Writing Systems
ID: 1803 - View Book Page - Edit In OJS
The cultures of the world have chosen different ways to make spoken language visible and permanent. The original edition of Writing Systems represented the first time that modern linguistic principles were brought to bear on a study of this. Now this new edition brings the story up to date; it incorporates topics which have emerged since the first edition (such as electronic techniques for encoding the world's scripts), together with new findings about established topics, including the ultimate historical origin of our alphabet. Featuring a series of detailed case studies of scripts of diverse types, and giving due attention to the psychology of reading and learning to read, the book is written so as to be accessible to those with no prior knowledge of any writing systems other than our own. Listen to Geoffrey Sampson's podcast interview with New Books in Language
Published: Jan 30, 2015
| Section | Chapter | Authors |
|---|---|---|
| Preliminaries | ||
| Acknowledgements | Geoffrey Sampson | |
| 1 | ||
| Introduction | Geoffrey Sampson | |
| 2 | ||
| Theoretical preliminaries | Geoffrey Sampson | |
| 3 | ||
| The earliest writing | Geoffrey Sampson | |
| 4 | ||
| A syllabic system: Linear B | Geoffrey Sampson | |
| 5 | ||
| Consonantal writing | Geoffrey Sampson | |
| 6 | ||
| European alphabetic writing | Geoffrey Sampson | |
| 7 | ||
| Influences on graph-shape evolution | Geoffrey Sampson | |
| 8 | ||
| A featural system: Korean Hangul | Geoffrey Sampson | |
| 9 | ||
| A logographic system: Chinese writing | Geoffrey Sampson | |
| 10 | ||
| Pros and cons of logography | Geoffrey Sampson | |
| 11 | ||
| A mixed system: Japanese writing | Geoffrey Sampson | |
| 12 | ||
| Writing systems and information technology | Geoffrey Sampson | |
| 13 | ||
| English Spelling | Geoffrey Sampson | |
| 14 | ||
| Conclusion | Geoffrey Sampson | |
| End Matter | ||
| References | Geoffrey Sampson | |
| Index | Geoffrey Sampson | |
Related Books
Reviews
Reviews of the Second Edition
This book remains one of the most interesting, useful and balanced works on the typology, history and psychology of written language, and the revisions made for the second edition bring it nicely up to date.
Journal of Linguistics
The book is quite readable, is clearly written, and the bulk of it is a pleasure to read. The reader does need a basic knowledge of phonology to follow the totality of the book, and what a morpheme is, but not more than that. Thus the potential audience is fairly broad. Even those with no linguistic background could benefit to some degree.
By choosing key examples and representative orthographies, this volume quite nicely achieves its main goal of providing a typology of the main writing systems of the world’s languages.
LinguistList
Praise for the first edition
This is a splendid book ... of outstanding interest to professional linguists and students of linguistics, and also to the large number of lay readers who are fascinated by facts about human language.
British Book News
A refreshing and rigorous contemporary scientific examination of writing ... Linguists on all fronts should welcome this.
Choice
An incredible tour de force, covering both Western and East Asian scripts, their historical development and their linguistic features. The treatment of Chinese, Japanese and Korean scripts is particularly fascinating for a Western reader.
ASI Newsletter
I have found Sampson’s book invaluable as a source of descriptive information ... it is written in a straightforward and approachable manner which makes it very engaging as general reading matter ... shows an acquaintance with recent psychological work that is seldom to be found in linguistic writing.
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
The best linguistic introduction to the study of writing systems now available.
Language