Language and Writing

From Orality to Literacy

Language

•humans are distinguished as a species by their advanced capacity to use language

• language is the means for connecting the internal world of the organism to the external world of natural and social phenomena

• Language is the most important development in the history of humankind.

• Other animals have forms of communication. Higher order mammals even display signs of symbolic communication.

• No other species has the advanced capacity for language and the ability to utilize abstraction to convey internal consciousness, natural phenomena and time.

Languages are not static--they evolve over time

•Old English - Largely Germanic

•Middle English - Fusion with French

•Elizabethan English - Development of Print, Empire

•Modern English -Still evolving, but with a standardization of grammar and vocabulary

History of Writing

•Approximately 5000 years old

•Earliest example is Cuneiform

Cuneiform

•Created by the Sumerians in Mesopotamia

•Likely began as pictographs that became abstracted into symbols

•Drawn on Clay tablets with a stylus

•Used for keeping records

Egyptian Hieroglyphics

Indus Valley Seal

Ancient Chinese Script