E-raamat: Analyses of Script: Properties of Characters and Writing Systems

Script is generally outside the regard of linguists, who generally believe it to be better left to other specialists. However, this group of researchers decided to analyze a selection of scripts and begin determining its inner life in which there may be some measure of self-regulation and control. Concentrating on Latin, Oriya, Japanese, and Old Egyptian, they measure the properties of scripts and seek models of their behavior. They introduce readers to the art and science of quantitative analysis of writing systems, then concentrate on the phoneme-grapheme relation in Italian, English, Slovene, Slovak, the graphemic representation of the Oriya phonemes and the distribution of graphemic representations. They also evaluate such special problems as script ornamentality, the decrease in complexity from hieroglyphs to hieratic symbols, the fractal dimension of script, and the relationship between the types and tokens of Japanese morae. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)