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<p class="MsoNormal">Dear all,</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I would like to ask everyone if you agree on the idea that written language is not simply a representation of spoken language, but a distinct modality (similar to how sign and spoken language are different modalities).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">For example in written English, an utterance may have different pragmatic values depending on the existence of punctuation.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">1a. Yes.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">b. Yes</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">(1a) and (1b) "sound" (or "seem") different, and this distinction has no phonetic equivalent in spoken English.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Also in some cases, written and spoken forms of the "same" language may differ morphosyntactically. For example in Korean, there are two allomorphs of the nomitive suffi: -<span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-family:"Batang",serif">이</span> /-i/
after a consonant, -<span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-family:"Batang",serif">가</span> /-ga/ after a vowel. In written Korean it is common to see sentences like:</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">2. <span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-family:"Batang",serif">민준</span>(<span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-family:"Batang",serif">내</span><span lang="ZH-CN">
</span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-family:"Batang",serif">친구</span>)<span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-family:"Batang",serif">이</span><span lang="ZH-CN">
</span><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-family:"Batang",serif">왔다</span>. Mincwun (nay chingu) -i wassta. 'Minjun (my friend) came.'</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In spoken Korean, the suffix should be /-ga/ because it follows a vowel. But in written Korean, it can "follow" the last syllable before the parenthesis, thus resulting in /-i/.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Also, there are paralinguistic visual parameters, such as font: a written message written in
<b>bold,</b> <i>italics,</i> <u>underlines</u> all deliver pragmatically different impressions. In addition, there are emojis that resemble (but are not equivalent to) manual gestures used in spoken languages.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It seems that there is a general consensus that a written language is simply the “shadow” of a spoken language. But I am not sure if this is exactly the case.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">From Hong Kong,</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Ian Joo</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">http://ianjoo.academia.edu</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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