Decipherment

Day 6: Phonographic Writing

Dr. Andrew M. Byrd

Review

Review from last time:

With your neighbor, define:

  • Phonetics vs. Phonology vs. Morphology
  • Phoneme vs. Allophone
  • Morpheme
  • Phonographic vs. Logographic Scripts

Today: Phonographic Writing Systems

  1. Alphabet
  2. Abjad
  3. Alphasyllabary (Abugida)
  4. Syllabary

Phonographic Writing Systems

Phonographic Writing Systems

  • When we talk about phonographic writing systems, we’re always talking about phonological writing systems
    • vs. phonetic

Different types of Phonographic systems

  • The phonology of every language has:
    • a finite set of phonemes
      • vowels: < a > , < e >, etc.
      • consonants: < p >, < b >, etc.

Phoneme Variation

The number of phonemes – and which phonemes – will differ in every language

Hawaiian has 13 (8 consonants, 5 vowels)

Abkhaz has 60 (58 consonants, 2 vowels)

  • Vowels: /a/ & /ɨ ~ ə/
  • Northwest Caucasian language

English has 40 (26 consonants)

English consonants

English has 40 (14 vowels)

English vowels

How can writing systems represent phonology?

  • There are a number of different ways that phonographic writing systems may represent the phonology of a language
  • Big distinction between them:
    • How does the system handle consonants and vowels?

How to represent phonology?

  • Traditionally divided into:
    • Syllabic
      • Graphemes represent syllables (completely or incompletely)
    • Segmental
      • Graphemes represent phonemes (completely or incompletely)

Syllabaries

Syllabic Scripts

  • Syllabic script = Syllabary
    • Signs stand for syllables, not individual phonemes

What’s a syllable?

  • A syllable is a unit of phonology that’s difficult to define

    • Some linguists don’t even believe they exist!

  • Nevertheless, we can come up with a general definition for the purposes of this class

What’s a syllable?

  • Phonological unit of timing, which always contains a vowel or vowel-like core, which is called the nucleus

  • All languages allow at least one consonant to precede the vowel, which is called the onset

What’s a syllable?

  • Many languages require all syllables to have onsets

  • Some languages allow at least one C to follow the vowel, which is called the coda

What’s a syllable?

Syllable Structure

What’s a syllable?

Syllable Structure

Identify the onset(s), nucleus, and coda(s) in the word “sprint”.

Syllable Structure

Example: The internal structure of the English word “sprint”

Syllable Structure

  • With your neighbors, identify the onset, nucleus and coda in the following words:
    • word [wʌɹd]
    • cipher [saɪfəɹ]
    • linguistics [lɪŋgwɪstɪks]

Syllabaries

  • Many of the world’s languages that utilize syllabaries have very restrictive syllable structure
    • Syllables look like CVCVCVCVCV
    • CV = consonant + vowel

Syllabaries

  • Hawaiian:

    • aloha

    • hula

    • Honolula

    • Hawai’i

    • kahuna

Syllabaries

Merry Christmas

How do you say “Merry Christmas” in Hawaiian?

Syllabaries

Merry Christmas

In Japanese: meri kurisumasu

Syllabaries

  • In a syllabary, each writing character should represent a syllable

    • This is called a syllabogram

    • What do all syllabograms have?

Syllabic Scripts

  • What would English look like if we used a syllabary?

<If> <Eng> <lish> <had> <a> <syl> <la> <ba> <ry> <we> <would> <write> <like> <this>

Cherokee Syllabary

Cherokee Syllabary

Japanese Hiragana

Syllabary Activity

Referring to the chart, write out the three words in hirigana as Roman, and the three in Roman as hiragana.

  1. すし

  2. さむらい

  3. からて

  4. kimono

  5. tsunami

  6. ninja

Segmental Writing Systems

Other Types of Phonographic Systems

  • All segmental

    • This means that the script conveys phonemes, not syllables

Segmental Type 1: the Abjad

The Phoenician Abjad

There’s something missing in this script…

Segmental Type 1: the Abjad


Cn y’ll rd ths sntnc? Ths s wht nglsh wld lk lk f t wrt lk Phncn.

Working with your neighbor, “decipher” this sentence.

The Abjad

The Phoenician script is an abjad.

  • consonantal alphabet

  • letters represent consonants only

The Abjad

Phoenician Abjad

What direction is Phoenician written in?

Phoenician Activity

Transliterate the following into Roman letters:

  • 𐤔𐤓
  • 𐤊𐤋
  • 𐤌𐤋𐤀

Transcribe the following into Phoenician using consonants only:

  • mlk ‘king’
  • bʿl ‘lord, master’
  • šm ‘name’

Segmental Type 2: the Alphabet

Cyrillic alphabet

How is an alphabet different from an abjad?

Cyrillic Activity

Transliterate the following into Roman letters:

  • музей

  • робот

  • компьютер

Transcribe the following into Cyrillic:

  • sputnik

  • vodka

  • cosmos

Segmental Type 3: the Alphasyllabary

Devanagari (India)

What represents <t> in devanagari? What represents the vowels?

The Alphasyllabary

  • In an alphasyllabary, characters represent consonants and vowels, but are grouped by syllable

  • Also called an akṣara or an abugida

The Alphasyllabary

Ethiopic Ge‘ez script, used to write Amharic and Tigrinya

With your neighbors: what represents < š >? What represents < ñ >? How are vowels represented?

Devanagari Activity

Transliterate the following into Roman letters:

  • गुरु

  • मन्त्र

  • योग

Transliterate the following into Devanagari:

  • dharma

  • karma

  • sutra

Phonetic Writing Systems

Where are the phonetic scripts?

  • As I mentioned earlier, the phonographic scripts of the world are invariably rooted in phonology, not phonetics

  • In each language represented by a phonographic script, the symbols represent sounds contrastive in that language (phonemes) and not those that are non-contrastive

Phonemic writing

  • In English:

    • vs. 

    • = /l/ = [l] and [ł]

    • /p/ = [p], [ph], [p̚]

One true instance of a phonetic alphabet

IPA

Returning to Old Persian

So what is important to understand for decipherment?

  1. Logographic System

  2. Syllabary

  3. Abjad

  4. Alphabet

  5. Alphasyllabary

Returning to Old Persian

Behistun inscription

Returning to Old Persian

Is Old Persian a logographic system, syllabary, abjad, alphabet, or alphasyllabary?