1) Writing systems developed from early pictograms and ideograms into more advanced forms of logographic and syllabic writing. 2) One method for developing syllabic writing was through a process called "rebus writing" where symbols for sounds were used to represent words. 3) Many modern alphabets developed from early Semitic scripts where symbols represented consonant sounds and some vowels, moving towards true alphabetic writing with one symbol per phoneme. 4) The unusual spelling in modern English is largely due to fixing spelling based on historic forms from Latin and French, along with influence from early printers with non-English native languages.

1. Writing System
MANSUR SALEEM
MA ENGLISH LINGUISTICS & LITERATURE

2. Writing
 Symbolic representation of language through the use of graphic signs.
 System that is not simply acquired, but has to be learned through sustained
conscious effort.
 In term of human development, writing is relatively recent phenomenon.
 The earliest writing is know as cuneiform, marked on clay tables about 5000
years ago.

3. The development of writing
• When we consider the development of writing, we should bear in mind that a
very large number of languages found in the world today are only used in the
spoken form. They do not have a written form.
• Writing which is based on some type of alphabetic script can only be traced back
to inscription dated around 3.000 years ago.
• Cave drawings may serve to record some event, but they are not usually thought of
as any type of specifically linguistic message.

4. Pictograms and Ideograms (1)
 When some of the ‘pictures’ came to represent particular images in a consistent
way, we can begin to describe the product as a form of picture writing or
pictogram.
• Thus, a form such as used for the sun.
• An essential part of this use similar forms to convey roughly similar meaning.

5. Pictogram and Ideograms (2)
• In time, this picture might take on a more fixed symbolic form, such as , and
come to be used ‘heat’ and ‘daytime’, as well as for ‘sun’.
• This type of symbol is considered to be part of a system of idea-writing or
ideograms.
• The distinction between pictograms and ideograms is essentially a difference
in the relationship between symbol and the entity it represents.

6. Pictogram and Ideograms (3)
• The more ‘picture-like’ forms are pictograms, more abstract, derived forms are
ideograms.
• A key property of both pictograms and ideograms is that they do not represent
words or sounds in a particular language.

7. Pictogram and Ideograms (4)
• It is generally thought that there are pictographic or ideographic origins for a
large number of symbols which turn up in later writing systems.
• For example, in Egyptian hieroglyphics, the symbol is used to refer to a
house and derives from the diagrammatic representation of the floor-plan a
house.

8. Logograms
• In Egyptian writing, the ideogram for water was . Much later, the derived
symbol came to be used for the actual word meaning ‘water’.
• When symbols come to be used to represents words in language, they are
described as examples of word-writing or logograms.

9. Rebus Writing (1)
• One way of using existing symbols to represent the sounds of language is
via a process known as rebus writing.
• In this process, the symbol for one entity is taken over as the symbol for the
sound of the spoken word used to refer to that entity.
• We can create an example, working with the sound of the English word eye.

10. Rebus Writing (2)
 We can imagine how the pictogram could have developed into the logogram .
 This logogram is pronounced as eye, and with the rebus writing principle at work, we
should be able to refer to yourself as (“I”), to one of your friends as
(“crosseye”).
• Take another, non-English, example, in which the ideogram becomes the
logogram
 for the word pronounced ba (meaning ‘boat’)

11. Syllabic Writing (1)
 We can produce a symbol for the word baba (meaning ‘father’) which would be .
What this process accomplishes is a sizeable reduction in the number of symbols
needed in a writing system.
 The symbol which is used for the pronunciation of parts of a word represents a
combination of a consonant and a vowel (e.g. ba). This combination is one type of
syllable. When a writing system employs a set of symbols which represent the
pronunciations of syllables it is described as syllabic writing.

12. Syllabic Writing (2)
 The Egyptian form , meaning ‘house,’ was adopted, in a slightly reoriented
form, as . After being used logographically for the word pronounced beth (still
meaning ‘house’), it came to represent syllables beginning a b sound. Similarly, the
Egyptian form meaning ‘water,’ turns up as and is used for syllables beginning
with an m sound. So aword which might be pronounced muba could be written as,
and pronunciation bima

13. Alphabetic Writing (1)
• If we have a set of symbols being used to represent syllables beginning with, for
example, a b sound or a m sound, then we are actually very close to a situation in
which the symbols can be used to represent single sound types in a language. This
is, in effect, the basis of alphabetic writing.
• An alphabet is essentially a set of written symbols which each represent a
single type of sound.

14. Alphabetic Writing (2)
 This situation described above is generally
what seems to have occurred in the origins of
the writing systems of Semitic languages such
as Arabic and Hebrew. The alphabets of these
languages, even in their modern version,
largely consists of consonant symbols. This
early form of alphabetic script, originating in
the writing systems of the Phoenicians, is the
general source of most other alphabets to be
found in the world.
 A modified version can be traced to the East
into Indian writing systems and to the West
through Greek.

15. Written English (1)
 If indeed the origins of the alphabetic writing system were based on a
correspondence between single symbol and single sound type, then one
might reasonably ask why there is such a frequent mismatch between the
forms of written English and the sound of spoken English.
 The answer to that question must be sought in a number of historical
influences on the form of written English. The spelling of written English
was very largely fixed in the form that was used when printing was
introduced in fifteenth century England.

16. Written English (2)
 At that time, a number of conversations regarding the written representation of
words derived from forms used in writing other languages, notably Latin and
French. Moreover, many of the early printers were native Dutch speakers and
could not make consistently accurate decision about pronunciations.