Week 13-written language Flashcards
Define ideograms
-Drawing becomes less literal and meaning extends to broader concepts
-e.g. The sun represent warmth, heat, light, daytime, etc
-‘No Parking’ sign with a slanting red line through a car is an ideogram vs. A no-parking symbol showing a car being towed away is more literal like a pictogram
Define pictograms
precursors to writing. Represent objects directly and literally. Not symbolic.
Describe rebus principle
phonographic symbol
-a symbol that stands for the sounds of a word
-single sign may represent a range of homophones. e.g. Jokes, riddles, advertising and license plates make use of the rebus principle
Describe word writing
-Character represents the meaning and the pronunciation of a word
-Currently used in China
Describe syllabic writing
-One symbol represents one syllable
-Suited to Japanese
-all its words contain only 100 mostly CV syllables and there are no underlying consonant clusters
Describe consonant writing
In Semitic languages such as Hebrew and Arabic alphabets consist only of consonants. Diacritic marks express vowels.
Describe alphabetic writing
Comprises separate symbol for consonants and vowels
-Easy to learn, maximally efficient for transcribing any human language
-Most European alphabets use Latin (Roman) letters, sometime adding diacritics to mark individual characteristics of a particular language
Describe bottom up processing
-reader encounters word and decodes each word into phonemic elements
-then blends the sounds back together. (D…o…..g makes dog).
-Each word triggers lexical entry in the vocabulary, allowing for comprehension of that word.
-Each word is decoded, until the whole sentence is comprehended.
Describe top-down processing
-Decoding is either very quick or not required
-Readers begin by reading the beginning of the sentence, and then make hypotheses or ‘guess’ what is coming next based on the words or grammar
-Frees up cognition to derive more meaning from the text
-More written text is able to be comprehended at a time
