Writing Systems Research - recent issues

Writing Systems Research: A new journal for a developing field

Cook, V., Vaid, J., Bassetti, B. — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 PST

Evaluating merit--the evolution of writing reconsidered

Coulmas, F. — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 PST

This article examines the question whether the merits of a writing system have a bearing on its spreading. While it is well known that the diffusion of writing systems and scripts follows that of religions, empires and other non-linguistic factors, the adoption and reform of a writing system or orthography is invariably promoted on the grounds of systematic merits. Since writing is an artefact it stands to reason that some systems are superior to others. Yet, it is difficult to define an absolute standard of goodness against which different writing systems could be measured and compared. Instead this article raises the question why, if it is true that in the long run quality prevails, after 5000 years of writing a universal visual code for language has not won world-wide recognition. Discussing a variety of examples it offers six partial answers.

Statistical learning of conditional orthographic correspondences

Kessler, B. — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 PST

The English writing system deviates widely from the alphabetic ideal of uniform one-to-one correspondence between graphemes and phonemes, but its inconsistency is greatly reduced when conditional sound–spelling rules are applied. When reading or writing one part of a word, children and adults evinced knowledge of rules sensitive to the identity of other letters or phonemes, even those appearing much later in the word. Adults also showed sensitivity to the distinction between the basic and Romance subsystems of English (Albrow’s Systems 1 and 2). Children as young as 6 years applied conditional rules that they were not taught, indicating implicit statistical learning of patterns observed in text. But learning is imperfect, and even adults did not match the frequency with which the patterns are found in English words.

Sociolinguistic approaches to writing systems research

Sebba, M. — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 PST

Writing systems have attracted relatively little attention from sociolinguists, in spite of obvious connections with subjects of great sociolinguistic interest, such as ethnicity and identity. In fact, the literature contains a substantial amount of research on writing systems from a sociolinguistic perspective, but there is no recognised ‘sociolinguistics of writing systems’ within which different case studies can be researched and compared from a social and cultural point of view.

This article will discuss and review research in the sociolinguistics of both writing systems and orthographies, taking a perspective drawn from literacy studies which treats writing systems as social practice. The paper will focus on stages of writing system development where social and cultural considerations typically play a role: the initial choice of script, the period when the orthography and/or script is developed, and once it is an established system in regular use. There is also a discussion of how social and cultural factors are involved in, and often stand in the way of, writing system reform.

A theory of reading/writing: from literacy to literature

Olson, D. R. — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 PST

This article traces some aspects of the history of Western literacy in terms of the invention of three discrete forms or genres of writing and reading, namely: logical prose, empirical description, and subjective narrative fiction. It then attempts to explain these developments in terms of the special properties of language brought into consciousness when, through writing, expressions become permanent objects fixed in time and space and distanced conceptually from their speakers’/authors’ intentions.