Abstract
Writing is an only seemingly self-explanatory everyday term. In the ancient Egyptian culture, for example, no distinction was made between “writing” and “drawing/painting,” and we know this terminology similarly from the Greek culture. Exactly this terminological width was also practiced in the Mayan culture. If the substantial difference between writing and painting was not terminologically expressed, this could mean that in this cultural perspective, the emblematic was in focus as the common denominator. We can operate with the differentiation between writing in a narrower sense and writing in a broader sense. Specific to writing in a narrower sense is a certain phonetic dimension of coding. The meaning of the language contacts for the phonetization of the signs, and thus the development of writing in a narrower sense, is an example of the high culture-poetical meaning of cultural diversity.
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Notes
- 1.
Ferdinand de Saussure, Cours de linguistique générale, Lausanne: Payot, 1995 (original edition posthumously Lausanne: Payot, 1916).
- 2.
Leonard Bloomfield, An Introduction to the Study of Language, London: H. Holt, 1935 (2nd edition); critical evaluation in Florian Coulmas, Writing: An introduction to their linguistic analysis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003 (German original: Idem, Über Schrift, Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1981).
- 3.
Josef Vachek, Zum Problem der geschriebenen Sprache, in: Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 8/1939, pp. 94–104; Idem., Written Language, The Hague: Mouton, 1973; Idem./Philipp A. Lueldorf, Written Language Revisited, Philadelphia: J. Benjamins, 1989; Jacques Derrida, Derrida, Writing and Difference, London: Routledge, 1978.
- 4.
Konrad, Ehlich, Funktion und Struktur schriftlicher Kommunikation, in: Hartmut Günther/Otto Ludwig (eds.) Schrift und Schriftlichkeit/Writing and its Use. Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch internationaler Forschung / An Interdisciplinary Handbook of International Research. Volume 1, Berlin: de Gruyter, 1994, pp. 18–41; Idem., Textualität und Schriftlichkeit, in: Ludwig Morenz/Stefan Schorch (eds.), Was ist ein Text?, Alttestamentliche, ägyptologische und altorientalistische Perspektiven, Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007, pp. 7–17.
- 5.
Indeed there are of course still undeciphered or unsure deciphered writings on which we are not able to make precise statements.
- 6.
The sometimes postulated old European writing (Harald Haarmann) is in any case a not yet deciphered system of signs that may only have a formal resemblance to writing in the strictest sense.
- 7.
Overview in Nikolai Grube, Mittelamerikanische Schriften, in: Hartmut Günther/Otto Ludwig (eds.), Schrift und Schriftlichkeit/Writing and its Use. Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch internationaler Forschung/An Interdisciplinary Handbook of International Research. Volume 1, Berlin: de Gruyter, 1994, pp. 405–415.
- 8.
Language contact can be named, for example, as a motivator for stronger phonetization of the signs in the Maya writing, see Søren Wichmann/ Albert Davletshin, Writing with an Accent: Phonology as a Marker of Ethnic Identity, in: Frauke Sache (ed.), Maya Ethnicity: The Construction of Ethnic Identity from the Preclassic to Modern Times. 9th European Maya Conference (Bonn, December 2004), in: Acta Mesoamerica 19/2006, pp. 99–106; this also applies to the sumeric script, see Jean-Jacques Glassner, Écrire à Sumer. L’invention du cuneiform, Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2000.
Literature
Bloomfield, Leonard, An Introduction to the Study of Language, London: H.Holt, 1935 (2nd edition).
Coulmas, Florian, Writing: An introduction to their linguistic analysis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003 (German original: Idem., Über Schrift, Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1981).
Derrida, Jacques, Writing and Difference, London: Routledge, 1978.
De Saussure, Ferdinand, Cours de linguistique générale, Lausanne: Payot, 1995 (original edition posthum Lausanne: Payot, 1916).
Ehlich, Konrad, Funktion und Struktur schriftlicher Kommunikation, in: Günther, Hartmut/Ludwig, Otto (eds.), Schrift und Schriftlichkeit/Writing and its Use. Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch internationaler Forschung/An Interdisciplinary Handbook of International Research. Vol. 1, Berlin: de Gruyter, 1994: 18–41.
Ehlich, Konrad, Textualität und Schriftlichkeit, in: Morenz, Ludwig/Schorch, Stefan (eds.), Was ist ein Text? Alttestamentliche, ägyptologische und altorientalistische Perspektiven, Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007: 7–17.
Glassner, Jean-Jacques, Écrire à Sumer. L’invention du cuneiform, Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2000.
Grube, Nikolai, Mittelamerikanische Schriften, in: Günther, Hartmut/Ludwig, Otto (eds.), Schrift und Schriftlichkeit/Writing and its Use. Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch internationaler Forschung/An Interdisciplinary Handbook of International Research.Vol. 1, Berlin: de Gruyter, 1994: 405–415.
Morenz, Ludwig, Bild-Buchstaben und symbolische Zeichen. Die Herausbildung der Schrift in der hohen Kultur Altägyptens, OBO (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis) 205, Fribourg: Academic Press/Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004.
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Vachek, Josef, Zum Problem der geschriebenen Sprache, in: Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 8/1939: 94–104.
Vachek, Josef, Written Language, The Hague: Mouton, 1973.
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Wichmann, Søren/Davletshin, Albert, Writing with an Accent: Phonology as a Marker of Ethnic Identity, in: Sachse, Frauke (ed.), Maya Ethnicity: The Construction of Ethnic Identity from the Preclassic to Modern Times. 9th European Maya Conference (Bonn, December 2004), in: Acta Mesoamericana 19/2006: 99–106.
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Morenz, L.D. (2019). Writing. In: Kühnhardt, L., Mayer, T. (eds) The Bonn Handbook of Globality. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90377-4_45
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