Logograms

An early example of logographic writing is the system used by the Sumerians, in the southern part of modern Iraq, around 5,000 years ago. Because of the particular shapes used in their symbols, these inscriptions are more generally described as cuneiform writing. The term cuneiform means “wedge-shaped” and the inscriptions used by the Sumerians were produced by pressing a wedge-shaped implement into soft clay tablets, resulting in forms such as .

The form of this symbol really gives no clue to what type of entity is being referred to. The relationship between the written form and the object it represents has become arbitrary and we have a clear example of word-writing or a logogram. The cuneiform symbol above can be compared to a typical pictographic representation of the same fishy entity:. We can also compare the ideogram for the sun, presented earlier as, with the logogram used to refer to the same entity found in cuneiform writing:.

Contemporary logograms in English are forms such as $, @, 9, &, where each symbol represents one word. A more elaborate writing system that is based, to a certain extent, on the use of logograms can be found in China. Many Chinese written symbols, or characters, are used as representations of the meaning of words, or parts of words, and not of the sounds of spoken language. One of the advantages of such a system is that two speakers of very different dialects of Chinese, who might have great difficulty understanding each other’s spoken forms, can both read the same written text. Chinese writing, with the longest continuous history of use as a writing system (i.e. 3,000 years), clearly has many other advantages for its users.

One major disadvantage is that quite a large number of different written symbols are required within this type of writing system, although the official “list of modern Chinese characters for everyday use” is limited to 2,500 characters. (Other lists contain up to 50,000 characters.) Remembering large numbers of different composite wordsymbols, however, does seem to present a substantial memory load, and the history of most other writing systems illustrates a development away from logographic writing. 214 The Study of Language To accomplish this, some principled method is needed to go from symbols representing words (i.e. a logographic system) to a set of symbols that represent sounds (i.e. a phonographic system).