Ancient Scripts and Phonological Knowledge
Ancient Scripts and Phonological Knowledge

Author: D. Gary Miller

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 1994-01-01

Total Pages: 156

ISBN-13: 9027236194

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This study investigates the properties of several ancient syllabic and linear segmental scripts to make explicit the aspects of linguistic knowledge they attempt to represent. Some recent experimental work suggests that nonliterate speakers do not have segmental knowledge and that only syllabic knowledge is 'real' or accessible, whence the ubiquity of syllabaries. Miller disputes this by showing that such tests do not distinguish relevant types of knowledge, and that linguistic analysis of the ordering and writing conventions of early Western scripts corroborates the evidence from language acquisition, use, and change for segment awareness. By coding segments, the ancient syllabaries represented more phonological knowledge than the alphabet, which was a poor compromise between the vowelless West Semitic scripts and the vowel-redundant syllabic scripts. A wide range of information about early scripts and their development is combined with a new theory of the syllable as 'Sonority Phrase'. The book's value is further enhanced by thorough discussion of the issues from a broad range of theoretical and applied viewpoints, including language play and change, cognition, literacy, and cultural history.

Ancient Scripts and Phonological Knowledge
Ancient Scripts and Phonological Knowledge

Author: D. Gary Miller

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 1994-09-06

Total Pages: 157

ISBN-13: 9027276714

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This study investigates the properties of several ancient syllabic and linear segmental scripts to make explicit the aspects of linguistic knowledge they attempt to represent. Some recent experimental work suggests that nonliterate speakers do not have segmental knowledge and that only syllabic knowledge is 'real' or accessible, whence the ubiquity of syllabaries. Miller disputes this by showing that such tests do not distinguish relevant types of knowledge, and that linguistic analysis of the ordering and writing conventions of early Western scripts corroborates the evidence from language acquisition, use, and change for segment awareness. By coding segments, the ancient syllabaries represented more phonological knowledge than the alphabet, which was a poor compromise between the vowelless West Semitic scripts and the vowel-redundant syllabic scripts. A wide range of information about early scripts and their development is combined with a new theory of the syllable as 'Sonority Phrase'. The book's value is further enhanced by thorough discussion of the issues from a broad range of theoretical and applied viewpoints, including language play and change, cognition, literacy, and cultural history.

Handbook of Literacy in Akshara Orthography
Handbook of Literacy in Akshara Orthography

Author: R. Malatesha Joshi

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-06-11

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 3030059774

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This volume examines the unique characteristics of akshara orthography and how they may affect literacy development and problems along with the implications for assessment and instruction. Even though akshara orthography is used by more than a billion people, there is an urgent need for a systematic attempt to bring the features, research findings, and future directions of akshara together in a coherent volume. We hope that this volume will bridge that gap. Akshara is used in several Indic languages, each calling it by a slightly different name, for example 'aksharamu', in Telugu, 'akshara' in Kannada, and 'akshar' in Hindi. It is the Bhrami-derived orthography used across much of the Indian subcontinent. There is a growing body of research on the psycholinguistic underpinnings of learning to read akshara, and the emerging perspective is that akshara, even though classified as alphasyllabaries, abugida, and semi-syllabic writing systems, is neither alphabetic nor syllabic. Rather, akshara orthography is unique and deserves to be a separate classification and needs further investigation relating to literacy acquisition in akshara. The chapters in this volume, written by leading authors in the field, will inform the reader of the current research on akshara in a coherent and systematic way.

Understanding Relations Between Scripts II
Understanding Relations Between Scripts II

Author: Philippa M. Steele

Publisher: Oxbow Books

Published: 2019-10-10

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1789250951

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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 programme (grant agreement No. 677758), and based in the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge. Understanding Relations Between Scripts II: Early Alphabets is the first volume in this series, bringing together ten experts on ancient writing, languages and archaeology to present a set of diverse studies on the early development of alphabetic writing systems and their spread across the Levant and Mediterranean during the second and first millennia BC. By taking an interdisciplinary perspective, it sheds new light on alphabetic writing not just as a tool for recording language but also as an element of culture.

Typology of Writing Systems
Typology of Writing Systems

Author: Susanne R. Borgwaldt

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2013-06-15

Total Pages: 174

ISBN-13: 9027271852

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Typology research is extremely important in both proposing classification frameworks and in promoting the careful investigation and analysis of the core concepts inherent within the classification contrasts employed. More exemplary of the latter aspect, the present collection of papers on the typology of writing systems address a number of significant linguistic and psycholinguistic issues surrounding the classification of writing systems. The seven contributions within this volume, which originally appeared as a special issue of Written Language and Literacy 14:1 (2011), cover a wide variety of issues, ranging from an overview of writing system typology research, comparative graphematics, letter-shape similarities, the morphographic principle, tone orthography typology, measuring graphematic transparency, to unconventional spellings within online chat. Reflecting the growing interest in writing, the book will be of interest to advanced students and researchers working on writing systems, written language, and reading research.

Greek Writing from Knossos to Homer
Greek Writing from Knossos to Homer

Author: Roger D. Woodard

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1997-06-12

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 0195355660

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Greek Writing from Knossos to Homer examines the origin of the Greek alphabet. Departing from previous accounts, Roger Woodard places the advent of the alphabet within an unbroken continuum of Greek literacy beginning in the Mycenean era. He argues that the creators of the Greek alphabet, who adapted the Phoenician consonantal script, were scribes accustomed to writing Greek with the syllabic script of Cyprus. Certain characteristic features of the Cypriot script--for example, its strategy for representing consonant sequences and elements of Cypriot Greek phonology--were transferred to the new alphabetic script. Proposing a Cypriot origin of the alphabet at the hands of previously literate adapters brings clarity to various problems of the alphabet, such as the Greek use of the Phoenician sibilant letters. The alphabet, rejected by the post- Bronze Age "Mycenaean" culture of Cyprus, was exported west to the Aegean, where it gained a foothold among a then illiterate Greek people emerging from the Dark Age.

Phonetics and Phonology
Phonetics and Phonology

Author: Marina Vigário

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2009-10-28

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 902728900X

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The papers included in the volume Phonetics and Phonology: Interactions and interrelations are concerned with some of the multiple possible forms of interactions and interrelations in phonetics and phonology: the phonetic and/or phonological nature of speech patterns, segmental and prosodic interactions, and interactions between segments and features, both in child and in adult language, combining perception and production data, and doing so from theoretically as well as experimentally oriented perspectives. The book is unique in the universe of recent publications for its topic, wide scope and coherent thematic content. It is of interest to all researchers, teachers and students in the fields of phonetics and phonology as well as to those interested in the interplay between production and perception, the organization of grammar and language typology. In general, Phonetics and Phonology. Interactions and interrelations may be a useful companion to all those wishing to widen and deepen their knowledge of the sound structure of language(s).

Segmental and prosodic issues in Romance phonology
Segmental and prosodic issues in Romance phonology

Author: Pilar Prieto

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2007-04-06

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 9027292698

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This volume is a collection of cutting-edge research papers written by well-known researchers in the field of Romance phonetics and phonology. An important goal of this book is to bridge the gap between traditional Romance linguistics — with its long and rich tradition in data collection, cross-language comparison, and phonetic variation — and laboratory phonology work. The book is organized around three main themes: segmental processes, prosody, and the acquisition of segments and prosody. The various articles provide new empirical data on production, perception, sound change, first and second language learning, rhythm and intonation, presenting a state-of-the-art overview of research in laboratory phonology centred on Romance languages. The Romance data are used to test the predictions of a number of theoretical frameworks such as gestural phonology, exemplar models, generative phonology and optimality theory. The book will constitute a useful companion volume for phoneticians, phonologists and researchers investigating sound structure in Romance languages, and will serve to generate further interest in laboratory phonology.