The Development of Writing

When we consider the development of writing one thing should kept in

mind that there are large number of language in the world toady that exist

only in speech and do not have written from for those languages which

have not writing system yet the process of development of writing is a

relatively recent phenomenon an account of the early history of writing

has gradually emerged, but it contains many gaps and ambiguities. The

matter is problematic by the fact that in this early period, it is not easy to

decide whether a piece of graphic expression should be counted as an

optimistic image or as a symbol of primitive writing. In principle, the

difference, the difference is clear; the former convey personal and

subjective meanings and do not combined into a system with accepted

values in contrast with later is conventional and institutionalized, capable

of being understood in the same way by all who are using the system.

Problematic area: in Egyptian and Greek the same word was used for

both write and draw.

Although, one point is dear that the writing systems evolved

independently of each other at different times in several parts of the

world in Mesopotamia, China, Meso-America etc. Much of the evidence

used in the reconstruction of ancient writing systems comes from

inscriptions on stones on tablets found in the rubble do ruined cities.

Precursors

The earliest examples of a conventional use of written symbols are

on clay tablets discovered in various parts of the Middle East and South

east Europe from around 3500 B.C. Large numbers of tablets made by

the Sumerians have been found in sites around the rives figures and

Euphrates in presently Iraq and Iran but those Symbols have been listed,

most of them abstract in characters. That tablet seems to have recorded

matters such as business transactions, tax account, land sales etc.

These taken of several distinctive shapes, seem to have been used as

system of accounting from at least the 9th millenumium B.C. there are no

clear borders between picture/ symbol and what is already a sign in a

writing system (specific phonetic content which would be radium the

name way by any reader in a group of redoes.

Scribes

Scribes were very important people and trained to write confirm and

record many of the languages spoken in Mesopotamia. Without scribes,

letters would not have been written or real, Royal monuments would not

have been carved or stories would have been told and forgotten. Scribes

wrote those things on different shaped objects depending on the type of

information they wanted to record.

Changing in Signs

Although the signs had changed over the centuries. There were

more changes to come. Nobody can explain why the changes happened.

In the most ancient times tablets have signs drawn in bones. Later,

a change came and the signs were written in rows, and arranged them in

order in which they were real. After that a change was came that the

tablets were written in the manner so that all of the signs appeared to be

lying on their side.

Changing in Usage

In the serve ear, not only the change came in the shape, but also the

use of the sign had been changing. The barley sign could now be used in

two ways,

Firstly; It could represent barley, as on the tablet, which tells us that

Uranium (name of person) was given barley

Secondly; It could also be used to represent a sound the Sumerian word

for barley was she. So the barely sign was used to represent the sound she

in a word.

Stages in development of writing

Stage 1:- Signs are only used as symbols.

Stage 2:- The beginning of writing: limited standardization:

The surviving sources indicate that the hieroglyphics writing

system followed the systems and rules which were used thourout

Egyptian history. Early development include the emergence of rooms in

writing direction, forms of individual signs, orthography of single words,

and the gradual tendency towards writing longer inscription.

Stage 3: Developing Standardization:-

It seems that at the beginning only very few people could write but

standardization.

It seems that at the beginning only very few people could write but

standardization was not needed so much. At that point were the writing

was used for more people a fixed system was needed, and soon

developed. The signs and the writing of many words are already those

found in the old Kingdom.

Types of Writing

PICTOGRAMS

Pictogram when some of eh pictures came to represent particular

images in a consistent way, we can be to describe the product as a from

of picture writing or pictograms. In this system, the graphemes provide a

recognizable picture of entities as they exist in eh world. Cave drawings

may serves to record some events but they are not usually thought of as

any type of usually thought of as any type of specifically linguistic

message. They are normally considered as part of a tradition do pectoral

art pictograms constitute the earliest system of writing and are found in

many parts of the world where the remains of easily people have been

discovered.

Thus, a form such as might come to be used fro the suncomes to

represent particular image or recognizable picture of entities in a certain

way, it can be described as a form of picture writing or pictograms. This

problem can be illustrated with modern pictograms, such as road sign

(right/ left). Without knowing the context the sign could be real in all

kinds of ways such as some other modern pictograms leads you to the

phone booth, bus stop, coffee shop and to the restrooms at the airport

even if you don’t speak and real the particular language but there is must

be a conventional relationship between the symbol and its representation

when a pictogram takes a more fixed symbolic from and comes to be

used for instance not only to represent sum but also heat and daytime, it

is considered as part of a system of idea writing or ideogram. There is no

intension to draw the reality artistically or exactly, but the symbols must

be efficiently clear and simple to enable then to be immediately

recognized and reproduced as occasion demands as part of a narrative.

Ideograms

Ideographic writing is usually distinguished as a later development of

pictographic. Ideographic can be defined as “Ideograms have on abstract

or conventional meaning, no longer displaying a clear pectoral link with

external link. Ideograms or ideographic display no clear pictorial link

with external reality. In olden days, two factors account for this, the

shape of an ideogram may so alter that is no longer recognizable as a

pectoral representation of an object; and its original meaning may extend

to include notions that lack any clear pectoral form. It is rare to fined a

pure ideographic symbols refers directly to the notions or things. Most

systems that have been called ideographic infect contain linguistic

element.

Distinction b/w ideogram and pictogram

The difference between ideogram and pictogram is essentially a

difference in the relationship between the symbol and its representation.

The other difference is that picture like forms are called pictograms and

the abstract and derived forms are called ideograms.

But at the same time, there is a quality which qualifies both

ideograms and pictograms that they do not represent words or sounds in a

particular language.

Cuneiforms

The cuneiform method of writing dates from the 4th millennium B.C

Cuneiforms were used to express both non-phonological and

phonological writing system in several languages.

The word cuneiform derived from Latin and its meaning is “Wedge-

Shaped”. Cuneiform referred to the techniques that are used to make

symbols. In early period, a stylus was pressed into a tablet of soft clay in

order to makes a sequence of short straight strokes. But in later period,

other materials were also used for made cuneiform. In the very start when

the cuneiform. were start to use in different things they were written top

to bottom and reflecting the direction of writing, later, they were turned

onto their sides, written from left to right. The earliest cuneiform was a

development of pictographic symbols. Subsequently, the script was used

to write words and syllable, and to mark phonetic elements. It ws used to

record variety of information such as temple activities, business and

trade. Cuneiform was also used to write stories, myths and personal

letters. The cuneiform script was used to write other languages also. In

Mesopotamia, it was use to write both Sumerian and Akkadian. It was

also used to write other languages like Elamite, Hittite and as carved here

in stone, Urartian. Cuneiform script was used by other people because

they needed to be able to record information but they did not have their

own system for writing down their languages.

Egyptian Hieroglyphic

In Egypt, a form of pictography developed around 3000 B.C., which

came to be called hierslyphic. In Greek hieroglyphics means “The Scared

Craving”, because it was prominently used in temple, tombs and other

special places. The units of writing system are known as hieroglyphs.

This term was also coined to be used for scripts of a similar character

from other cultures, such as Hittite, Mayan and Indus valley but the most

developed form of hieroglyphic script was used by Egyptian, the Script

of hieroglyphic tends to write from right to left, with the symbols

generally facing the beginning of a row, but the vertical rows are found,

following the line of the building. Some symbols are used to ideograms,

representing real word entities or notion.

Swallow go

Beetle Find

Eat Fresh

Determination symbols are signs that have no phonetic value but are

place next to other symbols to tell the reader what kind of meaning a

world has Egyptian symbols that were commonly used as a

determinatives in clouded the following.

Sun, Sun god, day time

Star, hour, time to pray

City, town

Pray, adore, Praise

Moon, Month

Mountain

See

Weep, grief

Logograms

Logographic writing system are those when the symbols come to

represent words in a language, they are described as example of word

writing or logograms where the graphiensces or characters represent

words. A good example of logographic writing is that used by the

Sumerians, in the southern part of modern Iraq between 5,000 and 6,000

years ago. Because of the symbols, these insertions are most generally

described as currfom writing. In Egyptian hierghphcis means house and

derives from a diagram representing the floor plan of a house.

In Chinese writing it means saver and derives from the pectoral

description of a stream flowing between two banks.

Several thousand graphics are involved in a logographic system. The

great Chinese dictionary of K, ang Hsi (1662-1722) contains nearly

50,000 characters; most of them are highly specialized or archaic.

A modern writing system based to a certain extent on the use of

logograms can be found in China. Many written chinses symbols or

characters, are used as representations of the meaning of words and not

of the sounds of spoken language. One of the advantages of such a

system is that two speakers of different dialects of Chinese, who might

have great difficulty in understanding each other’s spoken forms, can

read the same written text. These symbols are widely used in modern

written language. Their spoken equivalents, of course, vary from

language to language. The most developed logoraphic systems are found

in scientific notations, such as logic and mathematics.

Rebus Writing

One way of using exiting symbols to represent the sounds of

language is via a process known as “Rebus Writing”. In this process, the

symbol of one entity is taken over as the symbol for the sound of the

spoken word used to refer to that entity. That symbol then comes to be

used whenever that sound occurs in any words. For example, working

with the found of the English word. Eye we can imagine how the

pictogram could have developed into logoram This logogram

is pronounced as eye, and with the Rebus principle at work, you should

be able to yourself as (I) to one of your friend as ( cross eye).

Take another non English example, the ideogram becomes the

logograms for the word pronounced ba (meaning boat). We can then

produce a symbol for the world pronounced baba (meaning father) which

would be .One symbol can thus be used in many different ways,

with a range of meanings. What this process accomplishes is a sizeable

reduction in the number of symbols needed in writing system.

Syllabus Writings

When a writing system employs a set of symbols which represent

the pronunciation of syllables, it is described as syllabic writing. In a

syllabic writing, each grapheme corresponds to a spoken syllable usually

a consonant vowel pair. They do not seem to be any purely syllabic

writing systems in use today, but Japanese can be described as having an

at learn partly syllabic writing system. In the 19th century, an American

Indian named Sequoyah invented a syllabic writing system which was

used by the Cherokee Indians to produce written messages from the

spoken language. In this Cherokee example, and (ho), (as) (get),

these symbols do not correspond to single consonants or vowels, but to

syllables. The Egyptian form meaning ‘house’, was adopted, in a

slightly reoriented form, as . After being used logographically for the

word pronounced beth (house), it came to represent syllables beginning

with a /b/ sound. By about 1000 B.C, the Phoenicians had stopped using

logograms and had a fully developed syllabic writing system.

Alphabetic Writing

With alphabetic writing, there is a direct correspondence between

graphemes and phonemes, which makes it the most economic and

adaptable of all the writing system. Phoenicians, who irrigated the orally

alphabetic writing system, is the general source of most other alphabets

to be fund in the world. The early Greeks included symbols in which the

single symbol to single sound correspondence was fully realized. Modern

European alphabet can be traced from Egyptian to Phoenician then to

early Greek.

The Greek writing system was used in Eastern Europe with some

modification Where Slavic language was spoken. After Greeks it finally

reached to the Roman alphabet.

The actual from of a number of the letters in modern European

alphabets can be traced, as in the illustration, from their origin in

Egyptian

Egyptian

Written English

Alphabetic writing system were based on a correct correspondence

between single symbol and single sound type but there does seem to bane

a frequent mismatch between the forms of written and the sounds of

spoken English today. The answer to that question there must be

historical influences on the form of written English, may be the influence

of French and Latin in which written representation of words derived

from forms used in writing other languages. Recreation from sixteenth

century speeling reformers to bring their written forms more into line

with what were supposed, sometimes erroneously. Written provides

unreliable clues with reference to spoken English.

Graphological Contrast

Once a writing system devised it can be used to convey wide range

of archeological contrast. These are described from the range of

possibilities available in alphabetic systems.

Spellings

Correct selection and correct sequences of graphemes shows the identity

of words. This is the main component of any graphological description. It

is the study that includes not only learning of normal rules in order to

read and write but any dialect, stylistic or free variation. The example of

dialect variation can illustrate by American-British differences such as in

‘through and thru’. Stylistic variation is the way in which the author

adapts to suggest the pronunciation of non-standard speech. Free

variations include such alternatives as ‘uudgment/judgement’and in

‘organize/organise’.

Special Symbols

A large number of symbols are available to express meanings in an

economical way. Most of these are logograms, such as , .but some

logograms do not relate individual words such as it indicates the

place where paper many are cut; indicates the direction and dagger

showing that a person is dead. Special symbols also used to organize

written text or to draw the attention.

Abbreviations

Shortened form of words is major features of written language. Some

abbreviations are used commonly such as Ms, Mr., DR, Dept, Capt., Lt

or the use of acronyms such as cod, VIP, C/D and NATO. Some of

abbreviations are spoken as wares such as NATO (neit u) and FATA

(Fa:t:)

Graphic contrast

Italic, boldface, capitalization, color and other graphic variations are

major expressing semantic contrast. In conveying the part of message,

graphemes play important part such as in advertisement and invitations.

It should be noted that not all language has the same set of possibilities,

for example there is no use of italics or capitalization in Hebrew.

Capitalization

Use of capital letter in the beginning of the sentence marks both

grammatical and lexical units. A single graphic contrast is involved: big

us small. Such as in A Vs a. Rule of capitalization does not apply on

numbers either they appear in the start of the sentence or in the mind or

end of the sentence very remain same e.g. 33 is remain same , it would

not be written as 3 .

Punctuation

The punctuation of a language has two functions. First,

enable the stretches of written language in order to read in coherent way.

Secondly, its purpose is to give an indication of rhythm and color of

speech.

Features that separate

It is mainly used to separates the units of grammar such as sentences,

clauses, phrases, from each other these marks are organized in broadly

hierarchical manner. Some of them identify large units such as

paragraph; some of them identify small units such as words and word

parts. The main English conventional punctuations are as follows.

Space

It identifies paragraphs the first sentence begins a new line. It is also used

to mark a break in discourse.

Period (Full Stop)

Full stop identifies they end of a sentence. Sometimes used as a wider

space than is usual between words. Some times, it is used to mark

abbreviations. Indicates that the text is incomplete.

Semi- colon

It represents a pure of greater importance.

Colon

The colon marks a shill complete pause than that expressed by the

semicolon. It is an explanation of what precedes it- as in the present

sentence.

Comma

The comma represents the shortest pause. Comma has wide range of uses

such as marking a sequence of grammatical units and displays a great

deal of personal variation.

Parentheses

Parentheses ( ) and brackets [ ] used an alternate to commas. It is used in

the middle or end of the sentence.

Dash

It indicates an immediate stop or change of thought. In informal writing,

often replaces other punctuation marls.

Inverted commas

Inverted commas are used to enclose the exact woods of a speaker, or a

quotation, a caution or the special use of a word. The choice of ringlet

and double quotes is variable: the latter are more common in handwrite

and typed material.

Hyphen

A shorter line than the Dash – is used to minute the part of a compound

word and to rate the parts of the phrase e.g. in washing – machine. British

English during hyper in many context where American English would

omit them.

Features that convey Meanings

Some features are used to convey meanings, regardless in third

grammatical context in which they occur.

Question Marks

Question mark is usually express Question but sometimes found with

other functions such as marking silence or uncertainty.

Exclamation Marks

It is used to express sudden emotion or wish (e.g. Huma! was there).

Apostrophe

Apostrophe show the omission of a letter or letters and grammatical

contractions ( I’m, couldn’t ) found also in certain words (o’clock):

subjed to a great deal of usage variation (St. John’s) .

Bibliography

Yule, G, The History of language. Cambridge university press, U.K,

1996. Chapter. No 2

Crystal, D, Encyclopedia of Language.