PowerPoint PresentationSlide 2Slide 3Slide 4Slide 5Slide 6Slide 7Slide 8Slide 9Slide 10Slide 11Slide 12Slide 13Slide 14Slide 15Slide 16Slide 17Slide 18Slide 19Slide 20Slide 21Slide 22Slide 23Slide 24Slide 25Slide 26Slide 27Slide 28Slide 29Slide 30Slide 31Slide 32Slide 33Slide 34Slide 35Slide 36Slide 37Slide 38Slide 39Slide 40Slide 41Slide 42Slide 43Slide 44Slide 45Slide 46Slide 47Slide 48Slide 49Slide 50Slide 51Slide 52Writing Systems•Pictographs (symbol looks like the 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)Important Note Before We Go Through Each Writing SystemThere 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, =, ? …).PictographsWhat does this sign mean? The tree component only is a pictograph – meaning conveyed directly because it looks like the 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.What does this pictograph mean?Mountains? Some particular mountains (Rockies, Adirondacks)? Scenic view ahead? Landscape mode (rather than portrait mode)? Who knows?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?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.Other Ideographs! @ # $ % & 1 2 3 4 … ?Ideographs may or may not be iconic (iconic = looks like the 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].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 representedChinese writing is not purely ideographic. Some characters represent broad semantic categories (e.g., person, insect, metal) and others provide pronunciation clues.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 are 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).2. Clues are not provided to pronunciation (though Chinese is not purely ideographic). Encounter a new symbol? You’re stuck. Not true of alphabetic writing. What happened the 1st 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-to-symbol relationship would require an immense keyboard.Downsides to ideographic writing (cont’d)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.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.Syllabic WritingMain idea is pretty obvious: Each symbol repre-sents a syllable.Japanese syllabary(Syllabary=set of symbols to represent the syllables of a language)Hiragana base charactersa i u e o∅ あ あ あ あ あk あ あ あ あ あs あ あ あ あ あt あ あ あ あ あn あ あ あ あ あh あ あ あ あ あm あ あ あ あ あy あ あ あr あ あ あ あ あw あ あ あ ああ (N)Hiragana: One of two Japanese syllabaries.Note: The 1st row (identified with the “ ”∅ symbol) lists symbols used to specify syllables consisting of a vowel by itself; e.g., the 1st syllable in the English word “Okay”.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.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, and (2) it has many constraints on permissible syllable types (I’ll tell you what this means soon). Japanese: Somewhere around 50 unique syllable types. (Why? Japanese has just 5 vowels, a little over a dozen consonants, no consonant clusters; syllable types consist mainly of V and CV.)English: Many thousands of syllable types (~3 times as many vowels as Japanese, ~twice the number of consonants, lots & lots &