亨利·羅傑斯，加拿大多倫多大學語言學與人類學係的教授，緻力於語音學和文字係統的研究。除瞭《文字係統：語言學的方法》之外，還著有《語言的聲音：語音學導論》（Sounds of Language: An Introduction to Phonetics 2000年）、《理論語音學和實用語音學》（Theoretical and Practical Phonetics 1990年）等書。

孫亞楠，女，山東濟寜人，人類學博士。博士畢業於中央民族大學民族學與社會學學院，現任教於青島大學公共外語教育學院。研究興趣主要集中英語作為第二語言的寫作（SLW）研究，翻譯理論與實踐，族群文化。

Acknowledgments xiv

A Note on Dates xvii

1 Introduction

1.1 The Importance of Writing

1.2 Definition of Writing

1.3 Aspects of Writing

1.3.1 Creation and history of writing

1.3.2 Relationship of writing to language

1.3.3 Internal structure of writing

1.3.4 Sociolinguistics of writing

1.4 Further Reading

1.5 Terms

1.6 Exercises

2 Theoretical Preliminaries

2.1 Internal Structure

2.1.1 Arrangement of symbols

2.1.2 Graphemes and allographs

2.1.3 Free and bound graphemes

2.1.4 Ligatures

2.2 Relationship to Language

2.2.1 Phonographic writing systems

2.2.2 Morphographic writing systems

2.2.3 Non-segmental graphemic elements

2.2.4 Unit discrepancies

2.2.5 Contrastive discrepancies

2.3 Diglossia

2.4 Further Reading

2.5 Terms

2.6 Exercises

3 Chinese

3.1 Background, History, and Sociolinguistics

3.1.1 The language of written Chinese

3.1.2 Civil service examinations

3.2 Phonology of Modern Standard Chinese

3.2.1 Romanization

3.3 Relationship of Language and Writing in Chinese

3.3.1 What linguistic units do characters represent?

3.3.2 Homophony

3.4 Origin and Structure of Chinese Characters

3.4.1 Early Chinese writing

3.4.2 Reconstructing the early pronunciation of Chinese

3.4.3 How characters were formed

3.4.4 Traditional analysis of characters

3.4.5 Semantic-phonetic compounds

3.4.6 Semantic-semantic compounds

3.4.7 Some examples of characters with a complex history

3.4.8 Writing borrowed words

3.4.9 Dialect characters

3.5 Structure of Chinese Characters

3.5.1 The shapes of characters

3.5.2 Complex numerals

3.5.3 How characters are written

3.5.4 Writing direction and punctuation

3.5.5 Calligraphy

3.5.6 Ordering characters

3.6 How Many Characters Does Chinese Have?

3.6.1 Frequency of types of characters

3.7 Recent Reforms

3.8 Further Reading

3.9 Terms

3.10 Exercises

4 Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese

4.1 Japanese

4.1.1 Background and history

4.1.2 Relevant structure o t Japanese

4.1.3 Borrowing a writing system

4.1.4 Japanese writing

4.1.5 Writing reform in Japan

4.1.6 Psychology of writing in Japanese

4.2 Korean

4.2.1 Background and history

4.2.2 Korean lexicon

4.2.3 Phonology o t Korean

4.2.4 Hankul

4.2.5 Structure of hankul

4.2.6 Hanca

4.3 Vietnamese

4.3.1 Background and history

4.3.2 Chu nôm

4.3.3 Quôc ngu

4.4 Further Reading

4.5 Terms

4.6 Exercises

5 Cuneiform

5.1 Background and History

5.1.1 Sumerian

5.1.2 Akkadian

5.2 Tokens and the Invention of Writing

5.3 Materials of Writing

5.4 Social Context of Cuneiform Writing

5.5 An Early Sumerian Tablet from Uruk

5.6 Internal Structure of Cuneiform

5.6.1 Development of symbols

5.6.2 Relationship to language

5.7 Example Text

5.8 Other Cuneiform Writing

5.8.1 Ugaritic

5.8.2 Old Persian

5.9 Further Reading

5.10 Terms

5.11 Exercises

6 Egyptian

6.1 Language Family

6.2 Background and History

6.3 Phonology of Old Egyptian

6.4 Origin of Egyptian Writing

6.5 Styles of Writing

6.6 Social Context of Writing

6.6.1 Materials

6.6.2 Literature

6.6.3 Scribes and literacy

6.7 Structure of Egyptian Writing

6.7.1 Phonographic writing

6.7.2 Phonological complements

6.7.3 Morphographic writing

6.7.4 Semantic complements

6.7.5 Internal structure of Egyptian writing

6.8 Example Text

6.9 Decipherment

6.10 Further Reading

6.11 Terms

6.12 Exercise

7 Semitic

7.1 The Semitic Language Family

7.2 Origin of the Semitic Abjad

7.3 Development of the Semitic Abjad

7.3.1 Southern West Semitic

7.3.2 Phcenician

7.3.3 Aramaic

7.4 Hebrew

7.4.1 Background and history

7.4.2 Phonology of Tiberian Hebrew

7.4.3 Hebrew abjad

7.4.4 Hebrew vowels

7.4.5 Reading the Bible

7.4.6 Other languages written with the Hebrew script

7.5 Arabic

7.5.1 Background and history

7.5.2 Phonology of Modern Standard Arabic

7.5.3 Arabic abjad

7.5.4 Vowels and diphthongs

7.5.5 Hamzah

7.5.6 Other symbols

7.5.7 Numerals

7.6 The Ethiopic Abugida

7.7 The Distinctiveness of Abjads

7.8 Further Reading

7.9 Terms

7.10 Exercises

8 The Greek Alphabet

8.1 Background and History

8.2 Greek Scripts before the Alphabet

8.2.1 Linear B

8.2.2 Other early Greek scripts

8.3 Development of the Greek Alphabet

8.4 Abjad to Alphabet

8.5 The Relationship of Language and Writing in Greek

8.6 Scripts Derived from the Greek Alphabet

8.6.1 Coptic

8.6.2 Gothic

8.6.3 Armenian

8.6.4 Georgian

8.6.5 Slavic

8.7 Further Reading

8.8 Terms

8.9 Exercises

9 The Roman Alphabet

9.1 From Greece to Italy

9.2 Etruscan

9.3 Latin

9.3.1 Background and history

9.3.2 The phonology of Latin

9.4 The Roman Alphabet

9.5 Examples of Roman Writing

9.6 Later History of the Roman Alphabet

9.7 Orthographic Depth: Two Examples

9.7.1 Finnish: A shallow orthography

9.7.2 Scots Gaelic: A deep orthography

9.8 Further Reading

9.9 Terms

9.10 Exercises

10 English

10.1 Background and History

10.2 Old English

10.3 Middle English

10.4 Modern English

10.4.1 Orthographic dialect variation

10.4.2 Creative spelling

10.5 Spelling and Sound Changes

10.6 Spelling Reform

10.6.1 The nature of reform

10.6.2 Problems with spelling reform

10.7 Further Reading

10.8 Terms

10.9 Exercises

11 The Indian Abugida and Other Asian Phonographic Writing

11.1 Background and History

11.2 Indus Valley Writing

11.2.1 Decipherment of the Indus script

11.2.2 The language of the Indus writing

11.3 Brdhmi and Kharosthi

11.3.1 Aokan inscriptions

11.3.2 The scripts

11.3.3 Origin of Kharosthi and Brdhmi

11.3.4 Later development of Brdhmi

11.4 Devanagari as Applied to Sanskrit

11.4.1 Sanskrit phonology

11.4.2 Devanagari writing system

11.5 Southeast Asian Writing

11.6 The Tibetan Abugida

11.6.1 Tibetan phonemic inventory

11.6.2 The Tibetan abugida

11.6.3 Complex orthographic syllables

11.7 The 'Phags-pa Script

11.8 The Mongolian and Manchu Alphabets

11.8.1 Mongolian

11.8.2 Manchu

11.9 Further Reading

11.10 Terms

11.11 Exercises

12 Maya

12.1 Background and History

12.2 Structure of the Maya Writing System

12.2.1 Internal structure

12.2.2 Relation to language

12.3 The Maya Calendar

12.4 Example Text

12.5 Further Reading

12.6 Terms

12.7 Exercises

13 Other Writing Systems

13.1 Cherokee

13.1.1 Background and history

13.1.2 Phonology of Cherokee

13.1.3 The Cherokee script

13.2 Cree

13.2.1 Background and history

13.2.2 Phonology of Cree

13.2.3 Structure of the Cree writing system

13.3 Inuktitut

13.3.1 Background and history

13.3.2 The modern Inuktitut script

13.4 Runic

13.4.1 Background and history

13.4.2 Proto-Scandinavian phonology

13.4.3 The runic alphabets

13.4.4 Mysticism and magic

13.5 Ogham

13.5.1 Background and history

13.5.2 The ogham alphabet

13.5.3 Example text

13.6 Pahawh Hmong

13.6.1 Background and history

13.6.2 Phonology of Hmong

13.6.3 Structure of Pahawh Hmong script

13.7 Bliss

13.7.1 Charles Bliss and the origin of Bliss symbols

13.7.2 Bliss symbols as an augmentative communication system

13.7.3 The structure of Bliss symbols

13.7.4 Sentences in Bliss

13.8 Further Reading

13.9 Terms

13.10 Exercises

14 Classification of Writing Systems 269 (11)

14.1 Phonetic, Semantic, and Glottographic Writing

14.2 Glottographic Writing

14.3 Note: Amount of Morphography and Orthographic Depth

14.4 Gelb's Unilinear Theory of Development

14.5 Syllabic versus Moraic

14.6 Korean Hankul as a Featural System

14.7 Conclusion

14.8 Further Reading

14.9 Terms

Appendix A Some Basic Linguistic Terms

Appendix B The International Phonetic Alphabet

Appendix C English Transcription

Appendix D Glossary

Bibliography

Index