Written Language & Literacy - Volume 17, Issue 2, 2014

The architecture of writing systems metaphor has special relevance for understanding the structural nature of the Japanese writing system, and, more specifically, for appreciating how the 2,136 kanji of the 常用漢字表 /jō-yō-kan-ji-hyō/* ‘List of characters for general use’ function as the core building blocks in the orthographic representation of a considerable proportion of the Japanese lexicon. In seeking to illuminate the multiple layers of internal structure within Japanese kanji, the Japanese lexicon, and the Japanese writing system, the paper draws on insights and observations gained from an ongoing project to construct a large-scale Japanese lexical database system. Reflecting structural distinctions within the database, the paper consists of three main sections addressing the different structural levels of kanji components, jōyō kanji, and the lexicon. Keywords: Japanese writing system; building blocks; jōyō kanji; components; orthographic structure; database

Punctuation systems are explained by three architectural designs in the pertinent literature. The first one is rooted in rhetoric and ties punctuation solely to intonation; the second is pluralistic and considers not only intonation but also style, semantics, and grammar, i.e. syntax. The third model links punctuation solely to grammar, i.e. syntax. These distinctions are meant to explain both typological and historical variation in punctuation systems. The different punctuation types are mainly distinguished by the comma or virgule, which, therefore, will be the main topic of this paper. Linguistic research has shifted its focus from rhetoric to grammar and consequently, modern comma systems, including those that were previously analyzed as intonation-driven, are explained in grammatical terms by an increasing number of researchers. However, there are only few studies dealing with historical punctuation from a grammatical perspective and no study which is based on a more extensive corpus analysis. This article will fill this gap by analyzing the use of the virgule in Matthew’s Gospel in Luther’s bible (1545). In order to capture the major and systematic uses of the comma or virgule as well as its minor and less systematic uses, we propose a layered multi-dimensional model. Keywords: architecture of punctuation; historical punctuation system; comma; virgule; typology

Starting from a generic architecture for reading words in alphabetic scripts, we examine the special status of letters as the building block of single word reading. After briefly describing the overall architecture that defines the interaction between orthographic and phonological processes during silent reading for meaning, we then focus on orthographic processing. We describe the nature of orthographic representations as hypothesized in our approach and we discuss how such representations might be learned during reading acquisition. We present the hypothesis that such learning involves the adaptation of basic object identification mechanisms to the specific constraints of reading, and we provide examples of this adaptation. In the light of this, we then compare the function of letters as constituents of written words relative to the role of object parts in other kinds of familiar visual stimuli (e.g. faces, numbers). We explain why we think letters must have a special status and we provide some preliminary empirical evidence in favor of this special status for letters as parts of words. Keywords: reading; orthography; visual word recognition; orthographic learning; letter strings; object identification

It is widely acknowledged that the German writing system is not only phonographically structured but also represents morphological information (besides other grammatical information). Stem constancy, i.e. the graphic resemblance between morphologically related words, is the most prominent example of this. It is, however, only the phenomenological peak of morphographic structures within the German writing system. This paper deals with the question of how the graphematic coding of phonological and morphological information interacts systematically and how this morphophonographic interaction can be modeled in an adequate way. The theoretical framework for this investigation is a – slightly modified – non-linear graphematic approach as proposed by Primus (2010) and Evertz and Primus (2013). In analogy to non-linear phonology, this framework operates with a graphematic hierarchy. Within the framework, well- known and only recently established graphematic concepts – e.g. letter features, the graphematic syllable or the graphematic word – can be modeled as parts of a hierarchically structured system. This hierarchy shows the dependencies between the different graphematic units and how the writing system codes grammatical information in a suprasegmental way. Keywords: phonographic and morphographic regularities; German writing system; non-linear graphematics; stem constancy; graphematic syllabification

Morphologically motivated spellings in English are usually thought to be restricted to cases like 〈electric – electrician – electricity〉, where the stem final letter 〈c〉 is kept constant in spelling although the corresponding phoneme varies in spoken language. However, there are many more – and fundamentally different – spellings that refer to morphological information. We will show this by systematically going through the three major parts of morphology: inflection, derivation, and compounding. In each area, we will identify spellings that can best be explained with reference to morphology. As a result, we will present an overview of formal and functional means of morphological spellings which goes far beyond the ubiquitous example cited above. Keywords: English; spelling; writing system; morphology; stem constancy