Writing is both a result and a condition of civilization. it is both a product shaped by civilization and a tool shaping civilisation.it is generally accepted that writing was invented approximately 5 000 years ago, but some researchers date it as far back as 10 000 years ago.
Evolution of writing
1. Precursors to writing: Signs of Non-graphical nature
There are certain developments which cannot be considered writing because they do not exhibit the key characteristics of writing, yet they are important in the sense that they seem to have logically preceded the development. They are generally signs of a non-graphical nature, consisting of marks made for counting or identification dating back 30 000 years ago.
2. (a) Drawings and pictograms
The picture is often taken to be the basis of writing. The term petrograms refers to drawing or paintings on the surface of rocks and the term petroglyphs refers to drawings curved into rocks. However, not all drawings fulfill the characteristics of writing. For example, the Ewe of Togo recorded proverbs by means of pictures. Although these pictures were used to communicate something consisted of artificially produced graphical marks, it is difficult to consider them writing because there was no systematic relations between various parts of these pictures and the sentence they represented. These pictures were important in reminding someone of something they already knew, but someone who did not know the proverb had no way of interpreting such proverb.
The Essay on Years Ago Time People Made
Social Study Guide Due Wednesday, Jan 19/05 A. ) Definitions: 1. ) Dimension - is any part of and object or event that can be measured. 2. ) Absolute time - is the time measured in precise periods, dates or times. 3. ) Relative time - is the time measured in relation to other things. 4. ) Cyclical time - is a record of natural cycles. 5. ) Linear time - is a record of events in sequence from past ...
2(b) Tokens and Impressions
Apart from pictures, writing could have had its foundations in the use of tokens for record keeping, according to research on artifacts used for accounting in Asia. These tokens were objects like stones and pieces of baked clay of different shapes. These tokens were kept in clay containers, which were later sealed for purposes of security. In order to avoid breaking the seal in order to verify the contents, people began impressing the tokens on the container before the clay dried. Thus, the impression on the outside indicated the contents on the inside. This is important in the development of writing because the clay gradually unimportant as the outer impressions became sufficient for accounting purposes. Thus there developed a relation between the sign and the thing it referred to.
3. Ideograms
Pictograms developed into ideograms which represented ideas rather the objects e.g. a pictogram used to show the sun also came to represent heat, light, warmth, daytime etc. Since ideograms, unlike pictograms, did not refer to a specific object, they were quite abstract. They represented an idea represented by the object they had been drawn. The difference between pictograms and ideograms is that the former forms a direct relation between the symbol and the symbolized, while the latter does not. Use of pictograms and ideograms can only be regarded as limited writing systems since they work best with objects. Full writing systems are able to represent all the words in a language.
4. Logograms
Ideograms became even more abstract and began representing the words of languages. At this point relationship between the sign and the object was lost. The sign no longer resembled the object and users began to see connections between the name of an object/idea and the idea/object. Several ancient civilizations made the transfer from picture writing to word writing. These are the Sumerians, Egyptians, Proto-Elamite, Proto-Indic, Cretan, Hittite and Chinese. Only Chinese survives to date. In most logographic systems one sign can represent several distinct words. In purely logographic writing the reader must deduce the meaning from context. Other logographic systems include semantic ad phonetic indicators to assist in deriving the meaning. Semantic indicators show the category to which a word belongs.
The Review on Writing Students Teachers Words
A Research On Teaching Extensive Writing! SSThe best way to test people! |s writing ability is to get them to write. !" - Hughes, 1989: 75 in Charles & Bachman (eds), : 1) I. INTRODUCTION This study was set out to measure the writing ability of students in terms of number of words that were written by students in certain time. This study was carried out at the Nong lam University! V Center for ...
5. The Rebus Principle
After a logogram has lost all resemblance to the object it refers to, the logogram may come to stand for other words that have the same or nearly the same pronunciation. When a sign does not stand for a word but represents a common pronunciation then it becomes a rebus. Writing with such logograms is sometimes called writing according to the rebus principle.
Origin of Writing System
Sumerian Writing
