Books by Dimitrios Meletis
Grapholinguistics, the multifaceted study of writing systems, is growing increasingly popular, ye... more Grapholinguistics, the multifaceted study of writing systems, is growing increasingly popular, yet to date no coherent account covering and connecting its major branches exists. This book now gives an overview of the core theoretical and empirical questions of this field. A treatment of the structure of writing systems—their relation to speech and language, their material features, linguistic functions, and norms, as well as the different types in which they come—is complemented by perspectives centring on the use of writing, incorporating psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic issues such as reading processes or orthographic variation as social action. Examples stem from a variety of diverse systems such as Chinese, English, Japanese, Arabic, Thai, German, and Korean, which allows defining concepts in a broadly applicable way and thereby constructing a comparative grapholinguistic framework that provides readers with important tools for studying any writing system. The book emphasizes that grapholinguistics is a discipline in its own right, inviting discussion and further research in this up-and-coming field as well as an overdue integration of writing into general linguistic discussion.
Writing is an eclectic phenomenon whose many facets are studied by the young interdisciplinary fi... more Writing is an eclectic phenomenon whose many facets are studied by the young interdisciplinary field of grapholinguistics. Linguistically, writing is a system of graphic marks that relate to language. Under the lens of processing, it is a method of producing and perceiving utterances with our hands, eyes, and brains. And from a communication theoretical and sociolinguistic perspective, it is an utterly personal medium that allows users not only to convey messages to others but also to associate themselves with cultures or ideologies. These perspectives must merge to become the foundation of a functional theory of grapholinguistics that aims not only to describe how writing systems are built but to explain why they are built that way. Starting with a unified framework that allows the description of all types of writing systems with comparative concepts (such as grapheme) and moving towards the incorporation of evidence from disciplines such as psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics to arrive at explanations, this book establishes the cornerstones of such a functional theory of writing. The Nature of Writing is a collection of ideas about writing, a status report about relevant research, a discovery of desiderata, and a new perspective. It is a start, but most importantly, it is an invitation.
Der Genitiv der Negation (GenNeg) ist ein für slawische Sprachen typisches linguistisches Phänome... more Der Genitiv der Negation (GenNeg) ist ein für slawische Sprachen typisches linguistisches Phänomen, das im Russischen in zwei syntaktischen Positionen auftritt, in denen es jeweils mit einem anderen Kasus konkurriert: in der Subjektposition mit dem Nominativ, in der Objektposition mit dem Akkusativ. Diese Kasuskonkurrenzen stellen LinguistInnen seit über hundert Jahren vor mehrere herausfordernde Fragestellungen, von denen diese Publikation eine zentrale behandelt: In welchen Kontexten ist der GenNeg erlaubt und welcher Bedeutungsunterschied ergibt sich durch die genannten Kasusalternationen? Nachdem in einem umfangreichen Theorieteil zunächst der russische Genitiv besprochen und die relevantesten semantischen, teils auch syntaktischen Forschungsansätze zum GenNeg präsentiert werden, sollen ebendiese anhand einer qualitativen Analyse ausgewählter Beispiele aus der Fachliteratur auf ihre Gültigkeit getestet werden. Zusätzlich werden analoge Sprachstrukturen aus dem russischen Nationalkorpus sowie Grammatikalitätsurteile von L1-SprecherInnen des Russischen herangezogen, um zu überprüfen, inwiefern die Beispiele der sprachlichen Realität gerecht werden. Es wird gezeigt, dass Nomen, die eine GenNeg-Markierung erlauben, folgende Merkmale aufweisen: Einerseits fehlt ihnen eine relative Existenz-/Präsenzpräsupposition, d. h. es wird nicht davon ausgegangen, dass der Referent, den sie bezeichnen, in einer gewissen Domäne existiert/anwesend ist; andererseits sind sie vom semantischen Typ <e, t>, der keine Individuen, sondern Merkmale bezeichnet, weshalb der GenNeg meistens eine unspezifische, indefinite Lesart erhält. Sprachwandelprozesse bedingen, dass die Frequenz des GenNegs stetig abnimmt und die anderen Kasus (Nom und Akk) zur neutralen Kasuswahl werden. Auf Basis der systematischen Darstellung des Forschungsstands sowie der Analyse werden Desiderata herausgearbeitet, die als Anknüpfungspunkte für die zukünftige Forschung dienen sollen.
urn:nbn:at:at-ubg:3-6661
Dieses Buch stellt die erste umfassende wissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung mit der Graphetik da... more Dieses Buch stellt die erste umfassende wissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung mit der Graphetik dar – jenem interdisziplinären Forschungsfeld, das die Form und Materialität von Schrift untersucht. Neben einer kritischen wissenschaftsgeschichtlichen Darstellung der wichtigsten Beiträge zentraler Vertreterinnen und Vertreter werden relevante Definitionen gesammelt und diskutiert. Ein vorgeschlagenes Modell rückt graphetische Beschreibungsebenen und Einheiten in den Fokus, bevor schließlich der perzeptive Aspekt von Schrift beleuchtet wird und Konzepte wie Leserlichkeit und Lesbarkeit besprochen werden. Ein programmatisches Fazit samt Desideratakatalog wagt zuletzt einen Blick in die Zukunft der Graphetik.
Doctoral dissertation by Dimitrios Meletis
Naturalness Theory (NT) is based on the notion of linguistic naturalness and postulates that ling... more Naturalness Theory (NT) is based on the notion of linguistic naturalness and postulates that linguistic phenomena that are structured in ways to make them relatively easy to process by humans physiologically, cognitively, and sociopragmatically are more natural than other, more complex phenomena. Drawing on evidence such as language change, language acquisition, and language disorders, various parameters of naturalness have been proposed. These, thus far, focus primarily on the phonological and morphological subsystems of language. This dissertation is, on the one hand, an (1) extension of NT as it offers an outline of how the notion of naturalness can be transferred to grapholinguistic phenomena. To achieve this, typologically highly diverse scripts and writing systems must be compared to identify naturalness parameters at the universal, typological, and system-specific levels for both the material (graphetic) and linguistic (graphematic) subsystems of writing. Such a comparison requires a shared descriptive and terminological framework, which is why this dissertation provides, on the other hand, an (2) outline of a descriptive grapholinguistics complete with definitions of graphetic and graphematic categories, most notably the grapheme. Through merging the theoretical tenets of NT with a systematic analysis of writing, this dissertation demonstrates that a so-called Natural Grapholinguistics offers promising new insights as well as a tertium comparationis for future comparative analyses of scripts and writing systems. The end result is a first sketch of a theory of writing that, as a theory, does not stop at the description of the structure of writing systems, but is capable of explaining why they are built the way they are.
Papers (peer-reviewed) by Dimitrios Meletis
Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft, 2021
In essence, typologies of writing systems seek to classify the world's diverse writing systems in... more In essence, typologies of writing systems seek to classify the world's diverse writing systems in principled ways. However, against backdrops of early, misguided assumptions (Gelb 1969 [1952]) and stubborn term confusions, most proposals have focused primarily on the dominant levels of representational mapping (i. e., morphemic, syllabic, or phonemic), despite their shortcomings as idealizations (Joyce 2016, forthcoming; Joyce and Borgwaldt 2011; Meletis 2018). In advocating for exploring a more diverse range of criteria, either as alternatives or complementary factors, this paper outlines a promising framework for organizing typology criteria (Meletis 2018; 2020), which consists of three broad categories; namely, (a) linguistic fit, (b) processing fit and (c) sociocultural fit. Linguistic fit concerns the match between a language and its writing system and, thus, relates closely to the traditional criterion of representational mapping. Processing fit pertains to the physiological and cognitive aspects of a writing system, such as word spacing. Finally, sociocultural fit addresses the communicative and social functions of writing systems, such as implementing orthographic reforms. In singling out a particular parameter from each category, the paper illustrates its potential application as a typology criterion with cross-linguistic observations from the German (GWS) and the Japanese writing systems (JWS).
Social Semiotics, 2021
Typographic mimicry is the wrapping of writing in a “foreign dress,” i.e. the use of typefaces in... more Typographic mimicry is the wrapping of writing in a “foreign dress,” i.e. the use of typefaces in which one’s script (e.g. Latin) is made to visually resemble a different script (e.g. Chinese) with the goal of evoking associations with a “foreign” culture. First, this paper addresses the formal aspects of this practice, specifically the choice of visual features to be mimicked. The core part then focuses on typographic mimicry as a social practice and includes a discussion of both the typographic knowledge that different actors – both lay and expert producers and recipients – must apply to establish and recognise the associated cultural indexicality and the typographic ideologies (i.e. beliefs and attitudes) these actors hold. The central question being investigated is how typographic mimicry is discursively negotiated. An exemplary metapragmatic discourse analysis of online reactions to a food ad and comments to two articles covering the topic catered at readers with different knowledge backgrounds highlights that typographic mimicry is not a “neutral” practice. It shows that central aspects being debated are the (re)appropriation of cultural stereotypes by users both outside and within the respective cultures and the related question of whether using typographic mimicry is generally (in)appropriate (or even racist).
Open Linguistics, 2020
Variation in writing is highly frequent at both the visual and the functional levels. However, as... more Variation in writing is highly frequent at both the visual and the functional levels. However, as of yet, the associated notion of allography has not been systematically described. In this article, two major types of allography are proposed: graphetic allography, conceptually comparable to allophony, depends on visual similarity and captures how concrete units are associated with visual abstractions, i.e., how three graphs in <cabana> are instances of the basic shape |a|. Graphematic allography, conceptually closer to allomorphy, does not depend on visual similarity but groups together units that share the same function, i.e., represent the same linguistic unit (phoneme, syllable, morpheme, etc.) and are complementarily distributed, meaning there exist no contexts in which they contrast. An example is the positionally conditioned alternation between |σ| vs |ς| for the Greek grapheme <σ>. By means of a number of criteria, subtypes of graphetic and graphematic allography are proposed and examples are given from different writing systems. A special case that is discussed is the complex phenomenon of capitalization. Additionally, examples of variation phenomena that are not included in the concept of allography are given, and orthographic variation is addressed as a marginal case of variation dependent on the norm rather than the system.
Writing Systems Research, 2019
The grapheme appears to be a central concept of grapholinguistics. However, there is no consensus... more The grapheme appears to be a central concept of grapholinguistics. However, there is no consensus on how it should be defined. Some use the concept of grapheme in their work but fail to give a definition while others altogether reject it. When the concept is defined, it is interpreted either as a written unit which refers to a phoneme (this is termed the referential view), or as a written unit that is lexically distinctive (analogical view), which is tested via written minimal pairs such as <house> and <mouse> analogously to phonological minimal pairs which can be used to discover phonemes. A problem of these two views is that they are restricted to alphabets. A universal conception of the grapheme inclusive of all types of writing systems would make possible the uniform description and, consequently, the comparison of diverse writing systems. Such a conception is proposed here: Graphemes are units of writing which are (1) lexically distinctive, (2) have linguistic value (mostly by referring to phonemes, syllables, morphemes, etc.), and are (3) minimal. These criteria are characterised in detail, and examples from writing systems such as Arabic, Chinese, Devanāgarī, German, Japanese, Korean, Tamil, and Thai highlight their cross-linguistic applicability.
Written Language and Literacy, 2018
Naturalness Theory (NT) is founded on the notion of naturalness and claims that when a linguistic... more Naturalness Theory (NT) is founded on the notion of naturalness and claims that when a linguistic phenomenon can be processed by humans with little effort, both sensomotorically and cognitively, it is deemed more natural compared to other, more complex phenomena. Drawing on evidence such as language change, language acquisition, and language disorders, various parameters of naturalness (e.g., biuniqueness, constructional iconicity) have been postulated, which focus on the phonological and morphological subsystems of language. This paper offers an outline of how naturalness can be extended to grapholinguistic phenomena. Comparative graphematics (cf. Weingarten 2011), extended to comparative grapholinguistics, is assessed as a method that can be used to reveal naturalness parameters which apply to both material (graphetic) and linguistic (graphematic) aspects of writing. The reduction of extrinsic symmetry across various scripts will be discussed as an example. By integrating these preliminary theoretical ideas into the framework of NT, it is demonstrated that so-called Natural Grapholinguistics could offer promising new insights as well as a tertium comparationis method for future comparative analyses of scripts and writing systems.
The works of Russian author Adelaida Gercyk (1874–1925) have been mostly overseen and neglected b... more The works of Russian author Adelaida Gercyk (1874–1925) have been mostly overseen and neglected by literary scholarship. This article focuses on her sketch O starosti [On old age] (1915). In describing three separate events with different settings, the sketch’s main thread is the female protagonist’s continuous examination of aging. While initially idealizing old age, her urge to push it away is made increasingly perceivable. It is argued that the protagonist’s sentiments as well as the depicted interaction with other members of society open up contradictory discourses of aging. This article aims to uncover which strategies Gercyk uses in O starosti to convey how the concept of old age is constructed and evaluated in a society in which the opposition young vs. old is automatically accompanied by the attribution of numerous other stereotypical character traits. Furthermore, it is shown how Gercyk employs a variety of motifs such as death, physical as well as mental deterioration, and fear to paint a multifaceted picture of old age and its status in society.
Co-Authored papers (peer-reviewed) by Dimitrios Meletis
Yannis Haralambous (ed): Graphemics in the 21st Century. Brest: Fluxus Edition (= Grapholinguistics and Its Applications 1), 167–183., 2019
The present article stands at the interface of CMC research and grapholinguistics. After outlinin... more The present article stands at the interface of CMC research and grapholinguistics. After outlining which features are typical of the writing of pri vate text messages, the focus of the first part of the paper (Sections 2 and 3) lies on the use of emojis. Notably, emoji use is not-as is commonly done-analyzed under a pragmatic perspective, but grapholinguistically, at the graphetic and graphematic levels: emojis are conceptualized as visual shapes that may assume graphematic functions within a given writing system. In the second part (Section 4), it is underlined that all variants of written digital communication (such as the use of emojis, but also all other characters) are made possible only due to the Unicode Consortium's decisions; this, finally, is argued to have farreaching consequences for the future of writing.
Papers (editorial review) by Dimitrios Meletis
In this essay, I discuss the challenges of (engaging in) grapholinguistics, a young field that fo... more In this essay, I discuss the challenges of (engaging in) grapholinguistics, a young field that focuses on writing, a topic mostly marginalized in ‘mainstream’ linguistics to this day. Issues that are raised include the lack of writing-related classes in linguistic study programs, institutionalization (e.g. departments or chairs for grapholinguistics), and pertinent publication and presentation outlets. Furthermore, the essay highlights problems caused by the interdisciplinarity of grapholinguistics, including linguistic, theoretical, methodological, and terminological boundaries that must be crossed. These issues are partially addressed through a personal lens, i.e. my own ‘journey’ in the field thus far. This allows me to speak from (some) experience not only about the risks of focusing on a topic at the periphery of many disciplines and some of the setbacks this entails but also about my motivation behind proposing a (sketch of a) theory of writing in my PhD thesis that—based on linguistic Naturalness Theory—aims to offer a unified descriptive and explanatory framework for studying writing systems and writing in general. It also gives me a chance to argue that writing, which can be studied with many of the concepts firmly established in other fields of linguistics (as well as additional writing-specific concepts), is central to every language that is spoken, signed and written in literate language communities and should therefore be an integral rather than an optional part of linguistic theories and paradigms in general. Essentially, this essay highlights why doing research in grapholinguistics should be embraced rather than justified.
Der Genitiv der Negation (GenNeg) ist eine linguistische Besonderheit slawischer Sprachen – allen... more Der Genitiv der Negation (GenNeg) ist eine linguistische Besonderheit slawischer Sprachen – allen voran des Russischen –, die Forscherinnen und Forschern seit mehr als einem Jahrhundert zahlreiche Rätsel aufwirft. Zunächst stellen sich morphosyntaktische Fragen: Wie kann es sein, dass ein ‚Subjekt‘ – wie wir es vor eurozentrischem Hintergrund definieren – nicht im Nominativ, sondern im Genitiv, einem obliquen Kasus, steht? Und womit kongruiert in solchen Sätzen das Verb? Im Hinblick auf die Tatsache, dass der GenNeg mit anderen Kasus alterniert und konkurriert – in der Subjektposition mit dem Nominativ, in der Objektposition mit dem Akkusativ – ist eine Erforschung mehrerer Aspekte fruchtbar: Welche semantischen Unterschiede in der Bedeutung einer Aussage löst die jeweilige Kasuswahl aus? Warum ver- wenden ältere SprecherInnen eher den Genitiv, jüngere hingegen eher den Akkusativ? Gibt es neben den semantischen und syntaktischen Faktoren, die eine Kasuszuweisung bedingen, auch noch pragmatische Aspekte, die beachtet werden müssen?
Dieser Beitrag widmet sich drei der relevantesten (und dominantesten) Ansätze einer semantischen Analyse des Phänomens: Angefangen mit der (1) informationsstrukturellen Annahme eines perspektivischen Zentrums in Existenzsätzen, das den GenNeg überall dort lizensiert, wo eine Situation aus Sicht eines Schauplatzes/Ortes und nicht der/des darin befindlichen Referenten betrachtet wird (Bsp. Ivana ne bylo na lekcii), zu der Formulierung der (2) Property-Type-Hypothese, die davon ausgeht, dass jene Nomenphrasen (NPs), die im Genitiv auftreten, eine Verschiebung ihres semantischen Typs (von Typ e, der individuelle Referenten bezeichnet, zu Typ <e,t>, der für Merkmale/Eigenschaften steht) erfahren haben (Bsp. Ja ne ljublju ėtoj pevicy = Ich mag etwas an der Sängerin nicht, bspw. ihren Gesang) bis hin zur umfassendsten Analyse nicht-kanonischer Genitivverwendungen (zu denen auch der Genitiv nach intensionalen Verben wie ždat‘ gehört), dem Konzept des (3) irrealen Genitivs, der einerseits ebenfalls voraussetzt, dass mit dem GenNeg markierte NPs eine semantische Typverschiebung durchmachen (s. Punkt (2)) sowie andererseits nur Referenten ohne Existenzpräsupposition kennzeichnet (Bsp. Lena ne polučila otveta; es wird nicht ausgesagt, dass überhaupt eine Antwort existiert).
Anhand von Beispielen werden diese Ansätze präsentiert und diskutiert, wobei besonderes Augenmerk auf jene Aspekte gelegt wird, die nach wie vor offene Fragen aufwerfen. Ergänzt werden die eigenen Analysen ausgewählter Beispielsätze (sowohl bekannte aus der Literatur als auch neue aus dem russischen Nationalkorpus) durch die intuitiven Grammatikalitätsurteile von MuttersprachlerInnen. Das Ziel ist neben einer systematischen Darstellung und Kritik der bisherigen Erkenntnisse zur Semantik des GenNeg auch die Erstellung eines Desideratakatalogs, der Anknüpfungspunkte für die zukünftige Forschung identifiziert.
Encyclopedia Articles by Dimitrios Meletis
Schriftlinguistik / Grapholinguistics (Wörterbücher für Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft 5)
interdisciplinary field concerned with the analysis and description of the materiality of scripts... more interdisciplinary field concerned with the analysis and description of the materiality of scripts as well as its part in the production and perception of written language [...]
Talks by Dimitrios Meletis
In grapholinguistics (and linguistics in general), ‘orthography’ remains a contentious term let a... more In grapholinguistics (and linguistics in general), ‘orthography’ remains a contentious term let alone concept. Since English is a self-regulating writing system (cf. BERG/ARONOFF 2017, 2018) not or-thographically regulated by any official authority of linguistic policy, ‘orthography’ has often been used as a descriptive term more or less synonymous to ‘writing system’ in central and highly visible anglophone literature. In contrast, in other grapholinguistic traditions – such as the germanophone –, ‘orthography’ is interpreted prescriptively and tied to notions of normativity and system-external regulation (cf. NEEF 2015, DÜRSCHEID 2016, MELETIS 2020). While descriptive grapholinguistics (and its most prominent subbranch of graphematics) is concerned with what is systematic (or ‘grammatical’), i.e., conforms to the regularities of the system, orthography adds to this the evalua-tive and (meta)¬prag¬ma¬tic¬ally relevant notion of ‘correctness’.
However, the existence of orthographic standardization cannot be captured by a simplifying dichotomy, with systems like English classified as unregulated and systems like German as officially regulated; instead, there is a whole variety of different orthographies that serve as a normative benchmark in writing systems, rendering their respective users aware of the (in)correctness of scribal practices. In this paper, such different types of orthography will be described with the help of sever-al criteria that form the basis of a preliminary typology. In systems that are equipped with one, an orthography becomes a structural matter; however, it always originates as a social phenomenon, which is echoed by the predominantly sociolinguistic nature of the following criteria (cf. also CA-HILL 2014, HINTON 2014):
— Natural vs. artificial captures whether the orthographic conventions in a writing system have de-veloped naturally, through implicit negotiations among users during the prolonged continued use of the writing system (cf. MIHM 2016 for premodern orthographies), to become a ‘phenomenon of the third kind’ (cf. KELLER 2014), or whether they are artificial in the sense of having either been (1) implemented for an existing and established writing system without consideration of the actual use of that system (whether said system already had an orthographic standardization or not), or (2) im-plemented immediately during/after the creation of a new writing system, which has thus never been in use without a standardization.
— Regulated vs. unregulated describes, in a narrow sense, whether an orthographic standardization is officially regulated by an external stakeholder of linguistic policy (such as the Council for German Orthography in the case of German orthography) or not (such as English orthographies; cf. also KARAN 2014).
— Codified vs. uncodified reflects whether orthographic conventions are externally and explicitly cod-ified as rules – whether these are officially regulated or not. Types of codifications include rule-books, guidelines, and dictionaries. Notably, orthographies can be unregulated but codified (such as English orthographies, for which there exist dictionaries with – strictly speaking – only nonofficial status).
— Original vs. reformed is a subcriterion assessing whether a regulated codified orthography exists in its first, i.e., original form, or whether it has been reformed, i.e., re-codified, at least once.
— Community involvement vs. no community involvement (or a continuum of bottom-up vs. top-down standardization): In a loose sense, this criterion pertains to the involvement of users in the (implicit or explicit, gradual or onetime) establishment of orthographic conventions, their codifica-tion as rules, and their potential reform, i.e., bottom-up processes of standardization. In a narrow sense, it describes whether community members are involved in the (initial) explicit regulation and possibly codification of orthographic rules (cf. BOW 2013, PAGE 2013 for case studies) – which is the case mostly in the context of literacy development (cf. LÜPKE 2011, the contributions in CA-HILL/RICE 2014), i.e., the creation of new writing systems from scratch.
— As the first of two criteria that are structural in nature, variable vs. nonvariable establishes a con-tinuum capturing the degree of a writing system’s graphematic variability. It thus determines the possibility of (licensed or unlicensed) graphematic variation and with it, the expression of social (non-denotative) meaning and creativity etc. in writing. The Japanese writing system, for example, often affords multiple ways of writing the same word (or, more generally, utterance) without a devi-ance from the norm automatically being perceived as strictly ‘incorrect’ (cf. JOYCE/MASUDA 2019). It is crucial whether these variable parts of a writing system are unregulated, as there may exist graphematically highly variable writing systems which are strictly regulated and thus do not afford the same possibilities for ‘correct’ graphematic variation.
— Motivated vs. arbitrary is used to evaluate whether orthographic conventions/rules are based on the graphematics of the writing system, i.e., its internal systematics and its actual usage, in which case they are motivated, or whether they are arbitrary and based on other (external) considerations.
It is important to emphasize that this list is, of course, non-exhaustive. However, the proposed crite-ria allow categorizing and comparing different types of orthographic standardization. This can (fi-nally) further our understanding of the status that diverse kinds of norms assume in different writing systems. Notably, linguistic norms arguably play a more prominent role in the written modality than in the spoken one – they possibly even originate in writing and literacy (cf. MĬKIL¬LÄH¬DE/LEP¬PÄ-NEN/IT¬KON¬EN 2019 for normativity in language).
In this paper, not only the listed criteria will be presented – along with examples of writing systems and their orthographies to which they apply in various combinations – but a related im-portant question that will be raised is what bearing this typology has on central normative concepts such as ‘orthographic rule’ and ‘orthographic mistake’. Specifically, differences in the perception of prescriptivity will be highlighted – what to members of one literate community may be a rule (and a deviation from it a mistake) may for members of another community merely be a convention (and a ‘deviation’ from it variation). Fleshing out the basis of grapholinguistic normativity is expected to not only improve our understanding of writing and literacy practices, but pragmatics – and meta-pragmatic beliefs – regarding the linguistic and communicative behavior of members of literate communities in general. Furthermore, it is relevant to applied fields such as literacy development and the reform of existing orthographies.
References
BERG, KRISTIAN & MARK ARONOFF. 2017. Self-organization in the spelling of English suffixes: The emergence of culture out of anarchy. Language 93(1). 37–64. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2017.0000
BERG, KRISTIAN & MARK ARONOFF. 2018. Further evidence for self-organization in English spelling. Language 94(1). e48–e53. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2018.0013
BOW, CATHERINE. 2013. Community-based orthography development in four Western Zambian languages. Writ-ing Systems Research 5(1). 73–87. https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2012.747427
CAHILL, MICHAEL. 2014. Non-linguistic factors in orthographies. In Michael Cahill & Keren Rice (eds.), Develop-ing orthographies for unwritten languages, 9–25. Dallas: SIL International.
CAHILL, MICHAEL & KEREN RICE (eds.). 2014. Developing orthographies for unwritten languages. Dallas: SIL In-ternational.
DÜRSCHEID, CHRISTA. 2016. Einführung in die Schriftlinguistik, 5th edn. (UTB 3740). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
HINTON, LEANNE. 2014. Orthography wars. In Michael Cahill & Keren Rice (eds.), Developing or¬tho¬graphies for unwritten languages, 139–168. Dallas: SIL International.
JOYCE, TERRY & HISASHI MASUDA. 2019. On the notions of orthography and graphematic representation from the perspective of the Japanese writing system. Written Language & Literacy 22(2). 247–279. https://doi.org/10.1075/wll.00028.joy
KARAN, ELKE. 2014. Standardization: What’s the hurry? In Michael Cahill & Keren Rice (eds.), Developing or-thographies for unwritten languages, 107–138. Dallas: SIL International.
KELLER, RUDI. 2014. Sprachwandel: von der unsichtbaren Hand in der Sprache, 4th edn. (UTB, 1567). Tübingen: Francke.
LÜPKE, FRIEDERIKE. 2011. Orthography development. In Peter Austoin & Julia Sallabank (eds.), Hand-book of en-dangered languages, 312–336. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511975981.016
MÄKILLÄHDE, ALEKSI, VILLE LEPPÄNEN & ESA ITKONEN. 2019. Norms and normativity in language and linguistics: Basic concepts and contextualization. In Aleksi Mäkillähde, Ville Leppänen & Esa Itkonen (eds.), Norms and normativity in language and linguistics, 1–28. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.209.01mak
MELETIS, DIMITRIOS. 2020. The nature of writing. A theory of grapholinguistics (Grapholinguistics and Its Applica-tions 3). Brest: Fluxus Éditions. https://doi.org/10.36824/2020-meletis
MIHM, AREND. 2016. Zur Theorie der vormodernen Orthographien: Straßburger Schreibsysteme als Erkenntnis-grundlage. Sprachwissenschaft 41(3–4). 271–309.
NEEF, MARTIN. 2015. Writing systems as modular objects: Proposals for theory design in grapholinguistics. Open Linguistics 1. 708–721. https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2015-0026
PAGE, CHRISTINA J. 2013. A new orthography in an unfamiliar script: A case study in participatory engagement strategies. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 34(5). 459–474. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2013.783035
‘Writing system typology’, thus far, is closely associated with a descriptive classification of w... more ‘Writing system typology’, thus far, is closely associated with a descriptive classification of writing systems focusing on the linguistic level (phonemic, syllabic, morphemic) that the basic units of writing systems relate to – their main underlying criterion, thus, is ‘dominant level of representational mapping’ (cf. Joyce/Meletis in press). Such typologies have been used to show how writing systems function at their core as well as to highlight both similarities and differences between them. Arguably, however, due their narrow scope, many potentially relevant features and parallels remain blind spots.
These start already at the structural level, as the restricted focus on the relation between writing and language results in a disregard of systematic structural features that are intrinsic to writing systems, i.e., not determined by their relation to language. These include, for example, allography, i.e., systematic variation of variant units in writing, or graphotactics, the rules of how units of writing may combine to form larger units (such as written words, sentences, etc.). Notably, a restriction to structure dismisses paramount questions concerning the use of writing systems, e.g., how they are processed and used for communication, bringing to the fore psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives. Potential criteria for possible psycholinguistic typologies of writing include, for example, spacing between graphemes or written words, or the visual complexity exhibited by the script used for a writing system. A candidate for a sociolinguistic typology is the degree of normativity and prescriptivism characterizing a literate culture, which is established, among other things, by asking if and how the writing system in question is orthographically regulated and how this affects users’ literacy practices and ideologies pertaining to writing.
Since, in a comprehensive and integrated theory of writing, a writing system must always simultaneously be considered as a system with its own idiosyncratic features, a semiotic system relating to a given language, a graphic medium that must be physiologically and cognitively processed, and a communication tool and a cultural technique embedded in a given context and culture, structural, psycholinguistic, and sociolinguistic perspectives arguably should never be adopted completely divorced from each other (cf. Meletis 2020). This talk aims not only to present different structural and use-based typologies of writing that go beyond those brought forth by ‘traditional’ writing system typology but also to show how they are connected and interact with each other and, importantly, how this can increase our know¬ledge of the fundamental nature of writing.
REFERENCES
Joyce, Terry & Dimitrios Meletis (in press): Alternative criteria for writing system typology. Cross-linguistic observations from the German and Japanese writing systems. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft Special Issue.
Meletis, Dimitrios (2020): The nature of writing. A theory of grapholinguistics (= Grapholinguistics and Its Applications; 3). Brest: Fluxus Editions. DOI: 10.36824/2020-meletis.
Graphotactics captures the “restrictions on ways in which” elements of writing “may combine with ... more Graphotactics captures the “restrictions on ways in which” elements of writing “may combine with each other” (McCawley 1994: 115) to form larger written units. These restrictions take on many forms in the world’s diverse writing systems. For instance, users of the English alphabet likely know that <v> almost never occurs word-finally as <e> is commonly added after it, cf. <have>, <give> (cf. Berg 2016: 2). Phonographically, these words (/hæv/ and /ɡɪv/) would not require a written word-final <e>, underlining that notwithstanding important parallels, graphotactics is not always dependent on phonotactics. This is a vital point in arguing that writing systems not only represent various levels of language but are also their own systems exhibiting distinct features—and it is paramount that they be studied (also) as such.
Despite graphotactics being a core feature of writing systems, research on it—especially comparative—is scarce. This talk aims to systematize various types of restrictions, including, at the subsegmental level, favored positions of semantic and phonological components inside Chinese characters that “determine whether the character is legal or not” (Ho/Ng/Ng 2003: 853). As for larger written units, in many abu¬gi¬das such as Devanāgarī or Thai, secondary vowel graphemes occur in specific positions around consonants, with some being misaligned in appearing before consonants despite following them in speech (cf. Winskel 2009). A well-known length-related example is the ‘three-letter-rule’ in English: content words must consist of at least three letters (distinguishing <buy> from <by>).
Crucially, graphotactic regularities are independent of external orthographic regulation and thus not explicit, codified rules but intrinsic to writing systems as self-regulating systems and thus part of users’ implicit knowledge. They rely fundamentally on a two-dimensional spatiality that departs from the linear temporality of speech. This makes graphotactics central in arguing that writing systems are indeed systematic in nature.
References
Berg, Kristian (2016): Graphemic analysis and the spoken language bias. Frontiers in Psychology 7: 388. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00388
Ho, Connie S.-H., Ting-Ting Ng & Wing-Kin Ng (2003): A ‘radical’ approach to reading development in Chinese: the role of semantic radicals and phonetic radicals. Journal of Literacy Research 35.3: 849-878. DOI: 10.1207/s15548430jlr3503_3
McCawley, James D. (1994): Some graphotactic constraints. In W. C. Watt (ed.), Writing systems and cognition (= Neuropsychology and Cognition, 6), 115-127. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-94-015-8285-8_7
Winskel, Heather (2009): Reading in Thai: the case of misaligned vowels. Reading and Writing 22.1: 1-24. DOI: 10.1007/s11145-007-9100-z
Uploads
Books by Dimitrios Meletis
Doctoral dissertation by Dimitrios Meletis
Papers (peer-reviewed) by Dimitrios Meletis
Co-Authored papers (peer-reviewed) by Dimitrios Meletis
Papers (editorial review) by Dimitrios Meletis
Dieser Beitrag widmet sich drei der relevantesten (und dominantesten) Ansätze einer semantischen Analyse des Phänomens: Angefangen mit der (1) informationsstrukturellen Annahme eines perspektivischen Zentrums in Existenzsätzen, das den GenNeg überall dort lizensiert, wo eine Situation aus Sicht eines Schauplatzes/Ortes und nicht der/des darin befindlichen Referenten betrachtet wird (Bsp. Ivana ne bylo na lekcii), zu der Formulierung der (2) Property-Type-Hypothese, die davon ausgeht, dass jene Nomenphrasen (NPs), die im Genitiv auftreten, eine Verschiebung ihres semantischen Typs (von Typ e, der individuelle Referenten bezeichnet, zu Typ <e,t>, der für Merkmale/Eigenschaften steht) erfahren haben (Bsp. Ja ne ljublju ėtoj pevicy = Ich mag etwas an der Sängerin nicht, bspw. ihren Gesang) bis hin zur umfassendsten Analyse nicht-kanonischer Genitivverwendungen (zu denen auch der Genitiv nach intensionalen Verben wie ždat‘ gehört), dem Konzept des (3) irrealen Genitivs, der einerseits ebenfalls voraussetzt, dass mit dem GenNeg markierte NPs eine semantische Typverschiebung durchmachen (s. Punkt (2)) sowie andererseits nur Referenten ohne Existenzpräsupposition kennzeichnet (Bsp. Lena ne polučila otveta; es wird nicht ausgesagt, dass überhaupt eine Antwort existiert).
Anhand von Beispielen werden diese Ansätze präsentiert und diskutiert, wobei besonderes Augenmerk auf jene Aspekte gelegt wird, die nach wie vor offene Fragen aufwerfen. Ergänzt werden die eigenen Analysen ausgewählter Beispielsätze (sowohl bekannte aus der Literatur als auch neue aus dem russischen Nationalkorpus) durch die intuitiven Grammatikalitätsurteile von MuttersprachlerInnen. Das Ziel ist neben einer systematischen Darstellung und Kritik der bisherigen Erkenntnisse zur Semantik des GenNeg auch die Erstellung eines Desideratakatalogs, der Anknüpfungspunkte für die zukünftige Forschung identifiziert.
Encyclopedia Articles by Dimitrios Meletis
Talks by Dimitrios Meletis
However, the existence of orthographic standardization cannot be captured by a simplifying dichotomy, with systems like English classified as unregulated and systems like German as officially regulated; instead, there is a whole variety of different orthographies that serve as a normative benchmark in writing systems, rendering their respective users aware of the (in)correctness of scribal practices. In this paper, such different types of orthography will be described with the help of sever-al criteria that form the basis of a preliminary typology. In systems that are equipped with one, an orthography becomes a structural matter; however, it always originates as a social phenomenon, which is echoed by the predominantly sociolinguistic nature of the following criteria (cf. also CA-HILL 2014, HINTON 2014):
— Natural vs. artificial captures whether the orthographic conventions in a writing system have de-veloped naturally, through implicit negotiations among users during the prolonged continued use of the writing system (cf. MIHM 2016 for premodern orthographies), to become a ‘phenomenon of the third kind’ (cf. KELLER 2014), or whether they are artificial in the sense of having either been (1) implemented for an existing and established writing system without consideration of the actual use of that system (whether said system already had an orthographic standardization or not), or (2) im-plemented immediately during/after the creation of a new writing system, which has thus never been in use without a standardization.
— Regulated vs. unregulated describes, in a narrow sense, whether an orthographic standardization is officially regulated by an external stakeholder of linguistic policy (such as the Council for German Orthography in the case of German orthography) or not (such as English orthographies; cf. also KARAN 2014).
— Codified vs. uncodified reflects whether orthographic conventions are externally and explicitly cod-ified as rules – whether these are officially regulated or not. Types of codifications include rule-books, guidelines, and dictionaries. Notably, orthographies can be unregulated but codified (such as English orthographies, for which there exist dictionaries with – strictly speaking – only nonofficial status).
— Original vs. reformed is a subcriterion assessing whether a regulated codified orthography exists in its first, i.e., original form, or whether it has been reformed, i.e., re-codified, at least once.
— Community involvement vs. no community involvement (or a continuum of bottom-up vs. top-down standardization): In a loose sense, this criterion pertains to the involvement of users in the (implicit or explicit, gradual or onetime) establishment of orthographic conventions, their codifica-tion as rules, and their potential reform, i.e., bottom-up processes of standardization. In a narrow sense, it describes whether community members are involved in the (initial) explicit regulation and possibly codification of orthographic rules (cf. BOW 2013, PAGE 2013 for case studies) – which is the case mostly in the context of literacy development (cf. LÜPKE 2011, the contributions in CA-HILL/RICE 2014), i.e., the creation of new writing systems from scratch.
— As the first of two criteria that are structural in nature, variable vs. nonvariable establishes a con-tinuum capturing the degree of a writing system’s graphematic variability. It thus determines the possibility of (licensed or unlicensed) graphematic variation and with it, the expression of social (non-denotative) meaning and creativity etc. in writing. The Japanese writing system, for example, often affords multiple ways of writing the same word (or, more generally, utterance) without a devi-ance from the norm automatically being perceived as strictly ‘incorrect’ (cf. JOYCE/MASUDA 2019). It is crucial whether these variable parts of a writing system are unregulated, as there may exist graphematically highly variable writing systems which are strictly regulated and thus do not afford the same possibilities for ‘correct’ graphematic variation.
— Motivated vs. arbitrary is used to evaluate whether orthographic conventions/rules are based on the graphematics of the writing system, i.e., its internal systematics and its actual usage, in which case they are motivated, or whether they are arbitrary and based on other (external) considerations.
It is important to emphasize that this list is, of course, non-exhaustive. However, the proposed crite-ria allow categorizing and comparing different types of orthographic standardization. This can (fi-nally) further our understanding of the status that diverse kinds of norms assume in different writing systems. Notably, linguistic norms arguably play a more prominent role in the written modality than in the spoken one – they possibly even originate in writing and literacy (cf. MĬKIL¬LÄH¬DE/LEP¬PÄ-NEN/IT¬KON¬EN 2019 for normativity in language).
In this paper, not only the listed criteria will be presented – along with examples of writing systems and their orthographies to which they apply in various combinations – but a related im-portant question that will be raised is what bearing this typology has on central normative concepts such as ‘orthographic rule’ and ‘orthographic mistake’. Specifically, differences in the perception of prescriptivity will be highlighted – what to members of one literate community may be a rule (and a deviation from it a mistake) may for members of another community merely be a convention (and a ‘deviation’ from it variation). Fleshing out the basis of grapholinguistic normativity is expected to not only improve our understanding of writing and literacy practices, but pragmatics – and meta-pragmatic beliefs – regarding the linguistic and communicative behavior of members of literate communities in general. Furthermore, it is relevant to applied fields such as literacy development and the reform of existing orthographies.
References
BERG, KRISTIAN & MARK ARONOFF. 2017. Self-organization in the spelling of English suffixes: The emergence of culture out of anarchy. Language 93(1). 37–64. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2017.0000
BERG, KRISTIAN & MARK ARONOFF. 2018. Further evidence for self-organization in English spelling. Language 94(1). e48–e53. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2018.0013
BOW, CATHERINE. 2013. Community-based orthography development in four Western Zambian languages. Writ-ing Systems Research 5(1). 73–87. https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2012.747427
CAHILL, MICHAEL. 2014. Non-linguistic factors in orthographies. In Michael Cahill & Keren Rice (eds.), Develop-ing orthographies for unwritten languages, 9–25. Dallas: SIL International.
CAHILL, MICHAEL & KEREN RICE (eds.). 2014. Developing orthographies for unwritten languages. Dallas: SIL In-ternational.
DÜRSCHEID, CHRISTA. 2016. Einführung in die Schriftlinguistik, 5th edn. (UTB 3740). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
HINTON, LEANNE. 2014. Orthography wars. In Michael Cahill & Keren Rice (eds.), Developing or¬tho¬graphies for unwritten languages, 139–168. Dallas: SIL International.
JOYCE, TERRY & HISASHI MASUDA. 2019. On the notions of orthography and graphematic representation from the perspective of the Japanese writing system. Written Language & Literacy 22(2). 247–279. https://doi.org/10.1075/wll.00028.joy
KARAN, ELKE. 2014. Standardization: What’s the hurry? In Michael Cahill & Keren Rice (eds.), Developing or-thographies for unwritten languages, 107–138. Dallas: SIL International.
KELLER, RUDI. 2014. Sprachwandel: von der unsichtbaren Hand in der Sprache, 4th edn. (UTB, 1567). Tübingen: Francke.
LÜPKE, FRIEDERIKE. 2011. Orthography development. In Peter Austoin & Julia Sallabank (eds.), Hand-book of en-dangered languages, 312–336. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511975981.016
MÄKILLÄHDE, ALEKSI, VILLE LEPPÄNEN & ESA ITKONEN. 2019. Norms and normativity in language and linguistics: Basic concepts and contextualization. In Aleksi Mäkillähde, Ville Leppänen & Esa Itkonen (eds.), Norms and normativity in language and linguistics, 1–28. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.209.01mak
MELETIS, DIMITRIOS. 2020. The nature of writing. A theory of grapholinguistics (Grapholinguistics and Its Applica-tions 3). Brest: Fluxus Éditions. https://doi.org/10.36824/2020-meletis
MIHM, AREND. 2016. Zur Theorie der vormodernen Orthographien: Straßburger Schreibsysteme als Erkenntnis-grundlage. Sprachwissenschaft 41(3–4). 271–309.
NEEF, MARTIN. 2015. Writing systems as modular objects: Proposals for theory design in grapholinguistics. Open Linguistics 1. 708–721. https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2015-0026
PAGE, CHRISTINA J. 2013. A new orthography in an unfamiliar script: A case study in participatory engagement strategies. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 34(5). 459–474. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2013.783035
These start already at the structural level, as the restricted focus on the relation between writing and language results in a disregard of systematic structural features that are intrinsic to writing systems, i.e., not determined by their relation to language. These include, for example, allography, i.e., systematic variation of variant units in writing, or graphotactics, the rules of how units of writing may combine to form larger units (such as written words, sentences, etc.). Notably, a restriction to structure dismisses paramount questions concerning the use of writing systems, e.g., how they are processed and used for communication, bringing to the fore psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives. Potential criteria for possible psycholinguistic typologies of writing include, for example, spacing between graphemes or written words, or the visual complexity exhibited by the script used for a writing system. A candidate for a sociolinguistic typology is the degree of normativity and prescriptivism characterizing a literate culture, which is established, among other things, by asking if and how the writing system in question is orthographically regulated and how this affects users’ literacy practices and ideologies pertaining to writing.
Since, in a comprehensive and integrated theory of writing, a writing system must always simultaneously be considered as a system with its own idiosyncratic features, a semiotic system relating to a given language, a graphic medium that must be physiologically and cognitively processed, and a communication tool and a cultural technique embedded in a given context and culture, structural, psycholinguistic, and sociolinguistic perspectives arguably should never be adopted completely divorced from each other (cf. Meletis 2020). This talk aims not only to present different structural and use-based typologies of writing that go beyond those brought forth by ‘traditional’ writing system typology but also to show how they are connected and interact with each other and, importantly, how this can increase our know¬ledge of the fundamental nature of writing.
REFERENCES
Joyce, Terry & Dimitrios Meletis (in press): Alternative criteria for writing system typology. Cross-linguistic observations from the German and Japanese writing systems. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft Special Issue.
Meletis, Dimitrios (2020): The nature of writing. A theory of grapholinguistics (= Grapholinguistics and Its Applications; 3). Brest: Fluxus Editions. DOI: 10.36824/2020-meletis.
Despite graphotactics being a core feature of writing systems, research on it—especially comparative—is scarce. This talk aims to systematize various types of restrictions, including, at the subsegmental level, favored positions of semantic and phonological components inside Chinese characters that “determine whether the character is legal or not” (Ho/Ng/Ng 2003: 853). As for larger written units, in many abu¬gi¬das such as Devanāgarī or Thai, secondary vowel graphemes occur in specific positions around consonants, with some being misaligned in appearing before consonants despite following them in speech (cf. Winskel 2009). A well-known length-related example is the ‘three-letter-rule’ in English: content words must consist of at least three letters (distinguishing <buy> from <by>).
Crucially, graphotactic regularities are independent of external orthographic regulation and thus not explicit, codified rules but intrinsic to writing systems as self-regulating systems and thus part of users’ implicit knowledge. They rely fundamentally on a two-dimensional spatiality that departs from the linear temporality of speech. This makes graphotactics central in arguing that writing systems are indeed systematic in nature.
References
Berg, Kristian (2016): Graphemic analysis and the spoken language bias. Frontiers in Psychology 7: 388. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00388
Ho, Connie S.-H., Ting-Ting Ng & Wing-Kin Ng (2003): A ‘radical’ approach to reading development in Chinese: the role of semantic radicals and phonetic radicals. Journal of Literacy Research 35.3: 849-878. DOI: 10.1207/s15548430jlr3503_3
McCawley, James D. (1994): Some graphotactic constraints. In W. C. Watt (ed.), Writing systems and cognition (= Neuropsychology and Cognition, 6), 115-127. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-94-015-8285-8_7
Winskel, Heather (2009): Reading in Thai: the case of misaligned vowels. Reading and Writing 22.1: 1-24. DOI: 10.1007/s11145-007-9100-z
Dieser Beitrag widmet sich drei der relevantesten (und dominantesten) Ansätze einer semantischen Analyse des Phänomens: Angefangen mit der (1) informationsstrukturellen Annahme eines perspektivischen Zentrums in Existenzsätzen, das den GenNeg überall dort lizensiert, wo eine Situation aus Sicht eines Schauplatzes/Ortes und nicht der/des darin befindlichen Referenten betrachtet wird (Bsp. Ivana ne bylo na lekcii), zu der Formulierung der (2) Property-Type-Hypothese, die davon ausgeht, dass jene Nomenphrasen (NPs), die im Genitiv auftreten, eine Verschiebung ihres semantischen Typs (von Typ e, der individuelle Referenten bezeichnet, zu Typ <e,t>, der für Merkmale/Eigenschaften steht) erfahren haben (Bsp. Ja ne ljublju ėtoj pevicy = Ich mag etwas an der Sängerin nicht, bspw. ihren Gesang) bis hin zur umfassendsten Analyse nicht-kanonischer Genitivverwendungen (zu denen auch der Genitiv nach intensionalen Verben wie ždat‘ gehört), dem Konzept des (3) irrealen Genitivs, der einerseits ebenfalls voraussetzt, dass mit dem GenNeg markierte NPs eine semantische Typverschiebung durchmachen (s. Punkt (2)) sowie andererseits nur Referenten ohne Existenzpräsupposition kennzeichnet (Bsp. Lena ne polučila otveta; es wird nicht ausgesagt, dass überhaupt eine Antwort existiert).
Anhand von Beispielen werden diese Ansätze präsentiert und diskutiert, wobei besonderes Augenmerk auf jene Aspekte gelegt wird, die nach wie vor offene Fragen aufwerfen. Ergänzt werden die eigenen Analysen ausgewählter Beispielsätze (sowohl bekannte aus der Literatur als auch neue aus dem russischen Nationalkorpus) durch die intuitiven Grammatikalitätsurteile von MuttersprachlerInnen. Das Ziel ist neben einer systematischen Darstellung und Kritik der bisherigen Erkenntnisse zur Semantik des GenNeg auch die Erstellung eines Desideratakatalogs, der Anknüpfungspunkte für die zukünftige Forschung identifiziert.
However, the existence of orthographic standardization cannot be captured by a simplifying dichotomy, with systems like English classified as unregulated and systems like German as officially regulated; instead, there is a whole variety of different orthographies that serve as a normative benchmark in writing systems, rendering their respective users aware of the (in)correctness of scribal practices. In this paper, such different types of orthography will be described with the help of sever-al criteria that form the basis of a preliminary typology. In systems that are equipped with one, an orthography becomes a structural matter; however, it always originates as a social phenomenon, which is echoed by the predominantly sociolinguistic nature of the following criteria (cf. also CA-HILL 2014, HINTON 2014):
— Natural vs. artificial captures whether the orthographic conventions in a writing system have de-veloped naturally, through implicit negotiations among users during the prolonged continued use of the writing system (cf. MIHM 2016 for premodern orthographies), to become a ‘phenomenon of the third kind’ (cf. KELLER 2014), or whether they are artificial in the sense of having either been (1) implemented for an existing and established writing system without consideration of the actual use of that system (whether said system already had an orthographic standardization or not), or (2) im-plemented immediately during/after the creation of a new writing system, which has thus never been in use without a standardization.
— Regulated vs. unregulated describes, in a narrow sense, whether an orthographic standardization is officially regulated by an external stakeholder of linguistic policy (such as the Council for German Orthography in the case of German orthography) or not (such as English orthographies; cf. also KARAN 2014).
— Codified vs. uncodified reflects whether orthographic conventions are externally and explicitly cod-ified as rules – whether these are officially regulated or not. Types of codifications include rule-books, guidelines, and dictionaries. Notably, orthographies can be unregulated but codified (such as English orthographies, for which there exist dictionaries with – strictly speaking – only nonofficial status).
— Original vs. reformed is a subcriterion assessing whether a regulated codified orthography exists in its first, i.e., original form, or whether it has been reformed, i.e., re-codified, at least once.
— Community involvement vs. no community involvement (or a continuum of bottom-up vs. top-down standardization): In a loose sense, this criterion pertains to the involvement of users in the (implicit or explicit, gradual or onetime) establishment of orthographic conventions, their codifica-tion as rules, and their potential reform, i.e., bottom-up processes of standardization. In a narrow sense, it describes whether community members are involved in the (initial) explicit regulation and possibly codification of orthographic rules (cf. BOW 2013, PAGE 2013 for case studies) – which is the case mostly in the context of literacy development (cf. LÜPKE 2011, the contributions in CA-HILL/RICE 2014), i.e., the creation of new writing systems from scratch.
— As the first of two criteria that are structural in nature, variable vs. nonvariable establishes a con-tinuum capturing the degree of a writing system’s graphematic variability. It thus determines the possibility of (licensed or unlicensed) graphematic variation and with it, the expression of social (non-denotative) meaning and creativity etc. in writing. The Japanese writing system, for example, often affords multiple ways of writing the same word (or, more generally, utterance) without a devi-ance from the norm automatically being perceived as strictly ‘incorrect’ (cf. JOYCE/MASUDA 2019). It is crucial whether these variable parts of a writing system are unregulated, as there may exist graphematically highly variable writing systems which are strictly regulated and thus do not afford the same possibilities for ‘correct’ graphematic variation.
— Motivated vs. arbitrary is used to evaluate whether orthographic conventions/rules are based on the graphematics of the writing system, i.e., its internal systematics and its actual usage, in which case they are motivated, or whether they are arbitrary and based on other (external) considerations.
It is important to emphasize that this list is, of course, non-exhaustive. However, the proposed crite-ria allow categorizing and comparing different types of orthographic standardization. This can (fi-nally) further our understanding of the status that diverse kinds of norms assume in different writing systems. Notably, linguistic norms arguably play a more prominent role in the written modality than in the spoken one – they possibly even originate in writing and literacy (cf. MĬKIL¬LÄH¬DE/LEP¬PÄ-NEN/IT¬KON¬EN 2019 for normativity in language).
In this paper, not only the listed criteria will be presented – along with examples of writing systems and their orthographies to which they apply in various combinations – but a related im-portant question that will be raised is what bearing this typology has on central normative concepts such as ‘orthographic rule’ and ‘orthographic mistake’. Specifically, differences in the perception of prescriptivity will be highlighted – what to members of one literate community may be a rule (and a deviation from it a mistake) may for members of another community merely be a convention (and a ‘deviation’ from it variation). Fleshing out the basis of grapholinguistic normativity is expected to not only improve our understanding of writing and literacy practices, but pragmatics – and meta-pragmatic beliefs – regarding the linguistic and communicative behavior of members of literate communities in general. Furthermore, it is relevant to applied fields such as literacy development and the reform of existing orthographies.
References
BERG, KRISTIAN & MARK ARONOFF. 2017. Self-organization in the spelling of English suffixes: The emergence of culture out of anarchy. Language 93(1). 37–64. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2017.0000
BERG, KRISTIAN & MARK ARONOFF. 2018. Further evidence for self-organization in English spelling. Language 94(1). e48–e53. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2018.0013
BOW, CATHERINE. 2013. Community-based orthography development in four Western Zambian languages. Writ-ing Systems Research 5(1). 73–87. https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2012.747427
CAHILL, MICHAEL. 2014. Non-linguistic factors in orthographies. In Michael Cahill & Keren Rice (eds.), Develop-ing orthographies for unwritten languages, 9–25. Dallas: SIL International.
CAHILL, MICHAEL & KEREN RICE (eds.). 2014. Developing orthographies for unwritten languages. Dallas: SIL In-ternational.
DÜRSCHEID, CHRISTA. 2016. Einführung in die Schriftlinguistik, 5th edn. (UTB 3740). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
HINTON, LEANNE. 2014. Orthography wars. In Michael Cahill & Keren Rice (eds.), Developing or¬tho¬graphies for unwritten languages, 139–168. Dallas: SIL International.
JOYCE, TERRY & HISASHI MASUDA. 2019. On the notions of orthography and graphematic representation from the perspective of the Japanese writing system. Written Language & Literacy 22(2). 247–279. https://doi.org/10.1075/wll.00028.joy
KARAN, ELKE. 2014. Standardization: What’s the hurry? In Michael Cahill & Keren Rice (eds.), Developing or-thographies for unwritten languages, 107–138. Dallas: SIL International.
KELLER, RUDI. 2014. Sprachwandel: von der unsichtbaren Hand in der Sprache, 4th edn. (UTB, 1567). Tübingen: Francke.
LÜPKE, FRIEDERIKE. 2011. Orthography development. In Peter Austoin & Julia Sallabank (eds.), Hand-book of en-dangered languages, 312–336. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511975981.016
MÄKILLÄHDE, ALEKSI, VILLE LEPPÄNEN & ESA ITKONEN. 2019. Norms and normativity in language and linguistics: Basic concepts and contextualization. In Aleksi Mäkillähde, Ville Leppänen & Esa Itkonen (eds.), Norms and normativity in language and linguistics, 1–28. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.209.01mak
MELETIS, DIMITRIOS. 2020. The nature of writing. A theory of grapholinguistics (Grapholinguistics and Its Applica-tions 3). Brest: Fluxus Éditions. https://doi.org/10.36824/2020-meletis
MIHM, AREND. 2016. Zur Theorie der vormodernen Orthographien: Straßburger Schreibsysteme als Erkenntnis-grundlage. Sprachwissenschaft 41(3–4). 271–309.
NEEF, MARTIN. 2015. Writing systems as modular objects: Proposals for theory design in grapholinguistics. Open Linguistics 1. 708–721. https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2015-0026
PAGE, CHRISTINA J. 2013. A new orthography in an unfamiliar script: A case study in participatory engagement strategies. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 34(5). 459–474. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2013.783035
These start already at the structural level, as the restricted focus on the relation between writing and language results in a disregard of systematic structural features that are intrinsic to writing systems, i.e., not determined by their relation to language. These include, for example, allography, i.e., systematic variation of variant units in writing, or graphotactics, the rules of how units of writing may combine to form larger units (such as written words, sentences, etc.). Notably, a restriction to structure dismisses paramount questions concerning the use of writing systems, e.g., how they are processed and used for communication, bringing to the fore psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives. Potential criteria for possible psycholinguistic typologies of writing include, for example, spacing between graphemes or written words, or the visual complexity exhibited by the script used for a writing system. A candidate for a sociolinguistic typology is the degree of normativity and prescriptivism characterizing a literate culture, which is established, among other things, by asking if and how the writing system in question is orthographically regulated and how this affects users’ literacy practices and ideologies pertaining to writing.
Since, in a comprehensive and integrated theory of writing, a writing system must always simultaneously be considered as a system with its own idiosyncratic features, a semiotic system relating to a given language, a graphic medium that must be physiologically and cognitively processed, and a communication tool and a cultural technique embedded in a given context and culture, structural, psycholinguistic, and sociolinguistic perspectives arguably should never be adopted completely divorced from each other (cf. Meletis 2020). This talk aims not only to present different structural and use-based typologies of writing that go beyond those brought forth by ‘traditional’ writing system typology but also to show how they are connected and interact with each other and, importantly, how this can increase our know¬ledge of the fundamental nature of writing.
REFERENCES
Joyce, Terry & Dimitrios Meletis (in press): Alternative criteria for writing system typology. Cross-linguistic observations from the German and Japanese writing systems. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft Special Issue.
Meletis, Dimitrios (2020): The nature of writing. A theory of grapholinguistics (= Grapholinguistics and Its Applications; 3). Brest: Fluxus Editions. DOI: 10.36824/2020-meletis.
Despite graphotactics being a core feature of writing systems, research on it—especially comparative—is scarce. This talk aims to systematize various types of restrictions, including, at the subsegmental level, favored positions of semantic and phonological components inside Chinese characters that “determine whether the character is legal or not” (Ho/Ng/Ng 2003: 853). As for larger written units, in many abu¬gi¬das such as Devanāgarī or Thai, secondary vowel graphemes occur in specific positions around consonants, with some being misaligned in appearing before consonants despite following them in speech (cf. Winskel 2009). A well-known length-related example is the ‘three-letter-rule’ in English: content words must consist of at least three letters (distinguishing <buy> from <by>).
Crucially, graphotactic regularities are independent of external orthographic regulation and thus not explicit, codified rules but intrinsic to writing systems as self-regulating systems and thus part of users’ implicit knowledge. They rely fundamentally on a two-dimensional spatiality that departs from the linear temporality of speech. This makes graphotactics central in arguing that writing systems are indeed systematic in nature.
References
Berg, Kristian (2016): Graphemic analysis and the spoken language bias. Frontiers in Psychology 7: 388. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00388
Ho, Connie S.-H., Ting-Ting Ng & Wing-Kin Ng (2003): A ‘radical’ approach to reading development in Chinese: the role of semantic radicals and phonetic radicals. Journal of Literacy Research 35.3: 849-878. DOI: 10.1207/s15548430jlr3503_3
McCawley, James D. (1994): Some graphotactic constraints. In W. C. Watt (ed.), Writing systems and cognition (= Neuropsychology and Cognition, 6), 115-127. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-94-015-8285-8_7
Winskel, Heather (2009): Reading in Thai: the case of misaligned vowels. Reading and Writing 22.1: 1-24. DOI: 10.1007/s11145-007-9100-z
In a recent pilot study 21 semi-structured interviews with Austrian university students were conducted to investigate attitudes on (i) orthographic regulation, (ii) deviances from the written standard and denigrating public corrections of mistakes (so-called ‘orthographic shaming’), as well as (iii) changes of orthography, i.e. spelling reforms and involved stakeholders.
Many of the participants’ utterances, e.g. “Every time that I’m writing somewhere, I’m writing, and therefore it has to be correct”, were entrenched in normativity and (self-)prescriptivism, the most important aspects of which will be traced in this talk, as a metapragmatic discourse analysis of the interviews shows that in a literate community whose writing is orthographically regulated, (1) normativity appears to be inherent to literacy practices, which are strongly affected by standard language ideologies, (2) knowledge of various norms pertaining to the written standard is considered social/cultural capital and is instrumentalized in the establishment and reinforcement of hierarchies of power, and that, generally, (3) the public’s nuanced attitudes towards orthography and literacy prove invaluable in examining the interaction between the status of prescriptive orthographies as central cornerstones of linguistic policy and everyday literacy practices.
Dickinson, Jennifer A. (2015): Introduction: Language ideologies and writing systems. Pragmatics 25.4: 507–516.
Heyd, Theresa (2014): Folk-linguistic landscapes: The visual semiotics of digital enregisterment. Language in Society 43: 489–514.
Johnson, Sally (2002): On the origin of linguistic norms: orthography, ideology and the first con-stitutional challenge to the 1996 reform of German. Language in Society 31: 549-576.
Weth, Constanze & Kasper Juffermans (2018): Introduction: The tyranny of writing in language and society. In Constanze Weth & Kasper Juffermans (eds.), The tyranny of writing: Ideologies of the written word, 1–19. London, New York: Bloomsbury.
This talk aims to contribute to a first historiographic account by discussing and contextualizing the main points of three disputes centering on issues of writing and encapsulating the most pressing questions the discipline studies to this day.
In the first dispute, prolific writing researcher Peter T. Daniels proclaims – in a LACUS Forum talk – that “[t]here cannot be a structural graphemics” (Daniels 1991: 528) since writing systems cannot be treated with the same concepts as language. He argues that writing is merely a representation of language with no systematics of its own, thus rejecting the possibility of concepts such as grapheme. In a response, Earl M. Herrick (Herrick 1994) takes the opposite stance: writing is a system of its own and has idiosyncratic features that can only be captured in an independent grapholinguistic analysis. In two talks/papers as well as two additional replies, the two scholars adhere to views referred to as the dependency view and the autonomy view, respectively, reproducing an argument with a long tradition in German grapholinguistics, the crucial questions of which are being discussed to this day as they have a bearing on the very raison d’être of grapholinguistics as its own discipline.
In the second argument, Herbert E. Brekle attacks semiotician W. C. Watt’s (1994) view of the diachronic development of writing as a systematic evolutionary process not unsimilar to that of language. Specifically, Brekle (1994) criticizes four evolutionary ‘forces’ assumed by Watt: homogenization, facilitation, heterogenization, and inertia, addressing not only their (un)consciousness but also their cognitive reality as well as the problematics of the teleology they imply. Additionally, Brekle laments that vital factors of economical, technical, and social nature remain unaccounted for in Watt’s framework.
The third dispute starts with Primus’ (2004) claim of form-function-correlations between visual features of Roman letters and phonological features of the phonemes they represent, which is forcefully attacked by Rezec (2010). This argument touches on the core of the question of how writing is approached as a subject and the systematics one attempts or expects to find in it. This links it to the first two arguments in that it addresses whether writing is merely a representational system or its own system as well as whether, in its diachronic development, iconic relations between the visual and the linguistic such as proposed by Primus could have been established.
Even though they represent only three points in a gradual development, these disputes are strikingly representative of contemporary discourses in grapholinguistics. By contextualizing them and highlighting their relevance for the discipline, this talk is a crucial contribution to a much-needed grapholinguistic historiography.
BREKLE, HERBERT E. (1994): Some thoughts on a historico-genetic theory of the lettershapes of our alphabet. In W. C. WATT (ed.), Writing systems and cognition, 129-139. Dordrecht: Springer.
DANIELS, PETER T. (1991): Is a structural graphemics possible? LACUS Forum 18:528-537.
HERRICK, EARL M. (1994): Of course a structural graphemics is possible! LACUS Forum 21:413-424.
PRIMUS, BEATRICE (2004): A featural analysis of the Modern Roman Alphabet. Written Language and Literacy 7.2:235-274.
REZEC, OLIVER (2010): Der vermeintliche Zusammenhang zwischen Buchstabenformen und Lautwerten. Erwiderung auf einige Thesen von B. Primus. Linguistische Berichte 223:343-366.
WATT, W. C. (1994): Introduction. In W. C. WATT (ed.), Writing systems and cognition, 89-114. Dordrecht: Springer.
The ample evidence pointing to the syllable as a central grapholinguistic unit starts at the structural level: Aside from (parts of) writing systems in which the syllable is the unmarked basic unit of representation, such as the Japanese kana syllabaries or, indirectly, the morpho(syllabo)graphic Chinese writing system, syllabic structures are also reflected in alphabets, i.e. segmental phonographic writing systems. For German and English, for example, a so-called graphematic syllable has been postulated based on the observation that syllable boundaries are visually marked in writing by letters with descenders and ascenders, such as |bel| in German <Gabel> ‘fork’ (cf. Fuhrhop & Buchmann 2009; Fuhrhop, Buchmann & Berg 2011). This visual demarcation of syllables, interestingly, also holds for alphabets using scripts other than Roman such as Greek and Armenian (cf. Meletis 2019). Strikingly, it has been shown that some letters with ascenders or descenders such as |y| were diachronically ousted from the graphematic syllable nucleus precisely because they were gradually functionalized as visual markers of syllable boundaries (cf. Fuhrhop & Schmidt 2014). This begs the question of why and how such a development proceeded. In light of the claim that humans did not evolve to better process writing, a relatively recent invention, but that inversely, writing was gradually ‘changed’ by humans to suit and repurpose existing cognitive abilities (cf. Dehaene 2009), the focus shifts to processing as the central dimension for an inquiry of the syllable’s relevance.
While (segmental) phonological awareness might only be constituted by the acquisition of a segmental writing system which either makes phonological segments accessible or actually constructs them in the first place (cf. Davidson 2019), awareness of the phonological syllable has been found to be more robust and to exist earlier (cf. McBride-Chang & Kail 2002), suggesting that the syllable is not only central in phylogeny, but also in ontogeny. Accordingly, in literacy instruction, for alphabets such as German, methods based on syllables (such as Röber-Siekmeyer 2004) are gaining currency. Fittingly, Inkelas et al. (2013), in their study on the ‘learnability of writing systems’, found that graphemes representing syllables are acquired more easily than graphemes representing segments. Additional experimental evidence suggests that the syllable also plays a crucial role in production. For example, Kandel, Álvarez & Vallée (2006) found that in handwriting, intergrapheme intervals were longer at syllable boundaries than intrasyllabically: the interval between the graphemes in the sequence <gn>, which is always intrasyllabic in French (such as in <consi.gner>) and intersyllabic in Spanish (<consig.nar>), was shorter in French than in Spanish, and not only for monolingual writers of these respective languages, but also for bilingual French-Spanish writers, who systematically produced a shorter interval when writing French. For typing, Will, Nottbusch & Weingarten (2006) showed that inter-keystroke intervals were longer at syllable boundaries than within syllables, implying that syllables are relevant for the motor system.
Evidently, both the structure of writing systems and their processing by writers and readers imply that the syllable is somehow special. On the basis of the cited evidence above, this talk aims to discuss a number of questions: (1) Is the salience of the phonological syllable universal or mediated by the specific syllable structure/phonotactics of given languages? (2) Given the efforts of – mostly German – grapholinguists to define written units independently of units of speech and/or language, do there exist independent ‘syllabic’ structures in writing (cf. Primus 2003)? How are they similar to phonological syllables and how do they diverge from them in different types of writing systems? Finally, preliminary answers to these questions are integrated into the larger question of how writing and speech relate to one another to further our knowledge about the nature of writing and to refine existing models of writing.
References
Daniels, Peter T. (1992): The syllabic origin of writing and the segmental origin of the alphabet. In Pamela Downing, Susan D. Lima & Michael Noonan (eds.), The linguistics of literacy (= Ty-pological Studies in Language, 21), 83-110. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/tsl.21.10dan
Daniels, Peter T. (2017): Writing systems. In Mark Aronoff & Janie Rees-Miller (eds.), The handbook of linguistics, 2nd edition, 75-94. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI: 10.1002/9781119072 256.ch5
Davidson, Andrew (2019): Writing: the re-construction of language. Language Sciences 72: 134-149. DOI: 10.1016/j.langsci.2018.09.004
Dehaene, Stanislas (2009): Reading in the brain: the new science of how we read. London: Penguin.
Fuhrhop, Nanna & Franziska Buchmann (2009): Die Längenhierarchie: Zum Bau der graphematischen Silbe. Linguistische Berichte 218: 127-155.
Fuhrhop, Nanna, Franziska Buchmann & Kristian Berg (2011): The length hierarchy and the gra¬-phematic syllable. Written Language and Literacy 14.2: 275-292. DOI: 10.1075/wll.14. 2.05fuh
Fuhrhop, Nanna & Karsten Schmidt (2014): Die zunehmende Profilierung der Schreibsilbe in der Geschichte des Deutschen. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 136.4: 538-568. DOI: 10.1515/bgsl-2014-0047
Kandel, Sonia, Carlos J. Álvarez & Nathalie Vallée (2006): Syllables as processing units in hand-writing production. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 32.1: 18-31. DOI: 10.1037/0096-1523.32.1.18
Inkelas, Sharon, Keith Johnson, Charles Lee, Emil Minas, George Mulcaire, Gek Yong Keng & To-momi Yuasa (2013): Testing the learnability of writing systems. Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 75-89. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society. DOI: 10.3765/bls.v39i1.3871
McBride-Chang, Catherine & Robert V. Kail (2002): Cross-cultural similarities in the predictors of reading acquisition. Child Development 73.5: 1392-1407. DOI: 10.1111/1467-8624.00479
Meletis, Dimitrios (2019): Naturalness in scripts and writing systems: Outlining a Natural Grapholinguistics. PhD dissertation, University of Graz.
Primus, Beatrice (2003): Zum Silbenbegriff in der Schrift-, Laut- und Gebärdensprache – Versuch einer mediumübergreifenden Fundierung. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 23.1: 3-55. DOI: 10.1515/zfsw.2003.22.1.3
Röber-Siekmeyer, Christa (2004): Die Berücksichtigung des kindlichen Sprachwissens für den Schrifterwerb. In Hans-Werner Huneke (ed.), Geschriebene Sprache. Strukturen, Erwerb, didaktische Modellbildungen, 129-144. Heidelberg: Mattes.
Will, Udo, Guido Nottbusch & Rüdiger Weingarten (2006): Linguistic units in word typing. Effects of word presentation modes and typing delay. Written Language and Literacy 9.1: 153-176. DOI: 10.1075/wll.9.1.10wil
In order to move beyond dominant (synchronic) spelling principles, writing system typologies need to adopt a more diverse set of criteria (Share & Daniels 2016), which can be organized beneficially under three categories: (a) linguistic fit (match between writing system and language), (b) processing fit (both physiological and cognitive) and (c) sociocultural fit (communicative and social functions) (Meletis 2018). Naturally, such diverse categories interact dynamically and are often in conflict, but, crucially, they can afford valuable insights into the diachronic ‘evolution’ of writing systems.
Our paper elucidates these criteria with observations from both the German and Japanese writing systems. Japanese is a complicated mixture, consisting of morphographic kanji, syllabographic kana, and alphabetic Roman script, and although generally classified as an alphabet, German is also more accurately analyzed as a mixed system, due to its pervasive morphography (Schmidt 2018; Berg 2019). Moreover, their respective grapheme inventories are highly contrastive, and a number of inventory-related criteria have direct implications at various levels of graphematic representation. These, in turn, are of particular significance for many processing factors, such as syllabification and the saliency of syllables (cf. the emergence of the graphematic syllable in German; Fuhrhop & Schmidt 2014).
Of profound relevance to writing systems typology, the diverse criteria explored in this paper are particularly promising for cross-linguistic investigations of writing systems and for illuminating their diachronic changes.
References:
Berg, K. (2019). Die Graphematik der Morpheme im Deutschen und Englischen. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Daniels, P. T. (2018). An exploration of writing. Bristol: Equinox.
Fuhrhop, N. & K. Schmidt (2014). Die zunehmende Profilierung der Schreibsilbe in der Geschichte des Deutschen. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 136(4), 538-568.
Gelb, I. J. (1952): A study of writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Joyce, T. (2016). Writing systems and scripts. In A. Rocci & L. de Saussure (eds.), Verbal communication (287–308). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.
Meletis, D. (2018). What is natural in writing? Prolegomena to a Natural Grapholinguistics. Written Language and Literacy 21(1), 52-88.
Sampson, G. (2015). Writing systems: a linguistic introduction (2nd ed.). Bristol: Equinox.
Share, D. L. & P. T. Daniels (2016). Aksharas, alphasyllabaries, abugidas, alphabets and orthographic depth: Reflections on Rimzhim, Katz and Fowler (2014). Writing Systems Research 8(1), 17-31.
Schmidt, K. (2018). Phonographie und Morphographie im Deutschen. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.
Mit diesem natürlichkeitstheoretischen Fundament kann erklärt werden, warum Schriftsysteme so aussehen, wie sie heute aussehen. Erklärungen werden dabei weiter unterteilt in drei Bereiche: linguistische, verarbeitungstechnische und soziokulturelle. Linguistisch kann untersucht werden, wie Schriftsysteme als sekundäre, visuelle semiotische Systeme sich dem jeweiligen zugrunde liegenden Sprachsystem (als primärem semiotischen System) anpassen. Verarbeitungstechnisch gilt, was Dehaene (2009) konstatiert: Schrift ist als Erfindung zu jung, als dass Menschen sich evolutionär an sie hätten anpassen können, also war es umgekehrt – Schrift passte sich unserer Biologie und Kognition an. Drittens bleibt für Schrift als Kulturtechnik die hochrelevante soziokulturelle Dimension. Schriftsysteme sind geprägt durch die Bedürfnisse von literaten Sprachgemeinschaften. Sie erlauben es, sich als Individuum oder Gruppe sozial zu präsentieren, zu positionieren etc. Diese drei Dimensionen spiegeln sich in der diachronen Ent-wicklung von Schrift sowie ihrer synchronen Struktur wider.
In diesem Vortrag werden die Grundpfeiler einer natürlichen Schriftlinguistik sowie die drei genannten Erklärungsdimensionen anhand von Beispielen aus den diversesten Schriftsystemen – Deutsch, Chinesisch, Thailändisch, Arabisch, Koreanisch – vorgestellt und illustriert.
Dehaene, Stanislas (2009): Reading in the brain: the new science of how we read. London: Penguin.
Donegan, Patricia & David Stampe (2009): Hypotheses of Natural Phonology. Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 45.1: 1-31. DOI: 10.2478/v10010-009-0002-x
Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Marianne Kilani-Schoch (2016): Natural Morphology. In Andrew Hippisley & Gregory Stump (eds.), The Cambridge handbook of morphology, 356-389. Cambridge: CUP.
Based on Meletis (2018), this talk introduces the core tenets of Natural Graphematics as an explanatory theoretical framework that makes possible the comparison of writing systems. It is positioned in the framework of Naturalness Theory and modeled after its subbranch of Natural Morphology. In Natural Morphology (Dressler et al., 1987), the semiotic structure of signs is assumed to have a bearing on how they are cognitively processed by humans, with structures that are cognitively processed with less effort being termed natural, giving the approach its name. As writing systems are semiotic systems linking the visual units of scripts (= signifiers) with linguistic units (= signifieds), the semiotic parameters of Natural Morphology can be fruitfully transferred to graphematics. Accordingly, parameters such as transparency (a grapheme is transparent if it only corresponds with one linguistic unit, e.g. German <f> only corresponds to /f/) prove to be useful categories for the description and comparison of the graphematic module of writing systems. In this talk, the parameters of iconicity, diagrammaticity, indexicality, transparency, compositional transparency, positional transparency, and figure—ground will be presented and illustrated with examples from a variety of diverse writing systems.
While the investigation of how these parameters are reflected in different writing systems descriptively evaluates their linguistic fit, i.e. how well they fit their respective languages, in a next step, the processing fit of these parameters can be assessed with the help of external evidence such as data from literacy acquisition and the history of writing. Here, the central question reads: How do the structural features of writing systems affect their processing by humans? The processing fit also gives Natural Graphematics its explanatory force, as it does not stop at describing structures, but strives to explain how human pressure has shaped them and how they affect humans. In sum, taken together, the naturalness parameters and their linguistic and processing fits introduced in this talk offer instruments for the evaluation of writing systems. This presents a remarkable step in the development of a theory of writing.
DRESSLER, WOLFGANG U., WILLI MAYERTHALER, OSWALD PANAGL, and WOLFGANG U. WURZEL. 1987. Leitmotifs in Natural Morphology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
MELETIS, DIMITRIOS. 2018. What is natural in writing? Prolegomena to a Natural Grapholinguistics. Written Language and Literacy 21:52-88.
ROGERS, HENRY. 1995. Optimal orthographies. In Scripts and literacy: reading and learning to read alphabets, syllabaries and characters, edited by INSUP TAYLOR, and DAVID R. OLSON, 31-43. Dordrecht: Springer.
WATT, W. C. 1998. The old-fashioned way. Semiotica 122:99-138.
A context in which it becomes strikingly apparent that orthography is a form of social action (cf. Jaffe 2012; Sebba 2007) is social media. Frequently, written utterances on Facebook etc. that include orthographic mistakes are corrected by others (who are sometimes referred to as gram-mar or spelling nazis). In numerous cases, this is done not neutrally but in a manner that osten-tatiously degrades the person who made the mistake. I call this phenomenon orthographic shaming. It is characterized by the fact that people interpret linguistic knowledge, in this case the knowledge of orthographic norms, as a source of power: knowing something others do not – and pointing this out to them – validates their superiority.
In this talk, I present the results of a study that employs a combination of three methods to in-vestigate orthographic shaming in German: (1) a qualitative analysis of 100 correction samples including the respective contexts on Facebook, (2) semi-structured oral interviews with 21 par-ticipants regarding their attitudes towards orthography, mistakes, and orthographic shaming, and (3) written interviews with ‘orthographic shamers.’
In the analysis, I focus on the pragmatic aspects of orthographic shaming. Informed by previous studies on speech acts in social media (cf. Carr, Schrock & Dauterman 2012), speech acts with-in orthographic shaming comments and the reactions to them are identified. Conclusions are drawn as to the pragmatic behavior surrounding orthographic shaming as well as the attitudes towards this behavior. Ultimately, the phenomenon of orthographic shaming is an expression of a negotiation of power and normativity and a gradual change of discussion culture.
References
Carr, Caleb T., David B. Schrock & Patricia Dauterman (2012): Speech acts within Facebook status messages. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 31(2): 176-196.
Jaffe, Alexandra M. (et al.) (eds.) (2012): Orthography as social action: Scripts, spelling, iden-tity and power. Berlin: DeGruyter.
Johnson, Sally (2005): Spelling trouble? Language, ideology, and the reform of German or-thography. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Sebba, Mark (2007): Spelling and society: The culture and politics of orthography around the world. Cambridge: CUP.
A problem inherent in the modeling of writing is the question of the relationship between language, speech, and writing. In this context, predominantly Eurocentric efforts to define a graphematics autonomous from phonology have been misguided. This becomes evident when the approach is extended to non-phonographic writing systems, which yields the following question: if writing in morphographic systems such as Chinese is clearly dependent on mor-phology, why should writing in phonographic systems not be dependent on phonology, which is vehemently rejected by autonomists?
In this talk, I argue that writing and speech are two modalities of an abstract, amodal lan-guage system. What characterizes them and renders them so distinct is their materiality – visual on the one hand, acoustic on the other. They are not dependent on each other, but they are equal-ly dependent on abstract linguistic levels such as phonology and morphology. Crucially, pho-nology does not equal speech, but is interpreted amodally, offering minimal lexical contrasts that can be either spoken or written. Thus, while writing is always independent of speech, it can be dependent on phonology. Systems such as Chinese, however, can bypass this (direct) connec-tion to phonology and relate to morphological units instead. Consequently, minimal lexical con-trasts cannot be expressed in these systems. Ultimately, what has been termed grapheme in the autonomous approach and defined in analogy to the phoneme is exposed as an alphabetocentric concept not viable for a universal model of writing.
Using a variety of examples from diverse writing systems, I propose such a model that ac-counts for typological diversity and offers both graphetic and graphematic concepts and termi-nology for the description and comparison of historical and contemporary writing systems.
A context in which it becomes strikingly apparent that orthography is a form of social action (cf. Jaffe 2012; Sebba 2007) is social media. Frequently, written utterances on Facebook etc. that include orthographic mistakes are corrected by others. In numerous cases, this is done not neutrally but in a manner that ostentatiously degrades the person who made the mistake. I call this phenomenon orthographic shaming. It is characterized by the fact that people interpret linguistic knowledge, in this case the knowledge of orthographic norms, as a source of power: knowing something others do not – and pointing it out to them – validates their superiority.
In this talk, I discuss the results of a study that employs a combination of three methods to investigate orthographic shaming in German: (1) an analysis of 100 correction samples including the respective contexts on Facebook, (2) interviews with people of different backgrounds regarding their attitudes towards orthography, mistakes, and orthographic shaming, and (3) an internet survey based on Likert scales and open questions investigating the severity of different types of mistakes as well as possible reactions to them.
Questions that are addressed include: What criteria must be met for a correction to count as orthographic shaming? What are the contexts in which this phenomenon occurs? Which mistakes are most often corrected – is there a scale of severity? What are the motivations for people to engage in orthographic shaming? What are the reactions to orthographic shaming? And finally, what are general attitudes towards (German) orthography?
References:
Jaffe, Alexandra M. (et al.) (eds.) (2012): Orthography as social action: Scripts, spelling, identity and power. Berlin: DeGruyter.
Johnson, Sally (2005): Spelling trouble? Language, ideology, and the reform of German orthography. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Sebba, Mark (2007): Spelling and society: The culture and politics of orthography around the world. Cambridge: CUP.
Der euro- und alphabetozentrische Fokus der Schriftlinguistik und -forschung (vgl. Ehlich 2007; Share 2014) hat dazu geführt, dass der Diversität von Orthographie(n) bisher wenig bis gar keine Beachtung geschenkt wurde. Coulmas (1996: 379f.) nennt beispielweise Phonem-Graphem-Korrespondenzen, Wort- und Silbentrennung, Groß- und Kleinschreibung sowie die Schreibung von Lehnwörtern als zentrale Aspekte der orthographischen Normierung alphabetischer Schriftsysteme. Im Zuge eines Vergleichs von Schriftsystemen, wie ihn die komparative Schriftlinguistik (Meletis i.E.; Weingarten 2011) vornimmt, wird jedoch deutlich, dass nur wenige dieser Aspekte orthographieübergreifend von Bedeutung sind; vielmehr unterliegen andere, spezifische Bereiche der jeweiligen Schriftsysteme orthographischen Normen.
Dieser Vortrag behandelt anhand von zahlreichen Beispielen die Frage, wie orthographische „Regeln“ und „Rechtschreibfehler“ in Systemen wie dem Chinesischen, dem Arabischen, dem Thailändischen, dem Japanischen, dem Koreanischen und dem Hebräischen aussehen; auf diese Weise wird die Diversität von Orthographie(n) bzw. orthographischen Modulen beleuchtet. Gleichzeitig wird untersucht, inwiefern „orthographische Universalien“ bzw. universale Tendenzen existieren. Ebenfalls werden die Akteur_innen und Interessensvertreter_innen thematisiert, die an der Gestaltung einer Orthographie teilhaben: Wer sind sie und was sind ihre Motivationen? Der Vortrag schließt mit einem Fazit, in dem Vorschläge für die zukünftige Orthographieforschung gemacht werden und für eine differenziertere Schriftlinguistik plädiert wird.
I will argue that the misleading reductionist analogy between phonology/phonetics and graphematics/graphetics as well as the lack of commitment to one of the views listed above have contributed to a false hierarchizing within grapholinguistics. This has e. g. led to the ambiguity of terms such as allography, referring both to material (|a| and |ɑ|) as well as functional variation (<ph> and <f> for /f/). Therefore, a consistent distinction between graphetic and graphematic units seems inevitable: by postulating a central graphetic unit termed basic shape (cf. Rezec 2013), the grapheme is relieved of its duty of being both functional and material.
Furthermore, I will address the challenge of finding a conception of grapheme that holds across various types of writing systems (cf. Lockwood 2001). Can e. g. Chinese and German graphemes be compared? How does comparison inform our understanding of the grapheme? And can the grapheme further our understanding of what is at the core of all writing systems?
I will close my talk with refined terminological suggestions for grapholinguistics and a possible answer to the question if there is indeed a need for the concept of grapheme.
References
Bazell, C. E. (1956): The grapheme. Litera 3, 43–46.
Daniels, Peter T. (1991): Is a structural graphemics possible? LACUS Forum XVIII, 528–537.
Herrick, Earl M. (1994): Of course a structural graphemics is possible! LACUS Forum XXI, 413–424.
Kohrt, Manfred (1986): The term ‘grapheme’ in the history and theory of linguistics. In Gerhard Augst (ed.), New trends in graphemics and orthography, 80–96. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Lockwood, David G. (2001): Phoneme and grapheme – How parallel can they be? LACUS Forum XXVII, 307–316.
Neef, Martin (2015): Writing systems as modular objects: proposals for theory design in grapholinguistics. Open Linguistics 1, 708–721.
Rezec, Oliver (2013): Ein differenzierteres Strukturmodell des deutschen Schriftsystems. Linguistische Berichte 234, 227–254.
To date, this subject has been predominantly excluded from linguistic theorizing because of the implicit general agreement among linguists that the specific shape and look of writing – with its varying features, e.g. font, type size, color, writing surface, etc. – do not contribute to the (denotative) meaning or generally, the linguistic structure of written utterances. It is the goal of this talk to prove the functions of the materiality of writing are manifold – and linguistically relevant.
The first part of the talk gives a brief outline of the most relevant historical conditions, obstacles, and milestones that are central to the development of graphetics within linguistics. As part of this historical reconstruction, definitions are presented, vocal advocates and their work are named, and key problems are compiled.
The second and key part then presents a descriptive graphetic model as a main concern of visual graphetics. Based on visual properties – especially blank spaces of different levels, e.g. word spaces, line breaks etc. – inherent in a variety of typologically different writing systems (e.g. German, Chinese, Arabic, and Thai), a number of descriptive graphetic units and levels is postulated and discussed.
Finally, a range of unresolved issues and desiderata are presented that ultimately serve as a means of incentive and orientation for future research in this area.
References
Meletis, Dimitrios (2015): Graphetik: Form und Materialität von Schrift (= Typo|Druck). Glückstadt: Werner Hülsbusch.
Neef, Martin (2015): Writing systems as modular objects: proposals for theory design in grapholinguistics. Open Linguistics 1, 708–721.
By contrast, use comes to the forefront in psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic approaches to writing. Phenomena studied by psycholinguistics include processes of reading and writing, literacy acquisition, and disorders of reading and written expression, while the sociolinguistic study of writing has focused, among other things, on the social functions of writing (and its various registers), practices of literacy, and, crucially, ideologies associated with writing.
In practice, systematic, psycholinguistic, and sociolinguistic aspects interact and together shape both how writing is structured and how it is used (and how these two factors, in turn, affect each other). To reflect reality in grapholinguistic theory, the systematic, psycholinguistic, and sociolinguistic perspectives should converge. Notably, exchange between these perspectives and the scholars who adopt them has been scarce. Arguably, for the sake of writing as a subject, such exchange is necessary and will likely uncover many (new) questions that have yet to be negotiated. This workshop seeks to make this exchange possible.
In featuring talks from international experts covering all three mentioned perspectives, a full(er) picture of the study of writing is expected to emerge. Scholars are invited to present their research in their field of expertise, focusing also on what it can contribute to an overall theory of writing and indicating possible important interfaces with the other perspectives. This will hopefully generate stimulating discussion(s) about the current state and, most importantly, the future of grapholinguistics and a theory of writing.
Vereinzelt kam es in der Literatur zu Versuchen, die Erforschung von Schriftphänomenen in einen globaleren theoretischen Rahmen einzubetten (für materielle Aspekte s. exemplarisch Ehlich 2001, für funktionale Aspekte Neef 2015), bisherige Fehlannahmen und Missverständnisse hinsichtlich der Beziehung von Schrift zu Sprache zu entschärfen (Joyce 2016) sowie geeignete Methoden für die schriftlinguistische Forschung zu formulieren (Weingarten 2011). Im Einklang mit diesen Beiträgen strebt auch dieser Workshop eine Diskussion und Reevaluation zentraler Kategorien und Annahmen der Schriftforschung an und lädt in diesem Sinne SchriftforscherInnen und LinguistInnen ein, die sich mit theoretischen, methodischen oder empirischen Aspekten von Schrift und Schriftsystemen aller Art beschäftigen.
Im Workshop könnten u. a. folgende Aspekte untersucht werden:
˗ terminologische Probleme der Schriftlinguistik
˗ die Typologie von Schriftsystemen und von Schriften (verstanden als Inventare graphischer Zeichen)
˗ relevante Beschreibungsebenen und -einheiten der Schriftlinguistik
˗ die Interaktion von Schriftsystemen mit verschiedenen sprachlichen Ebenen
˗ der Zusammenhang zwischen materiellen und funktionalen Aspekten von Schrift
˗ geeignete Untersuchungsmethoden innerhalb der Schriftlinguistik
˗ relevante Arten von Daten und Methoden der Datengewinnung
˗ Einbettung empirischer (u. a. psycholinguistischer, didaktischer etc.) Daten in schrifttheoretische Modelle
Vorgesehen sind 20-minütige Vorträge, gefolgt von je 10-minütigen Diskussionen. Schicken Sie bitte Ihr Abstract (max. 350 Wörter, Times New Roman, Schriftgröße 12pt, 1,5-facher Zeilenabstand, Word- oder PDF-Datei) bis spätestens 15.07.2016 an [email protected].
Literatur:
Ehlich, Konrad. 2001. Graphe-mics/[Transindividual] Graphology. In de Cillia, Rudolf & Hans-Jürgen Krumm & Ruth Wodak (eds.): Loss of Communication in the Information Age, 61–76. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.
Joyce, Terry. 2016. Writing systems and scripts. In Rocci, Andrea & Louis de Saussure (eds.): Verbal Communication (Handbooks of Communication Science; 3), 287–308. Boston, Berlin: de Gruyter.
Neef, Martin. 2015. Writing systems as modular objects: proposals for theory design in grapholinguistics. Open Linguistics 1. 708–721.
Weingarten, Rüdiger. 2011. Comparative graphematics. Written Language & Literacy 14(1). 12–38.
The genitive of negation (GenNeg) is a linguistic phenomenon typical of Slavic languages. In Modern Russian, it occurs syntactically in both subject and object positions, competing with the nominative and accusative, respectively. This case alternation has posed numerous difficult challenges for linguists for more than a century, of which the present thesis addresses a central one: Which contexts allow the use of GenNeg and what differences in meaning result from the mentioned case alternations? After a thorough description of the genitive in Russian as well as a presentation and discussion of the most relevant semantic, to some extent also syntactic theoretical approaches, the theory shall be tested in a qualitative analysis of selected examples taken from the literature on GenNeg. Furthermore, analogous linguistic structures from the Russian National Corpus as well as grammaticality judgments and intuitions from L1-speakers of Russian will be used to review how the examples reflect the reality of modern language use. It will be shown that nouns which allow assignment of GenNeg display the following features: Firstly, they lack a relative presupposition of existence/presence, which means that it is not assumed that the referent they refer to exists or is present in a certain domain; secondly, they are of the semantic type <e, t> which does not denote individuals, but properties; this is why GenNeg is often interpreted as indefinite and unspecific. Processes of linguistic change determine that the frequency with which GenNeg is used is decreasing, whereas the other cases (nom and acc) become the neutral, unmarked choices. On the basis of the systematic description of the state of the arts as well as the analysis of selected examples, desiderata are presented that serve as starting points for future research on this topic.
The term graphetics serves as the title for a scientific discipline that deals with problems concerning the formal and material aspects of scripts. Thus far, this subject has mostly been excluded from linguistic theorizing because there was general agreement among linguists that the specific shape and look of written language - and its varying features, for example font, type size or color - do not contribute to the semantic meaning of written utterances. It is one of this master thesis' main goals to dispel this myth which ultimately resulted in the neglect of graphetic issues. The first part of this thesis gives an outline of the most relevant historical conditions, obstacles, and milestones that are central to the development of graphetics. As part of this historical reconstruction, preliminary definitions are collected and discussed, vocal advocates and their work are presented, and key problems are compiled. The second part presents the draft of a graphetic model that constitutes this thesis' theoretical innovation. Based on the visual properties inherent in German script a hierarchy of descriptive graphetic units and levels is postulated and discussed. The third part - giving this thesis its title - focuses on psycholinguistic, primarily perceptive issues in the context of the fittingly titled perceptive graphetics. The final part of this thesis summarizes the most relevant interdisciplinary theoretical fragments that, together with the presented descriptive model, merge to uncover a range of unresolved issues and scientific desiderata that ultimately serve as a means of incentive and orientation for future research in this area.
Eines dieser „gefloppten“ Beispiele aus der jüngeren Vergangenheit ist Kak ja vstretil vašu mamu, das vom Privatsender STS (2010-2011) produzierte Remake der international erfolgreichen US-amerikanischen Sitcom How I Met Your Mother (CBS, 2005-). Die Gründe für das Scheitern der russischen Version sind ein Bündel von miteinander in komplexer Wechselwirkung stehenden Faktoren: Zuerst wäre zu erwähnen, dass die Sitcom in Russland bisher kein etabliertes Genre mit Fernsehtradition ist; zudem verändern sich aufgrund des Fortschritts der Technologie und der digitalen Medien die Fernsehgewohnheiten vor allem junger Personen, denen das Internet nun die bis vor einiger Zeit undenkbare Möglichkeit bietet, sich das Original anzusehen, weshalb sie nicht auf eine russische „Kopie“ angewiesen sind; zuletzt soll der für die vorliegende Arbeit zentrale Faktor erwähnt werden: die Mechanismen der kulturellen Adaption. Scheiterte Kak ja vstretil vašu mamu, so liegt das möglicherweise am Misserfolg der Anpassung an die Bedürfnisse des Fernsehpublikums, das sich als der russischen Kultur zugehörig fühlt. Hiermit wären bereits kursorisch mögliche Ursachen angeschnitten, weshalb das hier analysierte russische Serienremake vom lokalen Publikum nicht angenommen wurde.
Die vorliegende Arbeit rückt die Methoden ebendieser kulturellen Adaption in den Fokus und stellt die Frage, wie diese anhand des konkreten Beispiels des Adaptionsprozesses von How I Met Your Mother zu Kak ja vstretil vašu mamu funktionier(t)en. Was wurde verändert, sprich kulturell angepasst, und warum? Um die Argumentation in einen theoretischen Rahmen einzubetten, werden neben Erkenntnissen zur kulturellen Adaption (Adriaens & Biltereyst 2012; Weber 2013; La Pastina & Straubhaar 2005; Straubhaar 1991; Bore 2011; Mikos & Perrotta 2013 u.a.) auch theoretische Grundannahmen aus der Kultursemiotik (u. a. Posner 2008) und der Fernsehsemiotik (exemplarisch Fiske & Hartley [1978] 2003) herangezogen. Das methodologische Vorgehen, das der folgenden Untersuchung zugrunde liegt, orientiert sich an der strukturellen und funktionalen Film- und Fernsehanalyse, wie sie von Lothar Mikos (2008) ausgearbeitet und beschrieben wurde. Im ersten Kapitel der vorliegenden Arbeit werden theoretische und historisch-kontextuelle Grundlagen erläutert, auf Basis derer im zweiten Kapitel, das den Kern dieser Arbeit darstellt, eine Analyse der kulturellen Adaption am Beispiel der Originalserie How I Met Your Mother sowie dessen russischer Variante Kak ja vstretil vašu mamu durchgeführt werden kann.
Einige ausgewählte Episoden (die besonders kulturspezifische Elemente enthalten) beider für die Analyse relevanten Serien werden einer systematischen Untersuchung unterzogen, um zu verdeutlichen, wie die kulturelle Anpassung in diesem konkreten Fall erfolgte. Ebendiese Analyse orientiert sich an einem vom Autor dieser Arbeit entworfenen dreistufigen Modell der kulturellen Adaption von Fernsehprogrammen. Auf den Ebenen der Produktion, der Fernsehserie selbst sowie der Rezeption werden aussagekräftige Beispiele für Modifikationen aufgrund unterschiedlicher Ausgangs- und Zielkulturen angeführt und besprochen.
Zuletzt wird noch das bereits genannte Scheitern des Remakes thematisiert, da die Rezeption seitens des Publikums als essentieller und aufschlussreicher Faktor in der Betrachtung der kulturellen Adaption gilt, wie noch gezeigt und diskutiert werden wird.