Investigation into Language: The Origins of Written Language

• Without writing there would be no archaeological recording, science, books, journals, newspapers, blogs for us to share fascinating discoveries
• All records are a result of writing
• Language as an informer, dictator of history
• Without bureaucracy we would never have invented writing and made a lead in our cultural evolution 
• 'A system of graphic symbols that can be used to convey any and all thought'
• Beginning of agriculture led to clay tokens - counting devices - MONEY was the reason behind the origin of written language - for COMMERCE - clay 'bullae' Latin for bubble
• Advancement of language due to civilisation growth - where are we now?
• First language / sentences composed from plants, body parts and birds - NATURE formed language 
• Pictures denoted syllables of sound not meaning alone - consider sound values
• Language was innate - as developed independently of humans around the world
• Process of first languages - pressing into physical material (clay), to produce a raised picture, wedge-shaped
• Used simply as memory aids in recording economic data
• The earliest Sumerian recordkeeping was a way of keeping inventory of merchandise by drawing crude pictures of each item
• Sound symbols - progression into spoken word 
• 'When the transition from icon to sound symbol was completed, and it became possible to symbolise all the syllables of the Sumerian language regardless of how abstract their meaning, try writing was born'
• Pictographs became stylised
• Homonymy - in linguistics, homonyms, broadly defined, are words which sound alike or are spelled alike, whilst maintaining different meanings. - CHARADE GAMES?
• Pictures of concrete objects began to be used as abstract symbols representing sound
• Hieroglyphs - HOLY WRITING
• Glyphs used only by priestly ruling class to record events of royal and religious significance - LANGUAGE AND STATUS - CLASS / SOCIOLOGY
• A century of Spanish conquest meant no-one was left who could understand or read Maya glyphs - WAR influencing the DECLINE of language (PHYSICAL ACTS vs LINGUAL ONES) 
• All earliest systems of written language represented sound first and concept secondarily, through the medium of specific sounds
• Rebus principle - a puzzel device which combines the use of illustrated pictures with individual letters to depict words and/or phrases
• Logograms focus meaning based on depiction
• Pictogram language has a deeper meaning - the relationship between words - language dictates OUR CONNECTIONS to everything in the material world - translates into the Chinese and Japanese cultures - EXAMPLE:
• In Chinese, the pictogram for REST is a combination of the word PERSON and TREE, meaning every time they want to relax they associate it with NATURE 
• Logographic vs phonologic languages - LEFT v RIGHT sides of brain - creativity vs logical 
• Different languages rely on different processing mechanisms 
• Logographic language = images = right sided activation - English is not stimulated/ associated with imagery - does this make us less creative?
• Conclusion: Language shapes meaning through association and cultural context

WRITTEN LANGUAGE (CHARACTERS) IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Inputting complex characters can be cumbersome on electronic devices due to a practical limitation in the number of input keys. 

More memory is needed to store each grapheme in programming and computing, as the character set is larger -

THEREFORE different written languages require different levels of memory space - and so within our knew technological age must we simplify language in order to store it?

Contextual research into the recognition of typography as an Art 
Humanist understanding of language

Essay by Martin Elsky (September, 2004)

The renaissance view of words as material things that belong to the same network of resemblances that endows natural objects with allegorical meaning - a view that underlies the Renaissance interest in hieroglyphs and emblem literature. 

The Humanist interest in language as uttered speech transcribed in written letters, and the cabalist, Neoplatonic interest in words and letters as physical things with symbolic significance. Both these interests lead to an increased awareness during the Renaissance of the material basis of language in its visibility as written marks and its audibility as spoken sounds.

written language imitates speech and that letters are manmade signs that represent the sounds of spoken language. The material basis of language, for these writers, resides in sound, in spoken utterance, which can then be recorded in writing. 

In layout the basic principle of the English orthographers, that writing imitates speech and that letter represent sounds:

letters are the pictures of spoken expression, and in this sense, writing is related to both speaking and painting 

Letters came to receive much attention as physical objects in themselves, as shaped, drawn, carved, or painted artefacts. In this sense, written letters were by no means completely subordinated to sounded speech. Many treatises on calligraphy and alphabet design were written under the influence of Humanism


Italian painter and theorist Giovanni Lomazzo, known in England through translation, observed that in at least one respect, painting had its origin in writing:

'Characters and the use of writing were first invented to preserve the memory of the Sciences, it follows inevitability that Painting is an instrument under which the treasury of memory is contained, insomuch as writing is nothing else, but a picture of white and black. 

Key findings for development
(Elsky, 2004)

• Class bias of language through ideals of 'proper pronunciation of speech'
• writing as 'nothing else but a picture of white and black'
• Letters are physical objects in themselves - shaped, drawn, carved, or painted artefacts
• In layout the basic principle of the English is that writing imitates speech and that letter represent sounds