The Linguistics Delusion - Geoffrey Sampson
8. From Phonemic Spelling to Distinctive Spelling
The Linguistics Delusion - Geoffrey Sampson
Geoffrey Sampson [+]
Sussex University, Professor Emeritus
Geoffrey Sampson is Professor Emeritus at Sussex University and has taught linguistics at the LSE, Lancaster and Leeds Universities. His recent books include Love Songs of Early China (2006), Electronic Business (2nd edn 2008) and Writing Systems (2nd edn 2015).
Description
Writing systems are a domain where it is possible to identify consistent historical tendencies, but (like trends in other aspects of society) these are responses to social pressures rather than laws enforced by innate mental mechanisms. Contrary to the common assumption that the ideal type of script is a phonemic script, the trend among mature writing systems is to maximize a quite different property, for identifiable social reasons.