Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T05:11:10.010Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - Comparative Historical Perspectives

from Part III - Organization and Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2023

By
Per Ambrosiani  and
Elena Llamas-Pombo
Edited by
Marco Condorelli  and
Hanna Rutkowska
Marco Condorelli
Affiliation:
University of Central Lancashire, Preston
Hanna Rutkowska
Affiliation:
Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan
Get access

Summary

This chapter is intended to offer assistance for the linguistic description of writing systems throughout the history of one or, especially, several languages and provide a comparative description of the different units of writing systems. The first section establishes the definitions of the concepts of grapheme, graph, allograph and suprasegmental grapheme. The application of these concepts to English and Romance languages is exemplified by three models and methods of diachronic and comparative description of writing systems: Romance scriptology, cultural history of European orthographies, and comparative graphematics of punctuation. The second section discusses biscriptality, the phenomenon of employing two or more writing systems for the same language, not rare in the history of languages from different families, and related to different aspects of society and language users. With examples mainly from Russian and other Slavic languages, biscriptality is shown to be present on several levels of written language, and various applications of biscriptality are characterized with the help of dichotomies such as synchronic vs. diachronic biscriptality, monocentric vs. pluricentric biscriptality, and societal vs. individual biscriptality.

Keywords

Comparative methodsgraphematicsbiscriptality
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Historical Orthography , pp. 163 - 182
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×