История письма и чтения. Асафова Г.К. - 20 стр.

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orthographies require the reader first to grasp the meaning of a passage as a whole

in order to decide which of several possible word meanings a particular graphic

string represents.

It must be remembered, however, that efficiency depends not only on the

nature of the writing system but also on the functions required of it by its users, for

orthographies are invented to serve particular cultural purposes. Furthermore, an

orthography invented to satisfy one purpose may acquire new applications. For

instance, writing systems invented to serve mnemonic purposes were subsequently

elaborated and used for communicative and archival purposes. Orthographies were

not invented as art forms but once invented could serve aesthetic functions.

Notions of explicitness of representation depend on the morphophonemic

structure of the language. An alphabet was a notable advance for representing the

Greek language but not necessarily for representing a Semitic language. Moreover,

for languages such as Chinese and Japanese, which have simple syllabic structure

and a great number of homophones, a writing system that depended on

phonological structure, such as a syllabary or an alphabet, would be extremely

inefficient. It is with such factors in mind that more recent accounts of writing

systems have stressed how many different orthographies may function efficiently,

given the particular language they are used to represent. Just as linguists have

abandoned the notion of progressive evolution of languages, with some languages

ranking as more primitive than others, so historians of writing have come to treat

existing orthographies as appropriate to the languages they represent.

Nonetheless, all contemporary orthographies have a history of development,

and there are many common features in these histories. It is unlikely that writing

was invented only once and then borrowed by different cultural groups. While all

Western writing systems may be traced back to the beginnings of symbol-making

in Sumer, there is no reason to believe that Oriental writing systems were

borrowed from the Sumerian form. Consequently, there are two quite separate

histories of writing, that of the writing system developed by the Sumerians and that

of the one developed by the Chinese.