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Writing Systems

Lecturer: Mr. Hong Kiseng

Students:

Batch: 08 Year IVSemester I Room W-101

1. Mr. Leang Channy2. Miss Seng Saksreyney3. Mr. Pha Rakim4. Miss Phien Davy

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1. Communication across Time and Space?

2. Morphemic and Phonetic Script3. Chinese Script – A Morphemic

System4. Roman Script – An Alphabetic

System5. Allographs6. Conclusion

Outline

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Do you know any country has no

writing system?

Can you develop one nation without

written language?

How can you study a history of one

country?

1. Communication across Time and Space

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Some societies have no writing

system and no society has developed

a written language and only

subsequently decided to transmit the

utterances orally.

1. Communication across Time and Space

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Writing has played an important part in the

development of society.

Our society requires communication to be

made across space and time.

Writing is allowing you to study the subject

of language without having to travel to a

particular place at a particular time.

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Rival means of communication or

bridging space and time (TV, Phone,

Tape recorder, or Video…), but

writing still develops.

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The written representation of an

object, of a concept, of an action, and

so on may be a direct representation

of the object itself or a

representation of the word that

represents the object.

2. Morphemic and Phonetic Script

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Morphemic are the characters or

graphs <1> and <5> represent a

concept directly.

Phonetic are the written words <one>

and <five> or symbols of symbols

represent the sounds that represent the

concept.

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<Seven> is generally called Phonetic

systems but <Seven> /sevәn/ is called

an Alphabetic system.

Alphabetic are character for each

sound segment or symbols represent

individual speech sounds.

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Syllabic refer to symbols represent

syllables. (Mostly, in Chinese,

Japanese, and Korean symbols) 好 吃 好吃

Hǎo Chī Hǎo chī

Good Eat Delicious

好 看 好看Hǎo Kàn Hǎo kàn

Good Look Attractive

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Morphemic Symbols

Ex: “4” is morphemic symbol that represent:

“quatre in French”“four in English”

“si ‘ 四’ in Chinese”

is internationally understood !

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Symbols that represent an object, a concept,

an action, and so on without the

intermediate element of the spoken word,

they are called “Morphemic Symbols”.

Morphemic Symbols

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Advantage:

It is a written

communication

which can be

understood by

people who speak

so differently that

they would not

understand each

other’s spoken

language.

Disadvantage:

Morphemic symbols

do, however, present

problems in the

modern age. Having a

different graph for

each morpheme

clearly means that

thousands of graphs

must be used.

Morphemic Symbols

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Generally speaking Phonetic systems develop out of Morphemic systems. When humans first wanted to convey or express visually the idea of an object it was natural that they should draw an image of that object rather than attempt to represent the sound of whatever word they used to denote or represent that object.

Ex:

semi-circle represented full-circle represented

moon sun

Morphemic Symbols

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Morphemic symbols can be Pictogram or Ideogram

If we want to consider pictograms or ideograms to be different:

1. One, stylized visual, is more about image or picture is called “pictogram”.

2. And the other one is more about idea is called “ideogram”.

3 Chinese Script- A Morphemic

As we have seen, the Chinese system of writing is primarily morphemic, the characters being associated directly with the object or concept that they

denote rather than with the sound of a spoken word.

Images become more stylized and more angular, but in some cases one can still see a resemblance between character

and the objective denoted.

As with the digraph for China ,

concepts may be represented by

combining or reduplicating

characters.

The characters for the sun and the

moon together (明 ), denote the

concept of brightness.

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The characters for women together

with that for child (好 ), denotes

goodness and love.

These may be referred to as

symbolic compound.

The Chinese characters representing

one concept may also come to be used

to denote another concept that is

denoted by a words that sound similar.

Thus it may be sound rather than

concept that is the common thread

linking different use of character.

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The semantic element, the radical, is

supplemented by a phonetic element

that indicate the spoken word. This

specifying the sense of the semantic

element.

For example, the character for a

woman can be accompanied by

another indicating the sound /ma/ to

denote the particular kind of woman

indicated by these sounds, a mother.

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The writing system that we use

came to us from the Middle East by

way of the Greeks and the Romans.

4. Roman Script – An Alphabetic System

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Runic Alphabets

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Khmer Script

The script has been modified for over 10

times. Here is some example of Khmer script:

Pre-Angkorian Script

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Angkorian Script

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Post-Angkorian Script

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Modern Script

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Allograph is a member of grapheme

or the variant forms of a written

character (grapheme is a fundamental unit in

a written language: alphabet, punctuation,

number, signature, and any other individual

symbol in a writing system).

5. Allographs

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A and a are Allographs of the grapheme

A in that replacing them does not alter

the meaning of the word, as calm,

CALM and cAlm, except oddness.

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As we know, writing system can help our

communication to transcend time and space.

But the development of writing system will

help us better.

However, in order to develop writing system

successfully we need to understand each

concept in this unit.

Conclusion

Thanks for your attention!

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