Writing System

The oldest known Arabic scripts consist of a single layer of ambivalent or multivalent letters. Like the vowel signs, the additional script layer to disambiguate letters emerged gradually and with regional variations. Understanding how Arabic sc ript emerged and evolved provides clues both to encoding and to rendering issues of Arabic and related scripts. Here is an underestimated and very powerful aspect of Arabic script: it makes it fundamentally rchigraphemic in structure.

RESUMO
Este artigo apresenta os resultados de um projeto de pesquisa que objetivou criar um sistema de escrita para línguas de sinais, que pudesse ser grafado de formar manuscrita e digital e que pudesse ser adquirido por seres humanos com relativa facilidade. Concentramos esforços na investigação da natureza articulatória do sinal da Língua Brasileira de Sinais (Libras) a fim de poder produzir um sistema de representação escrita dessa língua que pudesse se submeter à automatização do processamento. Nossa investigação nos levou à identificação da estrutura articulatória dos sinais da Libras, constituída em quatro níveis hierárquicos. Com base nessa estrutura, elaboramos o sistema de escrita para línguas de sinais SEL, que, além desse critério, fundamenta-se nos aspectos arbitrariedade e linearidade. Como resultado, obtivemos um sistema capaz de representar a Libras na modalidade escrita, de forma linear, abarcando sua tridimensionalidade com alto grau de precisão e atendendo à condição de automatização do processamento na leitura e na escrita.

ABSTRACT
This article presents the results of a research project which aimed to create a writing system for sign languages that could be written in handwritten and typed form as well as it could be learnt easily. We concentrated efforts in the investigation of the articulatory nature of the sign of Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) in order to be able to create its system of written representation that could undergo automation of processing. Our investigation led us to identify the articulatory structure of Libras signs which is constituted of four hierarchical levels. Based on this structure, we elaborated the writing system for sign languages, which is as well based on arbitrariness and linearity aspects. As a result, we obtained a system capable of representing Libras in the written mode, in a linear way, encompassing its threedimensionality with a high degree of precision and attending to the condition of automation of the processing in reading and writing.

Most scholars in Japanese studies (history, linguistics, literature) tend to accept in one form or another the ancient legend that the phonetic writing system of ancient Japan, known as man'yōgana, came from Paekche. This legend about the ancient Korean kingdom—Paekche—appears in the Kojiki and Nihon shoki, Japan's two oldest chronicles. To date there have been few attempts to use concrete data from the peninsula either to prove or reject this legend. This article supplies information from all epigraphic data on the Korean peninsula to show that Paekche spread the use of Chinese (sinographs) to be used phonogrammatically and that Koguryo educated the rest of the peninsula in the use of this script.

The significance of the morphographic principle – by which the orthographic units of a writing system primarily represent morphemes – has been seriously undervalued within the study and classification of writing systems in general and in comprehending kanji within the Japanese writing system in particular. This paper argues for a re-evaluation of the importance of the morphographic principle and suggests that the shift in focus that comes with fully acknowledging that the term morphographic ismore precisethan the widely (mis)used term logographic has profound consequences for how we think about writing systems and writing, as well as for the kinds of questions that we ask about the nature and organization of the mental lexicon in literate language users. Keywords: morphographic principle; logographic; writing system classification; Japanese writing system; kanji; psycholinguistics; mental lexicon

Previous studies have shown that phoneme awareness, letter-sound knowledge, rapid automatized naming (RAN), and verbal memory span are reliable correlates of learning to read in English. However, the extent to which these different predictors have the same relative importance in different languages remains uncertain. In this article, we present the results from a 10-month longitudinal study that began just before or soon after the start of formal literacy instruction in four languages (English, Spanish, Slovak, and Czech). Longitudinal path analyses showed that phoneme awareness, letter-sound knowledge, and RAN (but not verbal memory span) measured at the onset of literacy instruction were reliable predictors, with similar relative importance, of later reading and spelling skills across the four languages. These data support the suggestion that in all alphabetic orthographies, phoneme awareness, letter-sound knowledge, and RAN may tap cognitive processes that are important for learn...

En dehors de l'ecriture de la civilisation de l'indus qui reste indechiffree, les plus anciennes ecritures attestees (IIIe siecle avant notre ere) dans le sous-continent indien sont la kharoshthi et la brâhmi, qui peuvent etre qualifiees de semi-syllabiques. Toutes deux reposent sur une analyse poussee de la phonetique que rendait possible l'exceptionnelle qualite des grammaires indiennes des le IVe siecle avant notre ere. De la brâhmi derivent les ecritures anciennes et modernes de type indien.

Das Linienschema der glagolitischen Auszeichnungsmajuskeln

Bei der morphologischen Untersuchung der Auszeichnungsmajuskeln in den Über­schriften des Glagolita Clozianus lässt sich ein System von fünf Linien und vier Feldern ermitteln. Die Proportion der beiden äußeren (schmäleren) und inneren (breiteren) Fel­der beträgt 2:5:5:2. Diese Art der Zeilenaufteilung verbindet die Auszeichnungsmajus­keln mit dem ältesten Typus der Glagolica, dessen Grundstruktur offensichtlich das Dreieck bildete.

Sažetak
Na temelju grafičkoga kompjutorskog proučavanja naslovnog tipa glagoljskih slova u Kločevu glagoljašu ustanovljen je peterolinijski grafički sustav. Proporcije širih unutarnjih i užih vanjskih polja stoje u odnosu 2:5:5:2. Ovaj linijski sustav povezuje majuskulu naslova s najstarijim trokutastim tipom glagoljice.

RESUME: L’originalite de la linguistique et de la semiotique developpees par Roger Bacon est maintenant bien connue; en revanche, sa reflexion sur l’ecriture en general, les systemes d’ecriture en particulier, n’a guere ete etudiee. L’examen des remarques de Bacon concernant l’ecriture permet de comprendre comment il nourrit ses theories semiotiques et linguistiques d’exemples concrets, issus de l’analyse des divers systemes d’ecriture qu’il etudie (alphabets occidentaux, ecritures semitiques, ecritures extreme-orientales). Leur etude permet egalement d’aborder de maniere privilegiee un domaine ou le doctor mirabilis tente la synthese entre ses hypotheses linguistiques et sa conception esoterique du savoir.

We find an undiscovered effect of geography on the choices of writing system in ancient civilizations that in turn drive their courses of historical evolution. The history of the ancient civilizations was driven by the causation spirals generated by the writing system chosen by their ancient ancestors. Understanding the mechanism can enlighten our present political choices that in turn determine the future course of humankind evolution. It can also inspire us about the clue to build an inclusive global society that can integrate the cumulative knowledge, ideas and technology of the diverse speech-communities in the world for a better quality of living for all.

1 Introduction The advent of corpus has rejuvenated the use of frequency statistics in lan-guage study because a corpus containing a large collection of empirical data with numerous variations of use of linguistic properties is a reliable resource for both quantitative and qualitative ...