Pub Date : 2015-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2014.896771
Martha Bigelow, K. King
This article examines some of the ways in which the politics of a written script are enacted among Somali refugees and immigrants in present-day schools and classrooms. Analysis focuses on data gathered with Somali youths in one all-immigrant high school classroom in the US. Data are examined to illustrate how global processes, some of which have developed across timescales of multiple decades, including the decision about a Somali script, the Somali civil war(s) and the rise of Somali Diaspora, play out in everyday classroom interactions. Here we extend the academic conversation about the cognitive and educational benefit of home language literacy and schooling when learning a new language by exploring the dynamic relationship between the symbolic power of Somali print literacy on the one hand, and current classroom practices and informal policies on the other. These findings illustrate how the history of the Somali script, differential access to formal schooling along gender lines and the benefit of having print literacy in Somali play out in everyday interactions at school. We document ways in which Somali print literacy is integral to how Somali adolescents see themselves and others as learners and individuals.
{"title":"Somali immigrant youths and the power of print literacy","authors":"Martha Bigelow, K. King","doi":"10.1080/17586801.2014.896771","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2014.896771","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines some of the ways in which the politics of a written script are enacted among Somali refugees and immigrants in present-day schools and classrooms. Analysis focuses on data gathered with Somali youths in one all-immigrant high school classroom in the US. Data are examined to illustrate how global processes, some of which have developed across timescales of multiple decades, including the decision about a Somali script, the Somali civil war(s) and the rise of Somali Diaspora, play out in everyday classroom interactions. Here we extend the academic conversation about the cognitive and educational benefit of home language literacy and schooling when learning a new language by exploring the dynamic relationship between the symbolic power of Somali print literacy on the one hand, and current classroom practices and informal policies on the other. These findings illustrate how the history of the Somali script, differential access to formal schooling along gender lines and the benefit of having print literacy in Somali play out in everyday interactions at school. We document ways in which Somali print literacy is integral to how Somali adolescents see themselves and others as learners and individuals.","PeriodicalId":39225,"journal":{"name":"Writing Systems Research","volume":"7 1","pages":"19 - 4"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17586801.2014.896771","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60437503","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2014.912578
Des Ryan
Writing systems research has concerned itself mainly with the relationships between spelling and sound rather than with the graphic nature of written symbols. It is argued here that graphic forms can add significantly to the overall meaning of a written text. Based on evidence taken from, inter alia, Google Doodles celebrating New Year's Day between 2000 and 2011, writing's formal dimensions of signification are considered to be shape, size, position and colour. Single letter forms (glyphs) can double up as pictures or be interpreted in multiple ways, hence multidimensional writing. For example, the 2011 Doodle replaces with the year , yet the shape and position of the customised glyphs helps us to reconstruct the ‘underlying’ logo. These innovations suggest that a broader view of the nature of writing is called for.
{"title":"Google doodles: Evidence of how graphemes' colour, shape, size and position can interact to make writing multidimensional","authors":"Des Ryan","doi":"10.1080/17586801.2014.912578","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2014.912578","url":null,"abstract":"Writing systems research has concerned itself mainly with the relationships between spelling and sound rather than with the graphic nature of written symbols. It is argued here that graphic forms can add significantly to the overall meaning of a written text. Based on evidence taken from, inter alia, Google Doodles celebrating New Year's Day between 2000 and 2011, writing's formal dimensions of signification are considered to be shape, size, position and colour. Single letter forms (glyphs) can double up as pictures or be interpreted in multiple ways, hence multidimensional writing. For example, the 2011 Doodle replaces with the year , yet the shape and position of the customised glyphs helps us to reconstruct the ‘underlying’ logo. These innovations suggest that a broader view of the nature of writing is called for.","PeriodicalId":39225,"journal":{"name":"Writing Systems Research","volume":"7 1","pages":"79 - 96"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17586801.2014.912578","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60437866","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2013.868334
Duaa Abu Elhija
This paper is set within the context of Electronic Amiyyas (EA) written dialects in Facebook used by youth in the Arab World. In recent years, electronic writings have begun to replace print writing in many circumstances. Similar to the printing press, this new technology has also influenced the written colloquial forms of languages, since youngsters all over the world are formulating and devising new conventions for writing their indigenous spoken languages electronically. This linguistic development is now occurring in many languages in the world, and Arabic is just one example. Chinese youngsters, for example, are also deviating from the standard Chinese writing system by mixing spoken and written language features in order to facilitate the written use of oral dialects on the Internet. In Japan, young Japanese employ colloquial language online, for example, by using eccentric spelling which reproduces actual articulation in the typed message. This pattern of electronic writings is particularly salient in diglossic languages, such as Arabic, Persian and several languages of the Indian subcontinent such as Tamil, Sinhala, Telugu and Bengali. In such cases, the invention of a new writing system for the spoken language might endanger the formal written language. In this research, I describe the development of new systems for writing colloquial Arabic dialects. I am studying the consonantal system of Electronic Amiyya in several countries in the Arab World. This is the first empirical study of this kind. The purpose of the study is to examine the differences in this system amongst the different users in different countries and to investigate any occurring standardisations.
{"title":"A new writing system? Developing orthographies for writing Arabic dialects in electronic media","authors":"Duaa Abu Elhija","doi":"10.1080/17586801.2013.868334","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2013.868334","url":null,"abstract":"This paper is set within the context of Electronic Amiyyas (EA) written dialects in Facebook used by youth in the Arab World. In recent years, electronic writings have begun to replace print writing in many circumstances. Similar to the printing press, this new technology has also influenced the written colloquial forms of languages, since youngsters all over the world are formulating and devising new conventions for writing their indigenous spoken languages electronically. This linguistic development is now occurring in many languages in the world, and Arabic is just one example. Chinese youngsters, for example, are also deviating from the standard Chinese writing system by mixing spoken and written language features in order to facilitate the written use of oral dialects on the Internet. In Japan, young Japanese employ colloquial language online, for example, by using eccentric spelling which reproduces actual articulation in the typed message. This pattern of electronic writings is particularly salient in diglossic languages, such as Arabic, Persian and several languages of the Indian subcontinent such as Tamil, Sinhala, Telugu and Bengali. In such cases, the invention of a new writing system for the spoken language might endanger the formal written language. In this research, I describe the development of new systems for writing colloquial Arabic dialects. I am studying the consonantal system of Electronic Amiyya in several countries in the Arab World. This is the first empirical study of this kind. The purpose of the study is to examine the differences in this system amongst the different users in different countries and to investigate any occurring standardisations.","PeriodicalId":39225,"journal":{"name":"Writing Systems Research","volume":"6 1","pages":"190 - 214"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17586801.2013.868334","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60436927","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2013.869190
N. Doerr, Y. Kumagai
In foreign language (FL) classrooms, students are rarely alerted to the politics behind a particular use of words. The recent introduction of critical literacy in some FL classrooms has pushed students to understand the ways texts influence how we perceive and act in society. Nonetheless, some of the basic linguistic notions have yet to be challenged in FL classrooms, preventing critical literacy from achieving its full potential. We examined Kumagai's critical literacy project in an intermediate Japanese-as-a-foreign-language classroom at a college in the north-eastern US. The project encouraged students to question the textbook's prescriptive explanation regarding the use of katakana (a Japanese syllabary system that the textbook explains to be for foreign loanwords). Analysis of classroom interactions and students' reflection papers revealed that the notion of foreign loanword stifled the students' critical thinking. We argue that it is because the notion supports an absolute and static foreign/Japanese distinction, the idea of language as a homogeneous and bounded unit, and marking of only certain ‘foreignness’. We call for FL education to include critiques of taken-for-granted linguistic notions in order to make students become aware of the role that language plays in maintaining or transforming social orders.
{"title":"Power of language ideologies: Challenging the notion of foreign loanwords in Japanese-as-a-foreign-language classroom","authors":"N. Doerr, Y. Kumagai","doi":"10.1080/17586801.2013.869190","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2013.869190","url":null,"abstract":"In foreign language (FL) classrooms, students are rarely alerted to the politics behind a particular use of words. The recent introduction of critical literacy in some FL classrooms has pushed students to understand the ways texts influence how we perceive and act in society. Nonetheless, some of the basic linguistic notions have yet to be challenged in FL classrooms, preventing critical literacy from achieving its full potential. We examined Kumagai's critical literacy project in an intermediate Japanese-as-a-foreign-language classroom at a college in the north-eastern US. The project encouraged students to question the textbook's prescriptive explanation regarding the use of katakana (a Japanese syllabary system that the textbook explains to be for foreign loanwords). Analysis of classroom interactions and students' reflection papers revealed that the notion of foreign loanword stifled the students' critical thinking. We argue that it is because the notion supports an absolute and static foreign/Japanese distinction, the idea of language as a homogeneous and bounded unit, and marking of only certain ‘foreignness’. We call for FL education to include critiques of taken-for-granted linguistic notions in order to make students become aware of the role that language plays in maintaining or transforming social orders.","PeriodicalId":39225,"journal":{"name":"Writing Systems Research","volume":"6 1","pages":"148 - 166"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17586801.2013.869190","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60437155","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2013.873707
X. Tong, Jianhong Mo, H. Shu, Yuping Zhang, Shingfong Chan, C. McBride-Chang
In the present study, we compared models of overall writing quality, in addition to differences in grammatical usage in this writing, between children from Beijing and Hong Kong societies. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) resulted in a five-element scoring system used to tap overall writing quality in the Beijing sample. In addition, Beijing and Hong Kong children showed certain differences in mechanical errors in their writings. For example, Beijing children exhibited fewer errors in word order and misnomers than did Hong Kong children, but Hong Kong children performed better in punctuation usage than Beijing children. Overall, the present study highlighted some patterns in overall writing quality and also common mechanical errors in Chinese writing among Chinese children.
{"title":"Understanding Chinese children's complex writing: Global ratings and lower-level mechanical errors","authors":"X. Tong, Jianhong Mo, H. Shu, Yuping Zhang, Shingfong Chan, C. McBride-Chang","doi":"10.1080/17586801.2013.873707","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2013.873707","url":null,"abstract":"In the present study, we compared models of overall writing quality, in addition to differences in grammatical usage in this writing, between children from Beijing and Hong Kong societies. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) resulted in a five-element scoring system used to tap overall writing quality in the Beijing sample. In addition, Beijing and Hong Kong children showed certain differences in mechanical errors in their writings. For example, Beijing children exhibited fewer errors in word order and misnomers than did Hong Kong children, but Hong Kong children performed better in punctuation usage than Beijing children. Overall, the present study highlighted some patterns in overall writing quality and also common mechanical errors in Chinese writing among Chinese children.","PeriodicalId":39225,"journal":{"name":"Writing Systems Research","volume":"6 1","pages":"215 - 229"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17586801.2013.873707","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60437223","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2013.838536
Robert Woore
Research into second language (L2) print-to-sound decoding has consistently underlined the importance of L1-to-L2 transfer. Facilitation has been reported where the L1 and L2 writing systems are typologically similar (e.g., English and French) rather than distant (e.g., English and Chinese). However, other studies have found that young beginner learners of French, whose L1 is English, have poor L2 decoding proficiency and make little progress in this area, despite the similarities between these writing systems. To explore this apparent contradiction, 76 young L1 English speakers learning French as their L2 completed a French decoding test at two time points: at the end of their first and third trimesters of learning French in secondary school. Rather than simply being judged correct or incorrect, as in previous studies, their oral productions were transcribed and analysed at the level of individual grapheme-phoneme correspondences. Participants were found to make very little progress in L2 decoding, as measured by the number of grapheme tokens realised acceptably. Detailed analysis of their realisations of two vowel graphemes further showed that their decoding was often consistent with L1 symbol-sound mappings; and that it appeared to involve orthographic units larger than the individual grapheme, as is required in order to decode some graphemes accurately in English. However, not all attested realisations were explainable on the basis of English symbol-sound mappings, perhaps because the L2 vowels sometimes occurred in unfamiliar spelling bodies which did not readily trigger L1 symbol-sound associations. Viewed from a cognitive processing perspective, these findings suggest that the similarities between the English and French writing systems—whilst being facilitative in some respects—may also pose particular difficulties for the L2 learner.
{"title":"Beginner learners' progress in decoding L2 French: Transfer effects in typologically similar L1-L2 writing systems","authors":"Robert Woore","doi":"10.1080/17586801.2013.838536","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2013.838536","url":null,"abstract":"Research into second language (L2) print-to-sound decoding has consistently underlined the importance of L1-to-L2 transfer. Facilitation has been reported where the L1 and L2 writing systems are typologically similar (e.g., English and French) rather than distant (e.g., English and Chinese). However, other studies have found that young beginner learners of French, whose L1 is English, have poor L2 decoding proficiency and make little progress in this area, despite the similarities between these writing systems. To explore this apparent contradiction, 76 young L1 English speakers learning French as their L2 completed a French decoding test at two time points: at the end of their first and third trimesters of learning French in secondary school. Rather than simply being judged correct or incorrect, as in previous studies, their oral productions were transcribed and analysed at the level of individual grapheme-phoneme correspondences. Participants were found to make very little progress in L2 decoding, as measured by the number of grapheme tokens realised acceptably. Detailed analysis of their realisations of two vowel graphemes further showed that their decoding was often consistent with L1 symbol-sound mappings; and that it appeared to involve orthographic units larger than the individual grapheme, as is required in order to decode some graphemes accurately in English. However, not all attested realisations were explainable on the basis of English symbol-sound mappings, perhaps because the L2 vowels sometimes occurred in unfamiliar spelling bodies which did not readily trigger L1 symbol-sound associations. Viewed from a cognitive processing perspective, these findings suggest that the similarities between the English and French writing systems—whilst being facilitative in some respects—may also pose particular difficulties for the L2 learner.","PeriodicalId":39225,"journal":{"name":"Writing Systems Research","volume":"238 1","pages":"167 - 189"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17586801.2013.838536","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60436319","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2014.893862
Georgia Z. Niolaki, Aris Terzopoulos, J. Masterson
The current study aimed to investigate in a group of nine Greek children with dyslexia (mean age 9.9 years) whether the surface and phonological dyslexia subtypes could be identified. A simple regression was conducted using printed word naming latencies and nonword reading accuracy for 33 typically developing readers. Ninety per cent confidence intervals were established and dyslexic children with datapoints lying outside the confidence intervals were identified. Using this regression-based method three children with the characteristic of phonological dyslexia (poor nonword reading), two with surface dyslexia (slow word naming latencies) and four with a mixed profile (poor nonword reading accuracy and slow word naming latencies) were identified. The children were also assessed in spelling to dictation, phonological ability, rapid naming, visual memory and multi-character processing (letter report). Results revealed that the phonological dyslexia subtype children had difficulties in tasks of phonological ability, and the surface subtype children had difficulties in tasks of multi-character simultaneous processing ability. Dyslexic children with a mixed profile showed deficits in both phonological abilities and multi-character processing. In addition, one child with a mixed profile showed a rapid naming deficit and another showed a difficulty in visual memory for abstract designs. Overall the results confirm that the surface and phonological subtypes of developmental dyslexia can be found in Greek-speaking children. They also indicate that different subtypes are associated with different underlying disorders.
{"title":"Varieties of developmental dyslexia in Greek children","authors":"Georgia Z. Niolaki, Aris Terzopoulos, J. Masterson","doi":"10.1080/17586801.2014.893862","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2014.893862","url":null,"abstract":"The current study aimed to investigate in a group of nine Greek children with dyslexia (mean age 9.9 years) whether the surface and phonological dyslexia subtypes could be identified. A simple regression was conducted using printed word naming latencies and nonword reading accuracy for 33 typically developing readers. Ninety per cent confidence intervals were established and dyslexic children with datapoints lying outside the confidence intervals were identified. Using this regression-based method three children with the characteristic of phonological dyslexia (poor nonword reading), two with surface dyslexia (slow word naming latencies) and four with a mixed profile (poor nonword reading accuracy and slow word naming latencies) were identified. The children were also assessed in spelling to dictation, phonological ability, rapid naming, visual memory and multi-character processing (letter report). Results revealed that the phonological dyslexia subtype children had difficulties in tasks of phonological ability, and the surface subtype children had difficulties in tasks of multi-character simultaneous processing ability. Dyslexic children with a mixed profile showed deficits in both phonological abilities and multi-character processing. In addition, one child with a mixed profile showed a rapid naming deficit and another showed a difficulty in visual memory for abstract designs. Overall the results confirm that the surface and phonological subtypes of developmental dyslexia can be found in Greek-speaking children. They also indicate that different subtypes are associated with different underlying disorders.","PeriodicalId":39225,"journal":{"name":"Writing Systems Research","volume":"6 1","pages":"230 - 256"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17586801.2014.893862","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60437854","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2013.855620
P. Nakamura, K. Koda, R. Joshi
This study investigated the contribution of decoding and language comprehension sub-skills to Kannada and English biliteracy development over three years in multilingual students in urban low-income communities in one large city in India. Syllabic awareness, phonemic awareness and decoding skills were measured in Grades 3–5 (Time 1), and participants were followed to Grades 6–8 (Time 2), when their oral language comprehension and reading comprehension skills were tested. Hierarchical regression results revealed that: (1) both syllabic and phonemic awareness predicted Kannada decoding scores; however, only phonemic awareness predicted English decoding scores; (2) decoding ability from Time 1 and language comprehension skills from Time 2 made unique contributions to reading comprehension skills at Time 2 in both languages; (3) there were significant cross-linguistic relationships between corresponding reading sub-skills at both times; and (4) there was an independent contribution of Kannada decoding to English decoding at Time 1; however, the contribution of Kannada reading comprehension to English reading comprehension at Time 2 was not direct. The theoretical and pedagogical implications of these findings for alphasyllabic-alphabetic biliteracy development are discussed.
{"title":"Biliteracy acquisition in Kannada and English: A developmental study","authors":"P. Nakamura, K. Koda, R. Joshi","doi":"10.1080/17586801.2013.855620","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2013.855620","url":null,"abstract":"This study investigated the contribution of decoding and language comprehension sub-skills to Kannada and English biliteracy development over three years in multilingual students in urban low-income communities in one large city in India. Syllabic awareness, phonemic awareness and decoding skills were measured in Grades 3–5 (Time 1), and participants were followed to Grades 6–8 (Time 2), when their oral language comprehension and reading comprehension skills were tested. Hierarchical regression results revealed that: (1) both syllabic and phonemic awareness predicted Kannada decoding scores; however, only phonemic awareness predicted English decoding scores; (2) decoding ability from Time 1 and language comprehension skills from Time 2 made unique contributions to reading comprehension skills at Time 2 in both languages; (3) there were significant cross-linguistic relationships between corresponding reading sub-skills at both times; and (4) there was an independent contribution of Kannada decoding to English decoding at Time 1; however, the contribution of Kannada reading comprehension to English reading comprehension at Time 2 was not direct. The theoretical and pedagogical implications of these findings for alphasyllabic-alphabetic biliteracy development are discussed.","PeriodicalId":39225,"journal":{"name":"Writing Systems Research","volume":"6 1","pages":"132 - 147"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17586801.2013.855620","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60436589","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2013.857288
Christopher R. Miller
Several scripts in northern and southern India, Indonesia and the Philippines developed from informal varieties of Devanagari restricted to intimate, shorthand-like uses by members of mercantile occupations. The mercantile varieties took a characteristic quasi-abjad form with postconsonantal vowels unspelt. This paper follows the development of these scripts, demonstrating how they gave rise to the new scripts in South India, Indonesia and the Philippines. The basic relationships between these scripts are demonstrated with cursory descriptions of their structural correspondences, followed by a discussion for each of the ways the orthographic system changed back to a more classic abugida as a result of borrowing from prestige contact scripts or innovations in the use of existing resources. In addition to these more typical phenomena, we describe some quirky spelling conventions in Sumatran, Sulawesi and Philippine scripts, tracing them to practices used to teach combinations of vowel and coda signs on consonant letters.
{"title":"Devanagari's descendants in North and South India, Indonesia and the Philippines","authors":"Christopher R. Miller","doi":"10.1080/17586801.2013.857288","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2013.857288","url":null,"abstract":"Several scripts in northern and southern India, Indonesia and the Philippines developed from informal varieties of Devanagari restricted to intimate, shorthand-like uses by members of mercantile occupations. The mercantile varieties took a characteristic quasi-abjad form with postconsonantal vowels unspelt. This paper follows the development of these scripts, demonstrating how they gave rise to the new scripts in South India, Indonesia and the Philippines. The basic relationships between these scripts are demonstrated with cursory descriptions of their structural correspondences, followed by a discussion for each of the ways the orthographic system changed back to a more classic abugida as a result of borrowing from prestige contact scripts or innovations in the use of existing resources. In addition to these more typical phenomena, we describe some quirky spelling conventions in Sumatran, Sulawesi and Philippine scripts, tracing them to practices used to teach combinations of vowel and coda signs on consonant letters.","PeriodicalId":39225,"journal":{"name":"Writing Systems Research","volume":"6 1","pages":"10 - 24"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17586801.2013.857288","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60437187","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2014-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2013.855618
Anurag Rimzhim, L. Katz, C. Fowler
We claim that the orthographies of South and Southeast Asia, which are derived from the Brāhmī writing system, are best described by the typological term “āksharik” (/ɑ:kʃərik/), and that they are functionally predominantly alphabetic. We derive these descriptions from the encoding units that went into the design of the orthographies and the decoding units that are likely to be relevant for reading text in them. More commonly used terms, such as “alphasyllabary” or “abugida”, used to describe these orthographies, are not appropriate. Our focus is on Hindī, an Indo-Āryan language and its orthography, Devnāgrī. Our arguments are based on structural-descriptive, historical-linguistic and theoretical accounts as well as some psycholinguistic evidence. We also support claims that the universal and language-specific features of any writing system should be studied in the context of its associated spoken language or languages.
{"title":"Brāhmī-derived orthographies are typologically Āksharik but functionally predominantly alphabetic","authors":"Anurag Rimzhim, L. Katz, C. Fowler","doi":"10.1080/17586801.2013.855618","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2013.855618","url":null,"abstract":"We claim that the orthographies of South and Southeast Asia, which are derived from the Brāhmī writing system, are best described by the typological term “āksharik” (/ɑ:kʃərik/), and that they are functionally predominantly alphabetic. We derive these descriptions from the encoding units that went into the design of the orthographies and the decoding units that are likely to be relevant for reading text in them. More commonly used terms, such as “alphasyllabary” or “abugida”, used to describe these orthographies, are not appropriate. Our focus is on Hindī, an Indo-Āryan language and its orthography, Devnāgrī. Our arguments are based on structural-descriptive, historical-linguistic and theoretical accounts as well as some psycholinguistic evidence. We also support claims that the universal and language-specific features of any writing system should be studied in the context of its associated spoken language or languages.","PeriodicalId":39225,"journal":{"name":"Writing Systems Research","volume":"6 1","pages":"41 - 53"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17586801.2013.855618","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60436577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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