Download or read book The Disappearance of Writing Systems written by John Baines and published by Equinox Publishing (UK). This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume gathers papers from the first conference ever to be held on the disappearance of writing systems, in Oxford in March 2004. While the invention and decipherment of writing systems have long been focuses of research, their eclipse or replacement have been little studied. Because writing is so important in many cultures and civilizations, its disappearance - followed by a period without it or by replacement with a different writing system - is of almost equal significance to invention as a mark of radical change. Probably more writing systems have disappeared than have survived in the last five thousand years. Case studies from the Old and New Worlds are presented, ranging over periods from the second millennium BC to the present. To address many types of transmission, the broadest possible definition of 'writing' is used, notably including Mexican pictography and the Andean khipu system. One chapter discusses the larger proportion of known human societies which have not possessed complex material codes like writing, offering an alternative perspective on the long-term transmission of socially salient subjects. A concluding essay draws out common themes and offers an initial synthesis of results. The volume offers a new perspective on approaches to writing that will be significant for the understanding of writing systems and their social functions, literacy, memory, and high-cultural communication systems in general.
Download or read book The Disappearance of Writing Systems written by John Baines and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The World s Writing Systems written by Peter T. Daniels and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 970 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ranging from cuneiform to shorthand, from archaic Greek to modern Chinese, from Old Persian to modern Cherokee, this is the only available work in English to cover all of the world's writing systems from ancient times to the present. Describing scores of scripts in use now or in the past around the world, this unusually comprehensive reference offers a detailed exploration of the history and typology of writing systems. More than eighty articles by scholars from over a dozen countries explain and document how a vast array of writing systems work--how alphabets, ideograms, pictographs, and hieroglyphics convey meaning in graphic form. The work is organized in thirteen parts, each dealing with a particular group of writing systems defined historically, geographically, or conceptually. Arranged according to the chronological development of writing systems and their historical relationships within geographical areas, the scripts are divided into the following sections: the ancient Near East, East Asia, Europe, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. Additional parts address the ongoing process of decipherment of ancient writing systems; the adaptation of traditional scripts to new languages; new scripts invented in modern times; and graphic symbols for numerical, music, and movement notation. Each part begins with an introductory article providing the social and cultural context in which the group of writing systems was developed. Articles on individual scripts detail the historical origin of the writing system, its structure (with tables showing the forms of the written symbols), and its relationship to the phonology of the corresponding spoken language. Each writing system is illustrated by a passage of text, and accompanied by a romanized version, a phonetic transcription, and a modern English translation. A bibliography suggesting further reading concludes each entry. Matched by no other work in English, The World's Writing Systems is the only comprehensive resource covering every major writing system. Unparalleled in its scope and unique in its coverage of the way scripts relate to the languages they represent, this is a resource that anyone with an interest in language will want to own, and one that should be a part of every library's reference collection.
Download or read book Exploring Writing Systems and Practices in the Bronze Age Aegean written by Philippa M. Steele and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2023-11-09 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writing does not begin and end with the encoding of an idea into a group of symbols. It is practiced by people who have learnt its principles and acquired the tools and skills for doing it, in a particular context that affects what they do and how they do it. Nor are these practices static, as those involved exploit opportunities to adapt old features and develop new ones. The act of writing then has tangible and visible consequences not only for the writers but also for those encountering what has been produced, whether they can read its content or not – with potential for a wider social visibility that can in turn affect the success and longevity of the writing system itself. With a focus on the syllabic systems of the Bronze Age Aegean, this book attempts to bring together different perspectives to create an innovative interdisciplinary outlook on what is involved in writing: from structuralist views of writing as systems of signs with their linguistic values, to archaeological and anthropological approaches to writing as a socially grounded practice. The main chapters focus on the concepts of script adoption and adaptation; different methods of logographic writing; and the vitality of writing traditions, with repercussions for the modern world. Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) is a project funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 677758), and based in the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge.
Download or read book Script Switching in Roman Egypt written by Edward O. D. Love and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-12-06 with total page 509 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Script Switching in Roman Egypt studies the hieroglyphic, hieratic, demotic, and Old Coptic manuscripts which evidence the conventions governing script use, the domains of writing those scripts inhabited, and the shift of scripts between those domains, to elucidate the obsolescence of those scripts from their domains during the Roman Period. Utilising macro-level frameworks from sociolinguistics, the textual culture from four sites is contextualised within the priestly communities of speech, script, and practice that produced them. Utilising micro-level frameworks from linguistics, both the scripts of the Egyptian writing system written, and the way the orthographic methods fundamental to those scripts changed, are typologised. This study also treats the way in which morphographic and alphabetic orthographies are deciphered and understood by the reading brain, and how changes in spelling over time both resulted from and responded to dimensions of orthographic depth. Through a cross-cultural consideration of script obsolescence in Mesoamerica and Mesopotamia and by analogy to language death in speech communities, a model of domain-bydomain shift and obsolescence of the scripts of the Egyptian writing system is proposed.
Download or read book Writing and Script A Very Short Introduction written by Andrew Robinson and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2009-08-27 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Without writing, there would be no records, no history, no books, and no emails. Writing is an integral and essential part of our lives; but when did it start? Why do we all write differently and how did writing develop into what we use today? All of these questions are answered in this Very Short Introduction. Starting with the origins of writing five thousand years ago, with cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs, Andrew Robinson explains how these early forms of writing developed into hundreds of scripts including the Roman alphabet and the Chinese characters. He reveals how the modern writing symbols and abbreviations we take for granted today - including airport signage and text messaging - resemble ancient ones much more closely than we might think. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book The Kaabaean prototype of writing systems written by Nas E. Boutammina and published by BoD - Books on Demand. This book was released on 2019-01-29 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Without a doubt, one of the most important processes of expression and communication of mankind was writing. The latter appears as something that has always existed and, therefore, denies any notion of the invention of a syllable and its corollary, the spelling. Could the linear alphabetic writing, the Kaabaean, not have been used immediately as soon as man appeared at a very remote time that the scientific community called prehistory? The diffusion of Scripture is a long process that has taken place for tens of thousands of years as has been the one of human migration from its point of origin. Thus, throughout these tens of millenia BC, along with migratory movements, scripture had spread geographically in cultural areas that would become very different between them and, therefore, very distinct from its Original frame.
Download or read book Writing Around the Ancient Mediterranean written by Philippa M. Steele and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2022-10-06 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writing in the ancient Mediterranean existed against a backdrop of very high levels of interaction and contact. In the societies around its shores, writing was a dynamic practice that could serve many purposes – from a tool used by elites to control resources and establish their power bases to a symbol of local identity and a means of conveying complex information and ideas. This volume presents a group of papers by members of the Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) research team and visiting fellows, offering a range of different perspectives and approaches to problems of writing in the ancient Mediterranean. They focus on practices, viewing writing as something that people do within a wider social and cultural context, and on adaptations, considering the ways in which writing changed and was changed by the people using it.
Download or read book The Idea of Writing written by Alex de Voogt and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-12-09 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Idea of Writing is an exploration of the versatility of writing systems. This volume, the second in a series, is specifically concerned with the problems and possibilities of adapting a writing system to another language. Writing is studied as it is used across linguistic and cultural borders from ancient Egyptian, Cuneiform and Korean writing to Japanese, Kharosthi and Near Eastern scripts. This collection of articles aims to highlight the complexity of writing systems rather than to provide a first introduction. The different academic traditions in which these writing systems have been studied use linguistic, socio-historical and philological approaches that give complementary insights of the complex phenomena.
Download or read book Understanding Relations Between Scripts written by Philippa Steele and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2017-08-31 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the relationships between the writing systems of the ancient Aegean and Cyprus in the second and first millennia BC, principally Cretan 'Hieroglyphic', Linear A, Linear B, Cypro-Minoan and the Cypriot Syllabary, demonstrating the great advances made by inter-disciplinary studies.
Download or read book The Writing Systems of the World written by Florian Coulmas and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Athyrmata Critical Essays on the Archaeology of the Eastern Mediterranean in Honour of E Susan Sherratt written by Yannis Galanakis and published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2014-10-18 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together twenty-six papers to mark Susan Sherratt's 65th birthday - a collection that seeks to reflect both her broad range of interests and her ever-questioning approach to uncovering the realities of life in Europe and the Mediterranean in later prehistory.
Download or read book Societies in Transition in Early Greece written by Alex R. Knodell and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. Situated at the disciplinary boundary between prehistory and history, this book presents a new synthesis of Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Greece, from the rise and fall of Mycenaean civilization, through the "Dark Age," and up to the emergence of city-states in the Archaic period. This period saw the growth and decline of varied political systems and the development of networks that would eventually expand to nearly all shores of the Middle Sea. Alex R. Knodell argues that in order to understand how ancient Greece changed over time, one must analyze how Greek societies constituted and reconstituted themselves across multiple scales, from the local to the regional to the Mediterranean. Knodell employs innovative network and spatial analyses to understand the regional diversity and connectivity that drove the growth of early Greek polities. As a groundbreaking study of landscape, interaction, and sociopolitical change, Societies in Transition in Early Greece systematically bridges the divide between the Mycenaean period and the Archaic Greek world to shed new light on an often-overlooked period of world history.
Download or read book Syllabic Writing on Cyprus and its Context written by Philippa M. Steele and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-28 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers a new and interdisciplinary treatment of syllabic writing in ancient Cyprus. A team of distinguished scholars tackles epigraphic, palaeographic, linguistic, archaeological, historical and terminological problems relating to the island's writing systems in the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age, from the appearance of writing around the fifteenth century down to the end of the first millennium BC. The result is not intended to be a single, unified view of the scripts and their context, but rather a varied collection that demonstrates a range of interpretations of the evidence and challenges some of the longstanding or traditional views of the population of ancient Cyprus and its epigraphic habits. This is the first comprehensive account of the 'Cypro-Minoan' and 'Cypriot syllabic' scripts to appear in a single volume and forms an invaluable resource for anyone studying Cypriot epigraphy or archaeology.
Download or read book Languages Scripts and Chinese Texts in East Asia written by Peter Francis Kornicki and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a wide-ranging study of vernacularization in East Asia, examining Chinese script of the early common era, the spread of Chinese Buddhist, Confucian, and medical texts throughout East Asia, all the way to the end of the nineteenth century when nationalism created new roles for vernacular languages and vernacular scripts.
Download or read book Writing and Society in Ancient Cyprus written by Philippa M. Steele and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-25 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book to explore the development and importance of writing in ancient Cypriot society over 1,500 years.
Download or read book Opening the Tablet Box written by Sarah Melville and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2010-08-09 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With topics ranging from social and economic history to literature, language, and to art history and archaeology, the essays in his book reflect the broad spectrum of interests of its honoree, Benjamin R. Foster.
