Writing - Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Writing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing[25/02/2012 17:46:14]

WritingFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Write" redirects here. For other uses, see Write (disambiguation).

Writing is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs orsymbols (known as a writing system).[1] It is distinguished from illustration, such as cave drawing andpainting, and non-symbolic preservation of language via non-textual media, such as magnetic tapeaudio.

Writing most likely began as a consequence of political expansion in ancient cultures, which neededreliable means for transmitting information, maintaining financial accounts, keeping historical records,and similar activities. Around the 4th millennium BC, the complexity of trade and administration inMesopotamia outgrew human memory, and writing became a more dependable method of recordingand presenting transactions in a permanent form.[2] In both Ancient Egypt and Mesoamerica writingmay have evolved through calendrics and a political necessity for recording historical andenvironmental events. The oldest known use of writing in China was in divination in the royal court.

Contents [hide]

1 Writing as a category2 Means for recording information

2.1 Writing systems2.1.1 Logographies2.1.2 Syllabaries2.1.3 Alphabets

2.1.3.1 Abjads2.1.3.2 Abugidas

2.1.4 Featural scripts2.1.5 Historical significance of writing systems

2.2 Tools and materials3 History of writing

3.1 The beginning of writing3.2 Mesopotamia

3.2.1 Cretan and Greek scripts3.3 China3.4 Egypt3.5 Indus Valley3.6 Turkmenistan3.7 Phoenician writing system and descendants3.8 Mesoamerica

4 Creation of textual or written information4.1 Composition4.2 Creativity4.3 Author4.4 Writer4.5 Critiques

5 See also

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6 Notes7 References8 Further reading9 External links

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Writing, more particularly, refers to two things: writing as a noun, the thing that is written; and writingas a verb, which designates the activity of writing. It refers to the inscription of characters on amedium, thereby forming words, and larger units of language, known as texts. It also refers to thecreation of meaning and the information thereby generated. In that regard, linguistics (and relatedsciences) distinguishes between the written language and the spoken language. The significance ofthe medium by which meaning and information is conveyed is indicated by the distinction made inthe arts and sciences. For example, while public speaking and poetry reading are both types ofspeech, the former is governed by the rules of rhetoric and the latter by poetics.

A person who composes a message or story in the form of text is generally known as a writer or anauthor. However, more specific designations exist which are dictated by the particular nature of thetext such as that of poet, essayist, novelist, playwright, journalist, and more. A translator is aspecialized multilingual writer who must fully understand a message written by somebody else in onelanguage; the translator's job is to produce a document of faithfully equivalent message in acompletely different language. A person who transcribes or produces text to deliver a messageauthored by another person is known as a scribe, typist or typesetter. A person who produces textwith emphasis on the aesthetics of glyphs is known as a calligrapher or graphic designer.

Writing is also a distinctly human activity. Such writing has been speculatively designated ascoincidental. At this point in time, the only confirmed writing in existence is of human origin.

H.G. Wells argued that writing has the ability to "put agreements, laws, commandments on record. Itmade the growth of states larger than the old city states possible. It made a continuous historicalconsciousness possible. The command of the priest or king and his seal could go far beyond hissight and voice and could survive his death".[3]

The major writing systems methods of inscription broadly fall into four categories: logographic,syllabic, alphabetic, and featural. Another category, ideographic (symbols for ideas), has never beendeveloped sufficiently to represent language. A sixth category, pictographic, is insufficient to representlanguage on its own, but often forms the core of logographies.

A logogram is a written character which represents a word or morpheme. The vast number oflogograms needed to write a language, and the many years required to learn them, are the majordisadvantage of the logographic systems over alphabetic systems. However, the efficiency of readinglogographic writing once it is learned is a major advantage.[4] No writing system is whollylogographic: all have phonetic components as well as logograms ("logosyllabic" components in thecase of Chinese characters, cuneiform, and Mayan, where a glyph may stand for a morpheme, a

[edit]Writing as a category

[edit]Means for recording information

[edit]Writing systems

[edit]Logographies

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syllable, or both; "logoconsonantal" in the case of hieroglyphs), and many have an ideographiccomponent (Chinese "radicals", hieroglyphic "determiners"). For example, in Mayan, the glyph for"fin", pronounced "ka'", was also used to represent the syllable "ka" whenever the pronunciation of alogogram needed to be indicated, or when there was no logogram. In Chinese, about 90% ofcharacters are compounds of a semantic (meaning) element called a radical with an existingcharacter to indicate the pronunciation, called a phonetic. However, such phonetic elementscomplement the logographic elements, rather than vice versa.

The main logographic system in use today is Chinese characters, used with some modification forvarious languages of China, Japanese, and, to a lesser extent, Korean in South Korea. Another is theclassical Yi script.

A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent (or approximate) syllables. A glyph in asyllabary typically represents a consonant followed by a vowel, or just a vowel alone, though in somescripts more complex syllables (such as consonant-vowel-consonant, or consonant-consonant-vowel)may have dedicated glyphs. Phonetically related syllables are not so indicated in the script. Forinstance, the syllable "ka" may look nothing like the syllable "ki", nor will syllables with the samevowels be similar.

Syllabaries are best suited to languages with relatively simple syllable structure, such as Japanese.Other languages that use syllabic writing include the Linear B script for Mycenaean Greek; Cherokee;Ndjuka, an English-based creole language of Surinam; and the Vai script of Liberia. Mostlogographic systems have a strong syllabic component. Ethiopic, though technically an alphabet, hasfused consonants and vowels together to the point that it's learned as if it were a syllabary.

See also: History of the alphabet

An alphabet is a small set of symbols, each of which roughly represents or historically represented aphoneme of the language. In a perfectly phonological alphabet, the phonemes and letters wouldcorrespond perfectly in two directions: a writer could predict the spelling of a word given itspronunciation, and a speaker could predict the pronunciation of a word given its spelling.

As languages often evolve independently of their writing systems, and writing systems have beenborrowed for languages they were not designed for, the degree to which letters of an alphabetcorrespond to phonemes of a language varies greatly from one language to another and even withina single language.

In most of the writing systems of the Middle East, it is usually only the consonants of a word that arewritten, although vowels may be indicated by the addition of various diacritical marks. Writing systemsbased primarily on marking the consonant phonemes alone date back to the hieroglyphics of ancientEgypt. Such systems are called abjad's, derived from the Arabic word for "alphabet".

In most of the alphabets of India and Southeast Asia, vowels are indicated through diacritics ormodification of the shape of the consonant. These are called abugidas. Some abugidas, such asEthiopic and Cree, are learned by children as syllabaries, and so are often called "syllabics".However, unlike true syllabaries, there is not an independent glyph for each syllable.

Sometimes the term "alphabet" is restricted to systems with separate letters for consonants andvowels, such as the Latin alphabet, although abugidas and abjads may also be accepted asalphabets. Because of this use, Greek is often considered to be the first alphabet.

A featural script notates the building blocks of the phonemes that make up a language. For instance,all sounds pronounced with the lips ("labial" sounds) may have some element in common. In theLatin alphabet, this is accidentally the case with the letters "b" and "p"; however, labial "m" iscompletely dissimilar, and the similar-looking "q" and "d" are not labial. In Korean hangul, however,all four labial consonants are based on the same basic element. However, in practice, Korean is

[edit]Syllabaries

[edit]Alphabets

[edit]Abjads

[edit]Abugidas

[edit]Featural scripts

Trke

Ting Vit

VroWalonWinaray

emaitka



learned by children as an ordinary alphabet, and the featural elements tend to pass unnoticed.

Another featural script is SignWriting, the most popular writing system for many sign languages,where the shapes and movements of the hands and face are represented iconically. Featural scriptsare also common in fictional or invented systems, such as Tolkien's Tengwar.

Historians draw a distinction betweenprehistory and history, with history defined bythe advent of writing. The cave paintings andpetroglyphs of prehistoric peoples can beconsidered precursors of writing, but are notconsidered writing because they did notrepresent language directly.

Writing systems always develop and changebased on the needs of the people who usethem. Sometimes the shape, orientation andmeaning of individual signs also changesover time. By tracing the development of ascript it is possible to learn about the needsof the people who used the script as well ashow it changed over time.

See also: writing implements

The many tools and writing materials used throughout history include stone tablets, clay tablets, waxtablets, vellum, parchment, paper, copperplate, styluses, quills, ink brushes, pencils, pens, and manystyles of lithography. It is speculated that the Incas might have employed knotted threads known asquipu (or khipu) as a writing system.[5]

The typewriter and various forms of word processors have subsequently become widespread writingtools, and various studies have compared the ways in which writers have framed the experience ofwriting with such tools as compared with the pen or pencil. [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]

Main article: History of writing

By definition, the modern practice of history begins with written records; evidence of human culturewithout writing is the realm of prehistory.

The writing process first evolved from economic necessity in the ancient near east. Writing most likelybegan as a consequence of political expansion in ancient cultures, which needed reliable means fortransmitting information, maintaining financial accounts, keeping historical records, and similaractivities. Around the 4th millennium BC, the complexity of trade and administration outgrew thepower of memory, and writing became a more dependable method of recording and presentingtransactions in a permanent form.[2] The Dispilio Tablet, which was carbon dated to the 6thmillennium BC, may be evidence that writing was used even earlier than that.

Archaeologist Denise Schmandt-Besserat determined the link between previously uncategorized clay"tokens" and the first known writing, cuneiform.[11] The clay tokens were used to representcommodities, and perhaps even units of time spent in labor, and their number and type became morecomplex as civilization advanced. A degree of complexity was reached when over a hundred differentkinds of tokens had to be accounted for, and tokens were wrapped and fired in clay, with markings toindicate the kind of tokens inside. These markings soon replaced the tokens themselves, and theclay envelopes were demonstrably the prototype for clay writing tablets.[11] In both Mesoamerica andAncient Egypt writing may have evolved through calendrics and a political necessity for recordinghistorical and environmental events.

[edit]Historical significance of writing systems

Olin Levi Warner, tympanum representing Writing,above exterior of main entrance doors, Thomas JeffersonBuilding, Washington DC, 1896.

[edit]Tools and materials

[edit]History of writing

[edit]The beginning of writing



The original Mesopotamian writing system was derived from this method of keeping accounts, and bythe end of the 4th millennium BC,[12] this had evolved into using a triangular-shaped stylus pressedinto soft clay for recording numbers. This was gradually augmented with using a sharp stylus,indicating what was being counted by means of pictographs. Round-stylus and sharp-stylus writingwas gradually replaced by writing using a wedge-shaped stylus (hence the term cuneiform), at firstonly for logograms, but evolved to include phonetic elements by the 29th century BC. Around the26th century BC, cuneiform began to represent syllables of spoken Sumerian. Also in that period,cuneiform writing became a general purpose writing system for logograms, syllables, and numbers,and this script was adapted to another Mesopotamian language, Akkadian, and from there to otherssuch as Hurrian, and Hittite. Scripts similar in appearance to this writing system include those forUgaritic and Old Persian.

Main articles: Cretan hieroglyphs, Linear A, and Linear B

Cretan hieroglyphs are found on artifacts of Crete (early-to-mid-2nd millennium BC, MM I to MM III,overlapping with Linear A from MM IIA at the earliest). Linear B, the writing system of the MycenaeanGreeks,[13] has been deciphered while Linear A has yet to be deciphered. The sequence and thegeographical spread of the three overlapping, but distinct writing systems can be summarized asfollows:[13]

Writingsystem

Geographical area Time span[A 1]

CretanHieroglyphic

Crete ca. 1625 1500 BC

Linear AAegean islands (Kea, Kythera, Melos, Thera), and Greekmainland (Laconia)

ca. 18th century1450 BC

Linear BCrete (Knossos), and mainland (Pylos, Mycenae, Thebes,Tiryns)

ca. 1375 1200 BC

Further information: Oracle bone script and Bronzeware script

The earlest surviving examples of writing in China are inscriptions on so-called "oracle bones",tortoise plastrons and ox scapulae used for divination, dating from around 1200 BC in the late Shangdynasty. A small number of bronze inscriptions from the same period have also been found.[14]Historians have found that the type of media used had an effect on what the writing wasdocumenting and how it was used.

In 2003, archaeologists reported discoveries of isolated tortoise-shell carvings dating back to the 7thmillennium BC, but whether or not these symbols are related to the characters of the later oraclebone script is disputed.[15][16]

The earliest known hieroglyphic inscriptions are the Narmer Palette, dating to c.3200 BC, and severalrecent discoveries that may be slightly older, though the glyphs were based on a much older artistictradition. The hieroglyphic script was logographic with phonetic adjuncts that included an effectivealphabet.

Writing was very important in maintaining the Egyptian empire, and literacy was concentrated amongan educated elite of scribes. Only people from certain backgrounds were allowed to train to becomescribes, in the service of temple, pharaonic, and military authorities. The hieroglyph system wasalways difficult to learn, but in later centuries was purposely made even more so, as this preservedthe scribes' status.

The world's oldest known alphabet appears to have been developed by Canaanite turquoise miners[17]

[edit]Mesopotamia

[edit]Cretan and Greek scripts

[edit]China

[edit]Egypt



in the Sinai desert around the mid nineteenth century BC. Around 30 crude inscriptions havebeen found at a mountainous Egyptian mining site known as Serabit el-Khadem. This site was alsohome to a temple of Hathor, the "Mistress of turquoise". A later, two line inscription has also beenfound at Wadi el-Hol in Central Egypt. Based on hieroglyphic prototypes, but also including entirelynew symbols, each sign apparently stood for a consonant rather than a word: the basis of analphabetic system. It was not until the twelfth to the ninth centuries, however, that the alphabet tookhold and became widely used.

Main article: Indus script

Indus script refers to short strings of symbols associated with the Indus Valley Civilization (whichspanned modern-day Pakistan and North India) used between 26001900 BC. In spite of manyattempts at decipherments and claims, it is as yet undeciphered. The script generally refers to thatused in the mature Harappan phase, which perhaps evolved from a few signs found in early Harappaafter 3500 BC,[18] and was followed by the mature Harappan script. The script is written from right toleft,[19] and sometimes follows a boustrophedonic style. Since the number of principal signs is about400-600,[20] midway between typical logographic and syllabic scripts, many scholars accept thescript to be logo-syllabic[21] (typically syllabic scripts have about 50-100 signs whereas logographicscripts have a very large number of principal signs). Several scholars maintain that structural analysisindicates an agglutinative language underlies the script.

Archaeologists have recently discovered that there was a civilization in Central Asia using writing4,000 years ago. An excavation near Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan, revealed an inscriptionon a piece of stone that was used as a stamp seal.[22]

The Phoenician writing system was adapted from the Proto-Caananite script sometime before the14th century BC, which in turn borrowed principles of representing phonetic information from Egyptianhieroglyphics. This writing system was an odd sort of syllabary in which only consonants arerepresented. This script was adapted by the Greeks, who adapted certain consonantal signs torepresent their vowels. The Cumae alphabet, a variant of the early Greek alphabet, gave rise to theEtruscan alphabet, and its own descendants, such as the Latin alphabet and Runes. Otherdescendants from the Greek alphabet include Cyrillic, used to write Russian, among others. ThePhoenician system was also adapted into the Aramaic script, from which the Hebrew script and alsothat of Arabic are descended.

The Tifinagh script (Berber languages) is descended from the Libyco-Berber script which is assumedto be of Phoenician origin.

A stone slab with 3,000-year-old writing was discovered in the Mexican state of Veracruz and is anexample of the oldest script in the Western Hemisphere, preceding the oldest Zapotec writing byapproximately 500 years.[23][24][25] It is thought to be Olmec.

Of several pre-Columbian scripts in Mesoamerica, the one that appears to have been bestdeveloped, and the only one to be deciphered, is the Maya script. The earliest inscriptions which areidentifiably Maya date to the 3rd century BC. Maya writing used logograms complemented by a set ofsyllabic glyphs, somewhat similar in function to modern Japanese writing.

Further information: Literature

Main article: Composition (language)

[edit]Indus Valley

[edit]Turkmenistan

[edit]Phoenician writing system and descendants

[edit]Mesoamerica

[edit]Creation of textual or written information

[edit]Composition



Main articles: Creativity and Creative writing

Main article: Author

Main article: Writer

Main article: Peer critique

Asemic writingAuthorBoustrophedontextCalligraphyCollaborativewritingCommunicationCompositionstudiesCopyrightClauseCreative writingDeciphermentDyslexiaEssayFiction writingGrammarGraphonomics

InteractivefictionJournalismKishotenketsuLinguisticsList of writers'conferencesLiteracyLiteraryawardLiterarycriticismLiteraryfestivalLiteratureManuscriptMechanicalPencilOrthographyPencilPrinting

PublishingCreation of theSequoyahsyllabaryScriptoriumStory bibleSpeechcommunicationTeaching Writingin the UnitedStatesTypographyWhite papersWord processingWriterWriter's blockWriting bumpWriting circleWriting in spaceWriting slateWriting styleWriting systemsWriter's voice

1. ^ Beginning date refers to first attestations, the assumed origins of all scripts lie further back in the past.

1. ^ Peter T. Daniels, "The Study of Writing Systems", in The World's Writing Systems, ed. Bright andDaniels, p. 3

2. ^ a b Robinson, 2003, p. 363. ^ Wells, H.G. (1922). A Short History Of The World. p. 41.

St. Augustine writing, revising, and re-writing: Sandro Botticelli's St. Augustine inHis Cell

[edit]Creativity

[edit]Author

[edit]Writer

[edit]Critiques

[edit]See also

[edit]Notes

[edit]References



Wikiquote has a collection ofquotations related to: Writing

Wikimedia Commons has mediarelated to: People writing

Wikiversity has learning

4. ^ Smith, Frank. Writing and the writer. Routledge, 1994, pg. 142.5. ^ The Khipu Database Project, http://khipukamayuq.fas.harvard.edu/index.html6. ^ Chandler, Daniel (1990). "Do the write thing?". Electric Word 17: 2730.7. ^ Chandler, Daniel (1992). "The phenomenology of writing by hand". Intelligent Tutoring Media 3 (2/3):

6574. doi:10.1080/14626269209408310 .8. ^ Chandler, Daniel (1993). "Writing strategies and writers' tools". English Today: the International

Review of the English Language 9 (2): 328.9. ^ Chandler, Daniel (1994). "Who needs suspended inscription?". Computers and Composition 11 (3):

191201. doi:10.1016/8755-4615(94)90012-4 .10. ^ Chandler, Daniel (1995). The Act of Writing: A Media Theory Approach. Aberystwyth: Prifysgol Cymru.11. ^ a b Rudgley, Richard (2000). The Lost Civilizations of the Stone Age. New York: Simon & Schuster.

pp. 4857.12. ^ The Origin and Development of the Cuneiform System of Writing, Samuel Noah Kramer, Thirty Nine

Firsts In Recorded History pp 38138313. ^ a b Olivier 1986, pp. 377f.14. ^ Boltz, William (1999). "Language and Writing". In Loewe, Michael; Shaughnessy, Edward L.. The

Cambridge History of Ancient China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 74123. ISBN 978-0-521-47030-8.

15. ^ "Archaeologists Rewrite History" . China Daily. 12 June 2003. Retrieved 4 January 2012.16. ^ "'Earliest writing' found in China." . BBC News. 17 April 2003. Retrieved 4 January 2012. "Signs

carved into 8,600-year-old tortoise shells found in China may be the earliest written words, sayarchaeologists."

17. ^ Goldwasser, Orly. "How the Alphabet Was Born from Hieroglyphs", Biblical Archaeology Review,Mar/Apr 2010

18. ^ Whitehouse, David (1999) 'Earliest writing' found BBC19. ^ (Lal 1966)20. ^ (Wells 1999)21. ^ (Bryant 2000)22. ^ "Ancient writing found in Turkmenistan." . BBC. 2001-05-15. Retrieved 2008-03-30. "A previously

unknown civilisation was using writing in Central Asia 4,000 years ago, hundreds of years beforeChinese writing developed, archaeologists have discovered. An excavation near Ashgabat, the capital ofTurkmenistan, revealed an inscription on a piece of stone that seems to have been used as a stampseal."

23. ^ "Writing May Be Oldest in Western Hemisphere." . New York Times. 2006-09-15. Retrieved 2008-03-30. "A stone slab bearing 3,000-year-old writing previously unknown to scholars has been found inthe Mexican state of Veracruz, and archaeologists say it is an example of the oldest script everdiscovered in the Western Hemisphere."

24. ^ "'Oldest' New World writing found" . BBC. 2006-09-14. Retrieved 2008-03-30. "Ancient civilisationsin Mexico developed a writing system as early as 900 BC, new evidence suggests."

25. ^ "Oldest Writing in the New World" . Science. Retrieved 2008-03-30. "A block with a hithertounknown system of writing has been found in the Olmec heartland of Veracruz, Mexico. Stylistic andother dating of the block places it in the early first millennium before the common era, the oldest writingin the New World, with features that firmly assign this pivotal development to the Olmec civilization ofMesoamerica."

A History of Writing: From Hieroglyph to Multimedia,edited by Anne-Marie Christin, Flammarion (inFrench, hardcover: 408 pages, 2002, ISBN 2-08-010887-5)In the Beginning: A Short History of the HebrewLanguage. By Joel M. Hoffman, 2004. Chapter 3covers the invention of writing and its various stages.

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Origins of writing on AncientScripts.comMuseum of Writing : UK Museum of Writing withinformation on writing history and implementsOn ERIC Digests: Writing Instruction: Current Practices in the Classroom ; WritingDevelopment ; Writing Instruction: Changing Views over the YearsChildren of the Code: The Power of Writing Online VideoPowell, Barry B. 2009. Writing: Theory and History of the Technology of Civilization, Oxford:Blackwell. ISBN 978-14051-6256-2Rogers, Henry. 2005. Writing Systems: A Linguistic Approach. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-23463-2 (hardcover); ISBN 0-631-23464-0 (paperback)Ankerl, Guy (2000) [2000]. Global communication without universal civilization. INU societalresearch. Vol.1: Coexisting contemporary civilizations : Arabo-Muslim, Bharati,Chinese, and Western. Geneva: INU Press. pp. 5966, 235s. ISBN 2-88155-004-5.Robinson, Andrew "The Origins of Writing" in David Crowley and Paul Heyer (eds)Communication in History: Technology, Culture, Society (Allyn and Bacon, 2003).

Language, Writing and Alphabet: An Interview withChristophe Rico Damqatum 3 (2007)Why write? a history of writing and the alphabetfrom the British Library

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