MID-TERM ASSESSMENT: SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ON WRITING SYSTEMS
TYPOLOGY
1. Fuls, A. (2015). Classifying Undeciphered Writing Systems. Historical Linguistics, 128(1),
42–58. https://doi.org/10.13109/hisp.2015.128.1.42
This article by Andreas Fuls tries to explain how undeciphered writing systems can be explained
with two characteristics, sign frequency and word length. It uses them and degree of
phonetization as statistical methods of classifying these writing systems as logographic, syllabic,
or alphabetic.
Fuls starts giving a historical context about undeciphered writing systems and the problems they
have and then he gives a theoretical approach about typology of writing systems. The next
points are to prove his theory, so he analyses sign frequency based on statistical methods as
Zipf’s law, then the degree of phonetization, which consists of the amount of signs that
represent sounds and not signs and, finally he studies the relation between the amount of signs
per word and the type of writing systems.
Once he has done that, he establishes a classification of writing systems that he can apply to
undeciphered ones, such as Proto-Byblos writing, Phaistos disk, Indus Writing, Isthmian writing
and Linear A. He finally concludes that the number of signs and their frequencies depend on the
type of writing system and the language.
This article is clearly trying to explain an hypothesis about a concrete topic which are
undeciphered writing systems and it is argued in a solid, concrete, and accessible manner for
anyone. The most important points here for our research are the theoretical ones about writing
system classification and the very well explained theoretical introduction about sign frequency,
degree of fonetization and word length, so although it’s not its main objective, it can be a very
interesting article for learning about writing systems.
2. Joyce, T., & Borgwaldt, S. R. (2013). ‘Introduction’ Typology of writing systems. John
Benjamins Publishing Company. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/300471963
In this text Joyce and Borgwaldt present the Sixth International Workshop of the Association of
Written Language and Literacy (AWLL) in Braunschweig, Germany where writing systems and
different languages were discussed. They explain how writing language has been less studied
rather that spoken language.
Then, they do a chronological recapitulation of different typologies of writing systems proposed
in all time. They quote Taylor (1883), Gelb (1952), Diringer (1962), Haas (1976), Sampson
(1985), DeFrancis (1989), Daniels (1990, 1996, 2001), Sproat (2000) and Rogers (2005).
Finally, they present the articles included in a special number about writing systems typology. In
these articles they talk about comparative graphematics, letter shapes in children’s learning,
tonal orthography, orthographic depth or Portuguese chat writing.
This text works as the introduction for a book that widely talks about this topic but as it’s clear it
gives us a historical point of view of the topic we’re researching about, making clear for us who
has given each contribution to the investigation of writing systems and also giving us more
topics we can relate to our main studied one. It works as a way to continue researching the topic
and presenting lots of topics you can learn more about if you read the book. It’s deeper than the
previous one but we have to note that it’s a compilation of all you can learn in the following
chapters.
3. Mountford, J. (1990). ‘Language and writing-systems’. N. E. Collinge (Ed.), Encyclopedia
of Language (pp. 378-396). Routledge.
‘Language and Writing-systems’ is an article published as a chapter in An Encyclopedia of
Language where Mountford defines what a writing system is and explains many terms related
with the topic such as script, spelling, alphabet, language or orthography.
Then, he talks about the structure of writing systems through the terms of orthography and
punctuation, and also introduces graphemes and its classification: alphabetic graphemes,
punctuation graphemes, symbolic graphemes or numeric graphemes. Then, he explains how
writing systems are represented with scripts and the relation between script and writing.
He classifies language between phonological and no phonological ones, explains alphabet not
only as the representation of sounds but also as a way of organizing language, talks about the
relation between language and writing using japanese as an example of a language with several
writings ad finally he introduces the whole classification of writing systems: Orthographies,
Stenographies, Cryptographies, Paedographies, Technographies, Machinographies and
Metagraphies.
After talking about the concept of graphology (study of writing systems), he concludes that
writing systems are more than just alphabets and they include structural and functional
components that affect communication and evolution of languages.
This article is, as the previous one, part of a book but this one is the only one that talks about
writing systems specifically in a book that pretends to be an encyclopedia of language, so it has
to be a deep theoretical analysis about the topic. It explains clearly all the terms we can relate
with writing systems and talks about definition, structure, classification and key concepts. For
understanding this topic, this article should be the first one to read and for our research, in my
opinion it’s the best option of the three we have commented on.
