Linguistics Encyclopedia.pdf

The linguistics encyclopedia 674
glance whether a given graph was in fact man’yogana, or kun or on. Ultimately, two
syllabaries evolved of which one, hirigana (plain kana (script)) consists of simplified
cursive outlines of complete Chinese graphs, while the other, katakana (partial kana)
consists of small distinctive elements of the original Chinese graph. Chinese graphs in
their full form are called kanji. In modern Japanese, kanji are used for lexical
morphemes, hiragana for grammatical morphemes and inflections, and katakana for
foreign names. The Japanese writing system is mixed; it is partly logographic, partly
phonographic (Sampson, 1985, ch. 9).
In order to provide examples of a purely syllabic writing system and a featural writing
system, it is necessary to look at systems which have no connection with either Semitic or
Chinese. A good example of a purely syllabic writing system is the system known as
Linear B, adapted in about the sixteenth century BC by the Mycenaean civilization to
write an early form of Greek, from Linear A, which was used to write the unknown
language of the Minoan civilization of the second millennium BC. The Mycenaean civil
service used Linear B for record keeping purposes until about 1250 BC, when the
Minoan cities were destroyed, but a distant relative of Linear B was used to write Greek
in Cyprus in the classical period. Linear B consists of at least eighty-nine graphs of which
seventythree have known values, and it is genuinely syllabic, in so far as each separate
written mark stands arbitrarily for a distinct syllable, thus
(Sampson, 1985, p. 65). This script was lost after the collapse of Mycenean civilization in
the thirteenth century BC and was unknown to the later Greeks v/ho adapted the Semitic
alphabet used by the Phoenicians (see above).
Other scripts, often referred to as syllabic, are, in fact, segmentally based in so far as
the shape of the graphs is relatable to sound segments of the syllable, so that syllables
beginning with the same consonantal sound are of similar shape, as in the following
examples taken from the Ethiopian writing system:
(Sampson, 1985, p. 66). Almost all Linear B graphs stood for simple syllables consisting
of one consonant followed by one vowel, while the spoken language used many other
types of syllable. Consequently, the writing system did not reflect the pronunciation
particularly accurately, and a reader relied on contextual clues to the meaning of any
inscription. However, it is unlikely that this created many problems, given the restricted
uses to which Linear B was put (Sampson, 1985, ch. 4).
More recent syllabic systems include the Cherokee script invented by the Indian
Sikwayi in the early 1820s. Having given up the idea of devising a word-based script as
too cumbersome, he divided the words of the spoken language into around 200 syllables
with a sign for each. Subsequently, he was able to reduce the number of signs to a more
manageable eighty-five, by disregarding unimportant distinctions and by introducing a