Reflections on the Adaptation of Orthographic Scripts Between Cuneiform and Kana: From Logogram to Phonogram

DOI

10.2991/978-2-494069-97-8_32How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Cuneiform; Kana; Writing system; Logogram; Phonogram; Semantogram

Abstract

Cuneiform and Kana are representative in the scope of the world’s writing system more ancient text system, both are derived from hieroglyphs, their prototype was the early Sumerian pictographs and Chinese characters, the two writing systems are different depending on nationalities and different language users used to record more language, which had a profound impact on Mesopotamia and east Asia civilization. Among them, the formed cuneiform script as a pure phonetic text is used to record Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite and Old Persian, these involve other Semitic and Indo-European as well; with the introduction of Chinese characters from the Korean Peninsula, the almost unrelated Japanese absorbed Chinese logograms. The early Japanese users tried to use the combination of logograms and phonograms, with thousands of years of adaptation, which finally formed the modern Japanese writing system, namely Japanese characters (kanji), hiragana and katakana. Therefore, the two writing systems share many similarities, but the same intention used for the record pronunciations leads to two developing modes in different directions, which is worth discussing. This paper will try to discuss the features of two writing systems, phonetic features and morphological structure of those languages that used cuneiform and kana, and possible non-linguistic factors, aiming to provide a profound point of view on the relationship between logograms and phonograms.

Copyright

© 2023 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Haotian Luo
PY  - 2023
DA  - 2023/02/13
TI  - Reflections on the Adaptation of Orthographic Scripts Between Cuneiform and Kana: From Logogram to Phonogram
BT  - Proceedings of the 2022 4th International Conference on Literature, Art and Human Development (ICLAHD 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 255
EP  - 263
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-494069-97-8_32
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-494069-97-8_32
ID  - Luo2023
ER  -