Chapter 10 Study Guide Flashcards
(36 cards)
Logographic Writing (word-writing)
The symbols stand for whole words or morphemes.
Syllabic Writing
Each symbol represents one syllable (show us how to pronounce the word). There will always be fewer symbols than with logographic writing. Japanese is primarily sybillic.
Alphabetic Writing
Each symbol represents one specific phoneme.
Diffusing (diffusion)
The process whereby a cultural item moves from one geographic area to another.
The Rebus Principle
The process by which symbols, which once stood for whole one-syllable words, become symbols for those syllables, not the words they once represented. Supplemented the logographic principal an allows full writing systems to develop. This didn’t replace all logograms, however, and happened in conjunction with syllable use. Freed from original meaning of word.
Logograms
Written symbols that represent a concept or word without indicating its pronunciation/doesn’t carry a specific phonetic value. 123 !@# are all examples of things that different languages recognize as the same concept mentally but a different word for.
When a logogram resembles the thing it represents, it is sometimes called a pictogram or pictograph..
True, although b/c this is an impractical reality for a total language, it is more accurate to name these languages as Logophonetic langs, which typically are called logo-syllabic because they combine logograms and syllabic representations.
Sumerian
The first writing system people (similar to marks found 9000 years ago).
Stimulus Diffusion
The process by which an idea, but not the actual cultural item, spreads from one geographical area to another and is then adapted to the needs and practices of the receiving culture. Not the actual form of the writing system.
Writing and speech patterns change at different rates.
True because if they changed at the same rate, old writings would soon become obsolete (300).
Ideally, an alphabetic writing system would include one symbol for each identifiable sound in a language.
False: one grapheme (alphabetic symbol) per phoneme is the most ideal, otherwise there would be a crapper ton of letters. (300)
Your book estimates that language preceded writing by at least one million years.
True (about two million)
Unlike language, which is acquired naturally, writing must be formally learned.
True
Logograms probably originated as icons of what they represented.
True?
The earliest known true writing was discovered in China.
False (Sumeria).
A logographic writing system would have a different symbol for each morpheme in the language.
True
Writing systems were functional in Egypt and Sumeria some 6000 years ago.
True
Your book estimates that Chinese college students know on the order of 5,000 logograms.
True
Picture writing represents events and objects directly rather than representing some element of language.
True
A recent edition of the great Chinese Dictionary has more than 50,000 logograms.
True (56k)
People from one part of China may not be able to converse with people from another part, but they generally understand the same writing.
True (this is an example of how logograms are outside of language, being conceptual)
Kanji and Romanji are the names of the two Japanese syllabaries.
False? Hiragana and Katakana? Hard to tell.
Japanese syllabaries developed from Chinese logograms.
True
Changing the current English writing to a syllabary would likely aid in the teach of reading and writing.
False? Not a primarily syllabic lang – contains logographs, syllabic, and alphabetic components.
