told you that a major problem with English spelling was spelling standardization, then moved on to the next one. Would this have meant anything to you? Lesson: You do not need to write a book, but you 28 should aim to capture the key idea.

The Real Culprits (cont’d) 2. Historical sound change: Pronunciation changes over time; spelling usually stays put. knight, knife – the ‘k’ ([k]) used to be pronounced ([knʌit], [knʌif]). gnaw, gnat – same deal with the ‘g’ ([gæt], [gnɔ]) cough, rough – words used to end with a speech sound that is no longer in the phonetic inventory of English – the consonant that is at the end of the name “Bach”, as it is spoken by annoying eggheads. 29

3. ”Foreign born” words. Most English words started out life as part of the vocabulary of some other language. The habit is usually to retain the original spelling. pizza, colonel, cello, junta, chassis, psalm, repertoire, liaison, sauna, coup, algorithm, decipher, coffee … Result: Mishmash of different and wildly inconsistent spelling conventions. This is almost certainly the most important of the “culprits”. 4. Others – See Mac. Kay (Chapter 3), but the three points discussed above are the main ones. These are the ones I’d like you to know (& be able to explain). 30

For the Etymologically Curious pizza: colonel: Italian French (who borrowed it from the Italian colonnello, meaning ‘little column’) cello: junta: chassis: psalm: repertoire: liaison: sauna: coup: algorithm: decipher: coffee: Italian Spanish French Greek French Finnish French Arabic 31

OK, so English spelling has problems everywhere you look. These problems explain why: v It took most of us forever to learn to spell. v Most of us still have problems from time to time; more than occasionally for some of us. v It’s unusual to find people who consider themselves to be good spellers. It’s about as common as finding someone who says, “Yes, I find that algebra comes very easily to me. ” BUT: Q: Is English spelling really as bad as all that? A: 32 No, not really.

IMPORTANT NOTE The last topic we’re going to discuss addresses exactly this question: English spelling is a mess, no doubt about. But is it really quite as messed up as it seems? The answer is NO. The fact that English spelling is not phonetic is NOT a design flaw. English spelling is intentionally not based on a phonetic design principle; i. e. , it is purposely not trying to represent surface phonetic details. Instead, it is based on something called a morphophonemic design principle. *** This is the most important concept in the entire section on 33 writing. ***

IMPORTANT NOTE (cont’d) A quick preview of where we’re heading with this. In spite of all of its many and very real flaws, there is an elegance to our spelling system (and all other alphabetic spelling systems). It’s called the morphophonemic principle. Details very soon, but here’s the basic idea: The spelling system is purposely designed NOT to represent surface phonetic details. Instead, it’s designed to represent more abstract: (1) morphological regularities, and (2) phonemic (not phonetic) regularities. 34

IMPORTANT NOTE (last thing) The morphophonemic principle is not a hard idea, and pretty much everybody gets it (although not everyone can explain it). So, here goes. . . 35

Point #1: We could not make English spelling phonetic even if we though it was a good idea (which it isn’t). Why? There is no solution to dialect variation. Whose dialect should we use? British? Australian? Irish? Scottish? S. African? American? Suppose we chose American. Which dialect? Brooklyn? South Philly? Rural Alabama? New Orleans? We wouldn’t want spelling to vary across these communities – i. e. , you’d want a Brit to be able to read a book written by an Aussie. This problem is not solvable. 36

Review: Morpheme/Morphological Rules Morpheme: Smallest unit of language that conveys meaning. believe: believed: believable: unbelievable: 1 word, 1 morpheme 1 word, 2 morphemes 1 word, 3 morphemes Rules for combining these morphemes into words: morphological rules; e. g. believe>believable; read>readable; prove>provable; know->knowable; stick->sticks; photo->photos; shirt>shirts; paper->paperless 37

Bound and Unbound/Free Morphemes paint, chair, picture, throw, run: calmly stacked pets worker painting unbound prearrange postgame antiviolence unbound morphemes; these can all be used alone Morphemes shown in red are bound morphemes; they cannot appear alone. Those in blue are unbound or free morphemes. Unbound/free morphemes may appear either alone or in combination with other morphemes. Bound morphemes must be used in combination with (i. e. , bound with) some other morpheme. 38

Major Point #1: English spelling represents underlying morphological regularities, not superficial phonetic facts. Simpler idea than that sentence makes it sound. approximate, approximately Note that the highlighted letter is ‘a’ or “a” (NOT /a/ or [a] – a letter, not a speech sound). Is it pronounced the same way in the two words? [No] Would you want the spelling to: (1) change to reflect the difference in pronunciation? or (2) stay the same to reflect the fact that these are two versions of the same word, related to one another by a morphological rule? I vote for #2. This is not a minor feature of English spelling (all alphabetic spelling). It’s all over the place. 39

nation – nationality medicine - medicinal magic – magician social – society discuss – discussion televise – television (different sounds, same letter) (ditto) In all cases the spelling reflects not phonetic details but the deeper and more important fact that the word on the right is derived from the on the left by morphological rules. This is the ‘morpho’ part of morphophonemic. English spelling is morphophonemic, not phonetic. This is a good thing, not a bad thing. 40

nation – nationality medicine - medicinal magic – magician social – society discuss – discussion televise – television (different sounds, same letter) (ditto) Another way to summarize the idea: With a phonetic principle, two different speech sounds would be represented by two different letters. From the word pairs above, is that what happens? [No] With the morphological part of the morphophonemic principle, the same morpheme would be represented by the same (or similar) spelling. Is that what happens? [Yes] 41

Major Point # 2: English spelling represents underlying phonemic regularities, not surface phonetic facts. walk – walks cat – cats dog – dogs pan – pans Phonological rule: If the word ends in a voiceless consonant, add [s]; otherwise, add [z]. But note that the spelling does not reflect this – always get ”s” in spelling. On an abstract, phonological level, it’s an /s/ in both cases: a sound-pattern rule handles the phonetic detail of whether this “abstract” /s/ is realized as [s] or [z]. Similar to the morphology thing: The spelling system reflects underlying linguistic (phonemic/phonological) facts, not superficial phonetic facts. This is good. 42

Point #2 (cont’d): English spelling represents underlying phonemic regularities, not surface phonetic facts. walk – walks [wɔks] cat – cats [kæts] dog – dogs pan – pans [dɔgz] [pænz] The example in the previous slide (shown above) illustrates the phonemic part of the morphophonemic principle. This is very smart. Why? There is no need to use the spelling ‘dogz’, even though it is phonetically more accurate. The ‘z’ is not needed because the reader already knows that the word is pronounced [d ɔgz]. How? Even very young kids have already learned this 43 rule.

SUMMARY Types Writing Systems (Note: No system is purely any of the types listed) Symbols Represent Words or Concepts Symbols Represent Sound Pictographs Ideographs/ Syllabaries Alphabets Logographs Meaning is (meaning by convention) Symbols=Syllables Symbols=Phonemes Supposed to be Obvious examples: Chinese, Japanese (kanji), Japanese (kana) English, Russian, Dead Some ideographs used in Korean, Inuit, Spanish, many End English (! @ # $ % 1 2 3 …) Cherokee others 44

SUMMARY (cont’d) Which kind of system is actually in the alphabetic in use for English? Phonetic or morphophonemic? 45

Example 2: backs – bags ([bæks] - [bægz]) Spelling rules could do one of two very different things: (1) Use an “s” for “backs” and a “z” for “bags” to reflect the difference in phonetic details (phonetic spelling), or (2) Use the same letter in both cases so that the reader can easily see that all that is happening is that the base morpheme (back or bag) is being made plural (morphophonemic spelling). Which kind of system is actually in use in English? Example 3: jogged - walked Note that the spelling shows a “d” in both cases; however, in “walked” the final consonant is actually a [t], while in “jogged” it is a [d]. 46

To work out on your own: 1. In what way is example 3 (previous slide – jogged vs. walked) analogous to example 2? 2. In what way is this another example of morphophonemic rather than phonetic writing? 47

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) In one important sense the IPA does not belong in this section – it is not used as the writing system for any language. No books written in IPA, no newspapers, people don’t write letters to one another in IPA was developed explicitly for the study and description of the sound patterns of the world’s languages. Two important features: 1. This alphabet really is phonetic (or phonemic) – one-toone correspondence between speech sounds and symbols: The symbol /i/ always specifies the vowel in “beet”; every time the vowel in “beet” occurs the symbol /i/ is used to represent it. 48

2. Designed to represent the sounds of all of the world’s languages. Does the IPA represent sound at the phonetic level or the phonemic level? Example: How would we transcribe the words “cat” and “scat” or “pot” and “spot” or “bat” and “ban”? Answer: The IPA allows you to transcribe either at the phonetic level (e. g. , representing phonetic details such as aspiration or vowel nasalization) or at the phonemic level (i. e. , ignoring phonetic details and specifying only the phonemic category). Phonetic: [khæt]-[skæt], [phɑt]-[spɑt], [bæt]-[mæ n] Phonemic: /kæt/-/skæt/, /pɑt/-/spɑt/, /bæt/-/mæn/ 49

Phonetic: [khæt]-[skæt], [phɑt]-[spɑt], [bæt]-[mæ n] Phonemic: /kæt/-/skæt/, /pɑt/-/spɑt/, /bæt/-/mæn/ How are these different? • Phonetic transcription represents fine phonetic details; e. g. , the allophonic differences between [kh] and [k], [ph] and [p], [æ] and [æ ]. How many details? It’s up to you. • Phonemic transcription ignores the fine phonetic details, representing only the broad phonemic categories /k/, /p/, and /æ/. • Phonemic symbols are enclosed in slashes (e. g. , /k/, /p/, /æ/) • Phonetic symbols are enclosed in square brackets (e. g. , [kh], [k], [ph], [p], [æ ]). 50

Which system are we using in here? Phonetic? Phonemic? We’re using a middle-of-the-road system called broad phonetic transcription. All this means is that we’ll mark some allophonic details but not others. Which ones? Unless I specifically tell you otherwise, do it the way we’ve been doing it in class and in lab. This is not new. You now have a name for it. 51

Which system are we using in this course? Phonetic? Phonemic? We’re using a middle-of-the-road system called broad phonetic transcription. All this means is that we’ll mark some allophonic details but not others. Which ones? Unless I specifically tell you otherwise, do it the way we’ve been doing it in class and in lab – e. g. , we’ll use symbols like [ɾ], [ʔ], and [ə] (these are allophones, not phonemes), but not diacritics for nasalization or aspiration, unless I ask for them. Broad phonetic transcription is not new to you; you now have a name for it. 52

Q: In this course, which allophonic details do you need to mark? A: The ones we’ve been using in class. There’s nothing that needs to be memorized. Examples: [ɾ] [ʔ] [ə] (flap, an allophone of /t/) (glottal stop, another allophone of /t/) (schwa, an allophone of all English vowels, controlled by stress – if unstressed (also weak or reduced), you get schwa; more later) For later: syllabic consonants; e. g. , the /n/ in: button [bʌʔn ] cotton [kɑʔn ] (Note: The diacritic beneath the ‘n’ is supposed to be a vertical line centered beneath the symbol. It does not print correctly. No idea why. ) 53

If an allophonic feature such as aspiration (e. g. , [thɑp]) or nasalization (e. g. , [mæ t]) needs to be marked, I’ll let you know. 54