Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics
Means of recording spoken language through a conventionalized system of graphic signs. The millennia-old history of writing is strongly characterized by magic, religion, and mysticism, but also by the culturally and historically conditioned change in materials (stone, leather, bone, parchment), writing utensils, and writing techniques over the centuries. The numerous (and various) attempts at developing a typology of writing systems are based on different princi-ples of classification, though they all attempt to reflect the development of writing from the earliest signs that stood for objects, to the signs used in writing for words or meaningful units (
morpheme), to the phonetically based alphabetic systems. ( also alphabetic writing system, cuneiform, graphemics, hieroglyphics, ideography, logography, pictography, rune)
References
Cohen, M. 1958. La grande invention de l’écriture et son volution, 3 vols. Paris.
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Coulmas, F. and K.Ehlich (eds) 1983. Writing in focus. Berlin, New York, and Amsterdam.
Daniels, P.T. and W.Bright (ed.). 1995. The world’s writing systems. Oxford.
Diringer, D. 1948/9. The alphabet: a key to the history of mankind. London.
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Driver, G.R. 1976. Semitic writing: from photograph to alphabet. London.
Gelb, I.J. 1952.
A study of writing: the foundation of grammatology. London.
Günther, H. and O.Ludwig (eds) 1994. Writing and its use: an interdisciplinary handbook of international research. Berlin and New York.
Haarmann, H. 1990. Universalgeschichte der Schrift. Frankfurt.
Hall, R.A., Jr. 1957. A theory of graphemics. Ithaca, NY.
Harris, R. 1995. Signs in writing. London.
Miller, D.G. 1994. Ancient scripts and phonological knowledge. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA.
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Olson, D.R. 1994. The world on paper. Cambridge.
Pöldes-Papp, K. 1966. Vom Felsenbild zum Alphabet: die Geschichte der Schrift von ihren frühesten Vorstufen bis zur lateinischen Schreibschrift. Stuttgart.
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alphabetical writing system
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