The World's Writing Systems
By: Peter T. Daniels (Editor), William Bright (Editor)
Hardcover | 8 February 1996
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968 Pages
24.13 x 17.78 x 5.08
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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.
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Contributors | |
Preface | |
Abbreviations, Conventions, and Definitions | |
The Study of Writing Systems | p. 3 |
The First Civilizations | p. 21 |
Mesopotamian Cuneiform | p. 33 |
Origin | p. 33 |
Sumerian and Akkadian | p. 37 |
Basic cuneiform syllabary | p. 57 |
Other languages | p. 58 |
Egyptian Writing | p. 73 |
The Meroitic Script | p. 84 |
Epigraphic Semitic Scripts | p. 88 |
Salient features of various groups of texts | p. 100 |
The Iberian Scripts | p. 108 |
The Berber Scripts | p. 112 |
Anatolian Hieroglyphs | p. 120 |
Aegean Scripts | p. 125 |
Old Persian Cuneiform | p. 134 |
Methods of Decipherment | p. 141 |
The Proto-Elamite Script | p. 160 |
The Indus Script | p. 165 |
Maya and Other Mesoamerican Scripts | p. 172 |
Rongorongo of Easter Island | p. 183 |
Early Chinese Writing | p. 191 |
Modern Chinese Writing | p. 200 |
Japanese Writing | p. 209 |
Korean Writing | p. 218 |
Siniform Scripts of Inner Asia | p. 228 |
Tangut | p. 228 |
Kitan and Jurchin | p. 230 |
The Yi Script | p. 239 |
Classic Yi | p. 239 |
Modern Yi | p. 240 |
Asian Calligraphy | p. 244 |
Transmission of the Phoenician Script to the West | p. 261 |
The Greek Alphabet | p. 271 |
The Anatolian Alphabets | p. 281 |
The Coptic Alphabet | p. 287 |
The Gothic Alphabet | p. 290 |
The Scripts of Italy | p. 297 |
The Roman Alphabet | p. 312 |
The Runic Script | p. 333 |
Ogham | p. 340 |
The Slavic Alphabets | p. 346 |
The Armenian Alphabet | p. 356 |
The Georgian Alphabet | p. 364 |
Brahmi and Kharoshthi | p. 373 |
The Devanagari Script | p. 384 |
Gujarati Writing | p. 391 |
The Gurmukhi Script | p. 395 |
Bengali Writing | p. 399 |
Oriya Writing | p. 404 |
Sinhala Writing | p. 408 |
Kannada and Telugu Writing | p. 413 |
Malayalam Writing | p. 420 |
Tamil Writing | p. 426 |
The Tibetan Script and Derivatives | p. 431 |
The Spread of Brahmi Script into Southeast Asia | p. 445 |
Burmese Writing | p. 450 |
Thai and Lao Writing | p. 457 |
Khmer Writing | p. 467 |
Insular Southeast Asian Scripts | p. 474 |
The Jewish Scripts | p. 487 |
Aramaic Scripts for Aramaic Languages | p. 499 |
Modern Aramaic | p. 504 |
Mandaic | p. 511 |
Aramaic Scripts for Iranian Languages | p. 515 |
Aramaic Scripts for Altaic Languages | p. 536 |
Arabic Writing | p. 559 |
Dhivehi Writing | p. 564 |
Ethiopic Writing | p. 569 |
The Invention of Writing | p. 579 |
Cherokee Writing | p. 587 |
Scripts of West Africa | p. 593 |
The Cree Syllabary | p. 599 |
Scripts for Munda Languages | p. 612 |
The Pahawh Hmong Script | p. 619 |
A Functional Classification | p. 627 |
Adaptations of the Roman Alphabet | p. 633 |
Romance languages | p. 633 |
Germanic languages | p. 642 |
Celtic languages | p. 655 |
Welsh | |
Languages of Eastern and Southern Europe | p. 663 |
African languages | p. 689 |
Vietnamese | p. 691 |
Adaptations of the Cyrillic Alphabet | p. 700 |
Adaptations of Hebrew Script | p. 727 |
Yiddish | p. 735 |
Adaptations of Arabic Script | p. 743 |
Germany: Script and Politics | p. 765 |
Serbo-Croation: A Biscriptal Language | p. 769 |
South Asia: Coexistence of Scripts | p. 773 |
Christian Missionary Activities | p. 777 |
Script Reform in and after the Soviet Union | p. 781 |
The Alphabet as a Technology | p. 787 |
Numerical Notation | p. 795 |
Shorthand | p. 807 |
Phonetic Notation | p. 821 |
Music Notation | p. 847 |
Movement Notation Systems | p. 855 |
Analog and Digital Writing | p. 883 |
Index | |
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved. |
ISBN: 9780195079937
ISBN-10: 0195079930
Published: 8th February 1996
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Number of Pages: 968
Audience: Professional and Scholarly
Publisher: Oxford University Press USA
Country of Publication: GB
Dimensions (cm): 24.13 x 17.78 x 5.08
Weight (kg): 1.53
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