Manners of articulation

1. Plosives/stops – a complete closure and then a very sudden release of air p, b, t, d, k, g

2. Fricatives – no closure but a narrowing causing friction which we hear ,,,,,,š, ž

3. Affricates – a closure at some point but the air is not released suddenly like an explosion rather there is friction č,

4. Nasals – a complete velum closure and the air escapes through the nose n, m, 

5. Trill, roll – a series of intermittent closures (Polish r)

6. Tap, flap

7. Lateral – a partial closure, the air escapes by the sides of the tongue

Variants of /r/ in RP

/r/ has 3 variants in English

• frictionless continuant (initial, intervocalic position)

• fricative retroflex (tongue curled back after, t, d)

• flap/tap (intervocalic and after ) (?)

The spoken vs. written forms

• a very large number of the languages found in the world today are only in the spoken form

• development of writing is a relatively recent phenomenon

• we may trace human attempts to represent information visually back to cave drawings made at least 20 000 years ago or to clay tokens from about 10 000 years ago

• writing based on some type of alphabetic script can be tracked back to inscriptions dated around 3 000 years ago

• much of the evidence used in reconstruction of ancient writing system comes from inscriptions stone or tablets

Pictograms

• picture writing

• symbol (picture) resembles the object it represents; form such as might come to be used for the sun

• an essential part of this use of a representative symbol is that everyone should use similar forms to convey roughly similar meaning

Ideograms

• idea-writing

• more abstract, derived forms

• pictures take on more fixed symbolic for example come to be used for heat and daytime as well as for sun

Logograms

• a good example of logographs writing is that used by the Sumerians in the southern part of modern Iraq, between 5 000 and 6 000 years ago; these inscriptions are more generally described as cuneiform (wedge-shaped) writing (because of the particular shapes used in their symbols)

• the relationship between the written form and the object it represents has become arbitrary and we have a clear example of word writing

• Sumerian cuneiform inscriptions – the earliest known writing system

• modern writing system based to a certain extent on the use of logograms can be found in China

  Chinese writing has the longest continuous history of use as a writing system (i.e. 3 000 years)

  advantage: two speakers of very different dialects of Chinese who might have difficulty in talking can read the same text

  disadvantage: extremely large number of different written symbols exists (well over 70 000 symbols, knowledge of 2 000 characters)

  remembering large numbers of different word symbols – substantial memory load, and the history of most other writing systems illustrates a development away from logographic writing

  to accomplish this some principled method is required to go from symbols which represent words (logographic system) to a set of symbols which represent sounds (phonographic system)

Modern writing system

word or logographic system

syllabic writing

writing system employs a set of symbols which represent the pronunciations of syllables

modern Japanese can be written with a set of single symbols which represent spoken syllables and is consequently often described as having a (partially) syllabic writing system (syllabary)

both the Egyptian and the Sumerian writing systems evolved to the point where some of the earlier logographic symbols were used to represent spoken syllables; however the full use of syllabic writing system doesn’t appear until that used by the Phoenicians inhabiting what is modern Lebanon between 3 000 and 4 000 years ago

consonantal alphabet writing (alphabets consisting of consonants)

alphabetic writing

alphabetic writing systems are easy to learn, convenient to use and maximally efficient for transcribing any human language

most European alphabets used Latin (Roman) letters

Roman alphabet development

• 4 500 BC – cave drawing as pictograms

• 4 000 BC – Sumerian cuneiform

• 3 000 BC – Hieroglyphics

• 1 500 BC – West Semitic Syllabary of the Phoenicians

• 1 000 BC – ancient Greeks borrow the Phoenician consonantal alphabet

• 750 BC – Etruscans borrow the Greek alphabet

• 500 BC – Romans adopt the Etruscan/Greco alphabet to Latin

(Cyrillic alphabet – from Greek)