LIN101H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Cherokee Syllabary, Oracle Bone Script, Rebus
Document Summary
Its easy to draw little pictures of common objects. The rebus principle: apply a pictogram to represent homonyms of the word as well. Inspired by shapes of latin alphabet, but not an alphabetic system! If disambiguation is needs, vowels can optionally be written with diacritics the first letters of the arabic script) In fact, all writing systems are mixed: japanese used chinese logograms, and two syllabaries, each of which represents consonant voicing featurally, hangeul has some irregularly formed letters, making it partially alphabetic rather than featural. Some textbooks imply an evolutionary progression from pictograms through logograms and syllabaries to abjads, abugidas and alphabets, from less to more efficient. That"s not how writing systems work (actually, its not how evolution words, either) Choice of writing system to some extent, phonological structure determines what writing is best. Cv or cvc syllable structure: number of possible syllables is small (e. g. , japanese: <100, syllabaries are very efficient representations.
