Lecture

Writing Systems

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In course

DH-405: Foundations of digital humanities

This course introduces the core concepts and methodologies of Digital Humanities, integrating both theoretical and practical perspectives. Students learn to work with large-scale cultural datasets, acquiring the tools and techniques required for their proc ...

Description

This lecture discusses the evolution of writing systems, emphasizing the impact of new technologies like the printing press and digital computers. It covers the transformation of handwritten and printed texts over time, the formalization of scripts into Speech2Text and Text2Speech technologies, and the existence of various scripts such as pictographic/ideographic, logographic, syllabaries, and segmental scripts. The lecture also explores non-linear alphabets, character/grapheme and glyphs, as well as the gravitational effect of writing technologies on cognitive and cultural aspects.

Instructor

Frédéric Kaplan

Expertise Digital Humanities, Big Data, Models of language acquisition and evolution, Innovative Interfaces, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Developmental Systems, Intrinsic Motivation, Multi-agent system, Joint attention, Gesture Interaction Expertise Digital Humanities, Big Data, Models of language acquisition and evolution, Innovative Interfaces, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Developmental Systems, Intrinsic Motivation, Multi-agent system, Joint attention, Gesture Interaction Short biography Pro

Official source

Related concepts (30)

Writing system

A writing system is a method of visually representing verbal communication, based on a script and a set of rules regulating its use. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a reliable form of information storage and transfer. Writing systems require shared understanding between writers and readers of the meaning behind the sets of characters that make up a script.

Glyph

A glyph (ɡlɪf) is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A grapheme, or part of a grapheme (such as a diacritic), or sometimes several graphemes in combination (a composed glyph) can be represented by a glyph. In most languages written in any variety of the Latin alphabet except English, the use of diacritics to signify a sound mutation is common.

Syllabary

In the linguistic study of written languages, a syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent the syllables or (more frequently) moras which make up words. A symbol in a syllabary, called a syllabogram, typically represents an (optional) consonant sound (simple onset) followed by a vowel sound (nucleus)—that is, a CV or V syllable—but other phonographic mappings, such as CVC, CV- tone, and C (normally nasals at the end of syllables), are also found in syllabaries.

Grapheme

In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system. The word grapheme is derived and the suffix -eme by analogy with phoneme and other names of emic units. The study of graphemes is called graphemics. The concept of graphemes is abstract and similar to the notion in computing of a character. By comparison, a specific shape that represents any particular grapheme in a given typeface is called a glyph. There are two main opposing grapheme concepts.

Logogram

In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph (from Greek logo, "word", and gramma "that which is drawn or written") is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced Hànzì in Mandarin Chinese, Kanji in Japanese, Hanja in Korean, Hán tự in Vietnamese and Sawgun in Standard Zhuang) are generally logograms, as are many hieroglyphic and cuneiform characters. The use of logograms in writing is called logography, and a writing system that is based on logograms is called a logography or logographic system.

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