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The first proven uses of cuneiform to denote the sounds of the Sumerian
language appear in clay tablets dating to about 3100BC. These were found at
Jemdet Nasr in present day Iraq. On one of these tablets, for instance, the
Sumerian symbol for arrow was used to convey the word meaning life. There is no
logical connection between the depiction of an arrow and the concept life. Only
when looking at the sound of the Sumerian language does the reason for using the
pictograph in this way become understandable. The Sumerian word for arrow was
ti. The word for life was a near homonym, til. Since the concept life was hard to
draw, some scribe took advantage of homonymy and used an existing pictograph to
denote the SOUND of the syllable ti regardless of the original meaning of the
pictograph. In exactly the same way, the pictogram for reed was used to convey
the semantically unrelated concept reimburse: In the Sumerian language, the word
for reed and reimburse were both pronounced something like gi. Pictograms thus
began to be used as sound symbols.
Homonymy thus seems to have been one of the vehicles whereby pictures
of concrete objects began to be used as abstract symbols representing sound. The
morphological structure of the Sumerian language undoubtedly facilitated the
invention of writing: in Sumerian many single syllables are separate words or at
least separate morphemes. This morphemic structure undoubtedly facilitated the
transfer of pictograms into sound symbols, or graphemes. A language like English
with a complicated syllable structure could not easily have been written with
pictures for each syllable. Some English words, however, can be written by using
pictures for sound. Such sound pictures are called rebuses. Modern English can
partly be written using the rebus principle: (Give an example of pictographs for
eye, can, sea, ewe then use them to denote the sounds of homonyms: I can see
you.) But it would be impossible to write such English words as gratify or
reimburse using rebuses.
After the Sumerians, the idea of writing seems to have diffused to many
peoples of Southwest Asia and adjacent areas developed writing. These include the
Egyptians, the Cretans, the Elamites, and the Indus Valley peoples. It is virtually
certain that these peoples borrowed the idea of writing syllable of sound by using
pictures. This is an example of stimulus diffusion.
The most famous of these secondary scripts is found in Egypt. The rebus
principle of writing seems to have been borrowed by the Egyptians from the
Sumerians shortly after 3000BC, when Egyptian writing appears suddenly, as a fully
developed phonetic system, without any gradual transition from pictographic
writing. Egyptian hieroglyphs, or holy writing, are either syllabic symbols or
alphabetic symbols representing single sounds such as [t] or [m]. (See handout.)
Also, a pictographic element was often added to the phonetic symbols to clarify the
meaning. Ancient Egyptian was deciphered last century by the Frenchman
Champollion thanks to the Rosetta Stone.
The principle of using symbols for sound seems also to have been borrowed
by the peoples of the Indus Valley civilization in present day Pakistan, and various
ancient peoples of Crete and present-day Iran. Clay inscriptions dating back as far
a 2500BC have been found in these areas. As yet none of these inscriptions have
been deciphered.
Maya glyphs were also a syllabic system. Writing seems to have benn first
divised by the Olmecs before 400BC, but developed to its full flower under the Maya
from 200AD to the time of the Spanish conquest in the early 16th century. The
glyphs seem to have been used entirely by the priestly ruling class to record events
of royal and religious significance. As in ancient China, no commoners seemed to
have used them. Within a century of the Spanish conquest, no one was left who
could even read the glyphs, let alone understand them. They have been deciphered
only in the last decade.
Let's leave Southwest Asia for the time being and travel to Northern China.
The origins of Chinese writing are obscure and debated. Some people believe that
the rebus principle was borrowed through the trade routes from Sumeria to China--
which would be an example of stimulus diffusion. There is no direct evidence for
this, although there was contact through western China. Many believe that the
ancient Chinese hit upon the writing principle completely independently. The
earliest known form of true writing in China dates from the Shang dynasty,
1200BC-1045BC, dates considerably later than for Sumerian writing. But it is
entirely possible that pictographic signs had begun to be used as sound symbols in
China long before that. Just as in Sumeria, ancient pictograms and ideograms
came to be used to denote syllables of sound rather than to depict concepts. In the
case of homonymous syllables, the sound alone was represented and the
iconographic aspect of the picture became irrelevant: (Give example from the
handout: Picture of wheat lug= to come lug).
When signs lost the requirement of resembling what they represented, they
gradually became stylized and lost much of their pictographic iconicity. This process
took thousands of years. (See handout on Chinese.) The earliest, Shang Dynasty
examples of true writing, still looked like pictures. Some of the symbols even
preserved an iconic resemblance to their meaning up to the present day. (compare
the Chinese words for child--haize mouth--kou1, eye--mu4, one, two. But the
shape of most symbols no longer physically resembled their meaning. (See
handout)
Conclusion
The earliest syllabaries were also true writing systems, but, like English,
they represented sound in an irregular way. However, because they represented
sound, Chinese characters, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Sumerian cuneiform, and Maya
glyphs are just as great a departure from pictograms as are the modern English and
Spanish alphabets.