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| Acknowledgments | |
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| A Note on Dates | |
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| Introduction | |
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| The Importance of Writing | |
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| Definition of Writing | |
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| Aspects of Writing | |
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| Creation and history of writing | |
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| Relationship of writing to language | |
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| Internal structure of writing | |
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| Sociolinguistics of writing | |
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| Further Reading | |
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| Terms | |
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| Exercises | |
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| Theoretical Preliminaries | |
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| Internal Structure | |
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| Arrangement of symbols | |
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| Graphemes and allographs | |
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| Free and bound graphemes | |
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| Ligatures | |
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| Relationship to Language | |
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| Phonographic writing systems | |
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| Morphographic writing systems | |
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| Non-segmental graphemic elements | |
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| Unit discrepancies | |
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| Contrastive discrepancies | |
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| Diglossia | |
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| Further Reading | |
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| Terms | |
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| Exercises | |
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| Chinese | |
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| Background, History, and Sociolinguistics | |
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| The language of written Chinese | |
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| Civil service examinations | |
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| Phonology of Modern Standard Chinese | |
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| Romanization | |
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| Relationship of Language and Writing in Chinese | |
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| What linguistic units do characters represent? | |
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| Homophony | |
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| Origin and Structure of Chinese Characters | |
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| Early Chinese writing | |
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| Reconstructing the early pronunciation of Chinese | |
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| How characters were formed | |
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| Traditional analysis of characters | |
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| Semantic-phonetic compounds | |
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| Semantic-semantic compounds | |
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| Some examples of characters with a complex history | |
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| Writing borrowed words | |
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| Dialect characters | |
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| Structure of Chinese Characters | |
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| The shapes of characters | |
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| Complex numerals | |
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| How characters are written | |
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| Writing direction and punctuation | |
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| Calligraphy | |
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| Ordering characters | |
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| How Many Characters Does Chinese Have? | |
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| Frequency of types of characters | |
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| Recent Reforms | |
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| Further Reading | |
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| Terms | |
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| Exercises | |
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| Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese | |
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| Japanese | |
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| Background and history | |
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| Relevant structure of Japanese | |
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| Borrowing a writing system | |
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| Japanese writing | |
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| Writing reform in Japan | |
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| Psychology of writing in Japanese | |
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| Korean | |
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| Background and history | |
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| Korean lexicon | |
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| Phonology of Korean | |
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| Hankul | |
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| Structure of hankul | |
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| Hanca | |
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| Vietnamese | |
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| Background and history | |
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| Chu nom | |
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| Quoc ngu | |
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| Further Reading | |
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| Terms | |
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| Exercises | |
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| Cuneiform | |
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| Background and History | |
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| Sumerian | |
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| Akkadian | |
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| Tokens and the Invention of Writing | |
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| Materials of Writing | |
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| Social Context of Cuneiform Writing | |
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| An Early Sumerian Tablet from Uruk | |
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| Internal Structure of Cuneiform | |
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| Development of symbols | |
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| Relationship to language | |
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| Example Text | |
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| Other Cuneiform Writing | |
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| Ugaritic | |
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| Old Persian | |
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| Further Reading | |
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| Terms | |
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| Exercises | |
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| Egyptian | |
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| Language Family | |
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| Background and History | |
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| Phonology of Old Egyptian | |
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| Origin of Egyptian Writing | |
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| Styles of Writing | |
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| Social Context of Writing | |
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| Materials | |
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| Literature | |
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| Scribes and literacy | |
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| Structure of Egyptian Writing | |
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| Phonographic writing | |
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| Phonological complements | |
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| Morphographic writing | |
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| Semantic complements | |
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| Internal structure of Egyptian writing | |
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| Example Text | |
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| Decipherment | |
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| Further Reading | |
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| Terms | |
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| Exercise | |
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| Semitic | |
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| The Semitic Language Family | |
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| Origin of the Semitic Abjad | |
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| Development of the Semitic Abjad | |
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| Southern West Semitic | |
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| Phoenician | |
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| Aramaic | |
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| Hebrew | |
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| Background and history | |
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| Phonology of Tiberian Hebrew | |
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| Hebrew abjad | |
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| Hebrew vowels | |
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| Reading the Bible | |
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| Other languages written with the Hebrew script | |
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| Arabic | |
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| Background and history | |
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| Phonology of Modern Standard Arabic | |
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| Arabic abjad | |
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| Vowels and diphthongs | |
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| Hamzah | |
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| Other symbols | |
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| Numerals | |
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| The Ethiopic Abugida | |
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| The Distinctiveness of Abjads | |
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| Further Reading | |
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| Terms | |
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| Exercises | |
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| The Greek Alphabet | |
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| Background and History | |
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| Greek Scripts before the Alphabet | |
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| Linear B | |
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| Other early Greek scripts | |
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| Development of the Greek Alphabet | |
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| Abjad to Alphabet | |
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| The Relationship of Language and Writing in Greek | |
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| Scripts Derived from the Greek Alphabet | |
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| Coptic | |
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| Gothic | |
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| Armenian | |
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| Georgian | |
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| Slavic | |
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| Further Reading | |
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| Terms | |
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| Exercises | |
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| The Roman Alphabet | |
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| From Greece to Italy | |
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| Etruscan | |
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| Latin | |
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| Background and history | |
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| The phonology of Latin | |
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| The Roman Alphabet | |
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| Examples of Roman Writing | |
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| Later History of the Roman Alphabet | |
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| Orthographic Depth: Two Examples | |
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| Finnish: A shallow orthography | |
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| Scots Gaelic: A deep orthography | |
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| Further Reading | |
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| Terms | |
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| Exercises | |
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| English | |
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| Background and History | |
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| Old English | |
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| Middle English | |
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| Modern English | |
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| Orthographic dialect variation | |
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| Creative spelling | |
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| Spelling and Sound Changes | |
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| Spelling Reform | |
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| The nature of reform | |
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| Problems with spelling reform | |
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| Further Reading | |
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| Terms | |
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| Exercises | |
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| The Indian Abugida and Other Asian Phonographic Writing | |
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| Background and History | |
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| Indus Valley Writing | |
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| Decipherment of the Indus script | |
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| The language of the Indus writing | |
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| Brahmi and Kharosthi | |
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| Asokan inscriptions | |
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| The scripts | |
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| Origin of Kharosthi and Brahmi | |
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| Later development of Brahmi | |
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| Devanagari as Applied to Sanskrit | |
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| Sanskrit phonology | |
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| Devanagari writing system | |
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| Southeast Asian Writing | |
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| The Tibetan Abugida | |
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| Tibetan phonemic inventory | |
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| The Tibetan abugida | |
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| Complex orthographic syllables | |
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| The 'Phags-pa Script | |
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| The Mongolian and Manchu Alphabets | |
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| Mongolian | |
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| Manchu | |
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| Further Reading | |
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| Terms | |
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| Exercises | |
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| Maya | |
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| Background and History | |
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| Structure of the Maya Writing System | |
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| Internal structure | |
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| Relation to language | |
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| The Maya Calendar | |
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| Example Text | |
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| Further Reading | |
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| Terms | |
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| Exercises | |
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| Other Writing Systems | |
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| Cherokee | |
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| Background and history | |
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| Phonology of Cherokee | |
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| The Cherokee script | |
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| Cree | |
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| Background and history | |
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| Phonology of Cree | |
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| Structure of the Cree writing system | |
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| Inuktitut | |
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| Background and history | |
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| The modern Inuktitut script | |
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| Runic | |
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| Background and history | |
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| Proto-Scandinavian phonology | |
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| The runic alphabets | |
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| Mysticism and magic | |
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| Ogham | |
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| Background and history | |
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| The ogham alphabet | |
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| Example text | |
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| Pahawh Hmong | |
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| Background and history | |
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| Phonology of Hmong | |
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| Structure of Pahawh Hmong script | |
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| Bliss | |
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| Charles Bliss and the origin of Bliss symbols | |
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| Bliss symbols as an augmentative communication system | |
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| The structure of Bliss symbols | |
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| Sentences in Bliss | |
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| Further Reading | |
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| Terms | |
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| Exercises | |
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| Classification of Writing Systems | |
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| Phonetic, Semantic, and Glottographic Writing | |
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| Glottographic Writing | |
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| Note: Amount of Morphography and Orthographic Depth | |
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| Gelb's Unilinear Theory of Development | |
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| Syllabic versus Moraic | |
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| Korean Hankul as a Featural System | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Further Reading | |
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| Terms | |
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| Some Basic Linguistic Terms | |
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| The International Phonetic Alphabet | |
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| English Transcription | |
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| Glossary | |
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| Bibliography | |
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| Index | |