35.478, Review: Introducing Historical Orthography: Condorelli (2022)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-35-478. Sat Feb 10 2024. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 35.478, Review: Introducing Historical Orthography: Condorelli (2022)

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Date: 11-Feb-2024
From: Lionel Mathieu [lmathieu at bu.edu]
Subject: Historical Linguistics, Language Documentation: Condorelli (2022)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/33.3691

AUTHOR: Marco Condorelli
TITLE: Introducing Historical Orthography
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2022

REVIEWER: Lionel Mathieu

SUMMARY

‘Introducing Historical Orthography’ stems out of a larger academic
enterprise, compiled in the forthcoming ‘Cambridge Handbook of
Historical Orthography’ (Condorelli & Rutkowska), that seeks to
restore the fundamental and central place that writing holds within
the field of historical linguistics, that traditionally relegated its
study to prescriptivism and rules of correctness.

Flanked by an introduction and conclusion, the book is articulated
around four parts, each subdivided into two chapters, summarized
below.

The introduction to the book sets out to define this blossoming
scholarly undertaking as “the scientific study of writing in history,
[…] focus[ing] on the description and study of orthographies, their
development over time, as well as the forces and the processes which
shaped and directed modifications in historical writing features, from
the creation of the first writing systems to our contemporary era.”
(p. 3). No longer of ancillary importance, the study of historical
orthography is progressively establishing an international ecosystem
of conventions, methods, and terminology across the relevant scholarly
community. Thereby, the introduction takes every precaution to lay out
the considerations, conceptualizations, and limitations that naturally
arise when framing a relatively young avenue of scientific inquiry.
The author contends that “[t]he enthusiasm from the academic community
for topics related to historical orthography, the extraordinary
breadth and diversity of topics in the field, as well as the increased
awareness of the relevance of orthography as a subject underlying most
areas of historical linguistics, are all convincing indicators of the
field’s growing maturity and justify an introductory volume entirely
devoted to the subject.” (p. 10).

In Part I (Origins and Sources), the first chapter (A Short History of
Writing) chronicles the emergence and material and conceptual
development of the first writing systems around the globe (in China,
Mesoamerica, Mesopotamia, and Egypt). The chapter then proceeds to
focus on the rise and development of alphabetic writing, which marked
a point of departure from prior pictographic and logographic systems
(based on images and forms) to a phonetic system (based on speech
sounds). The genesis and evolution of the Phoenician, Greek, and
Roman/Latin alphabets are recounted, along with brief mentions of
other writing traditions such as the Arabic, Gothic, and Cyrillic
scripts. Following the evolutionary course of writing beyond mere
engraving and handwriting, the chapter concludes with a section on
modern technologies (the successive printing, industrial, and digital
revolutions) that have further expanded and shaped the written means
of communication. The second chapter (Witnesses to Historical Writing)
thoroughly documents and details the numerous physical supports (e.g.
stone, metal, papyrus, parchment, vellum, etc.) that have passed the
ages and have served to materialize writing over time. A particular
emphasis is given to the medium of paper, from the birth of
papermaking in China to its worldwide dispersion and adoption, as well
as paper’s intrinsic characteristics as a material across time and
space. Along with a detailed account of paper’s chronology as evidence
for the study of historical orthography, the advent of its
accompanying technology, namely typography, is also explored in light
of its empirical value for the field.

In Part II (Elements of Orthography), the first chapter (Orthographic
Components) defines and explains key terminology in the field of
historical orthography, such as logograms, phonograms, syllabaries,
ideograms and pictograms, before delving into more specific elements
of orthography such as graphemes, allographs, letters, characters,
glyphs, punctuation, and capitalization. This chapter thereby focuses
heavily on defining and unpacking terms and concepts within a taxonomy
of orthography, often offering readers a representative view of
various definitional understandings amongst scholars, as well as areas
of necessary research. The second chapter (Structure and Presentation)
tackles the systemic nature of orthography, focusing on both the
internal arrangement of orthographic elements and their spatial
disposition on a physical material, primarily in alphabetic systems of
writing. The chapter first proceeds to present the various levels of
orthographic organization, starting from its smallest single unit (the
grapheme) all the way to morpholexical (e.g. compound phrases) and
suprasegmental (e.g. word spacing, paragraph indentation)
considerations, with or without punctuation marks. The chapter
concludes with a discussion of the visual appearance of writing on
paper, with evidence from textual display, layout, decoration, and
general mise-en-page informing and buttressing the study of historical
orthography.

In Part III (Analysing Orthography), the first chapter (Investigative
Approaches) embarks on a journey most familiar to scholars and
researchers: the means and methods of birthing new understanding and
knowledge. Condorelli writes that “[t]his part of the book sets out to
cover a range of analytical methods, with the hope of defining
benchmarks useful to the student of historical orthography for the
most promising empirical approaches in the field, drawing on some of
the knowledge and habits inherited from the past” (p. 105). Among the
latter are traditional methods, such as philology and pragmaphilology,
that, over recent years, have benefitted from an upsurge in digitized
corpora of original texts, thereby bringing about new avenues of
investigation, analysis, and research methodologies in historical
orthography, and beyond. The chapter proceeds to present and explain
three methodological approaches (intra-, inter-, and cross- textual
analyses) in the diachronic study of a given language’s orthography.
It concludes with a discussion of the latest efforts in the field of
grapholinguistics to harmonize terminology and approaches in the
comparative, cross-linguistic study and understanding of all writing
systems of the past. The second chapter (Representation and
Interpretation) concerns itself with the issues and challenges of
unearthing the “agreements shared by those involved in writing and
reading orthography” (p. 126), that have persisted and fluctuated over
the span of time. Considerations of the complex interplay between
levels of linguistic representation (e.g. phonological, morphological,
semantic) in historical writing systems are discussed, through
examples from European, alphabetic languages, and East Asian,
logographic languages. The chapter concludes with a section on the
disappearance of writing systems, as is the case with Mayan glyphs or
Etruscan writing, the related difficulty of their interpretation, and
the analytical steps of decipherment used by experts in the field.

In Part IV (Understanding Orthography), the first chapter (Orthography
and Standardisation) examines orthographic developments with a
particular focus on standardization (i.e. the reduction of variation
in form, the elaboration of function, the codification of the least
variant form, and the maintenance and prescription of the standard in
a language community). The extensive history of English orthography,
and its standardization efforts over time, serves as the foundation
for more conceptual and theoretical understanding in general. The
author spends a great deal of time recounting the evolutionary (often
non-linear and complex) pathways of the standardization processes in
Early Modern English orthography (16-17th c.), with the support of a
wealth of references from the discipline. In that vein, questions of
the roles and influences of agents of standardization (e.g. printers,
language theoreticians, schoolmasters, authors, patrons, and readers)
in these processes are discussed at length. The second chapter
(Orthography and Language Change) takes a look at the
orthography-internal standardization factors that have superimposed
onto one another over the course of time to yield our present-day
spelling conventions. As language change is intrinsically inevitable,
by extent, its written manifestation doesn’t escape its dynamic
effects. This chapter therefore explains and surveys the two salient
types of language change (i.e. transmission, native-language learning
across generations, and diffusion, language contact across
communities) as it relates to orthographic development. These two
concepts, as applied to the diachronic stabilization of writing
conventions, are further substantiated and exemplified through
phenomena such as schooling, metalinguistic, prescriptive practices,
professional networks and communities (for transmission), and
regional, social, contextual and genre dissemination (for diffusion)
in English, German and Dutch.

The short conclusion to the book centers around three main points.
First, it recapitulates the tenets of its enterprise: “to provide an
overview of some of the main concepts inherent to historical
orthography – a burgeoning field of academic knowledge and empirical
inquiry” (p. 193). Second, it offers several avenues of inquiry to
enrich the growing stock of studies in historical orthography (e.g.
the interrelationship between philological approaches and
sociolinguistic methods, or the increased use of digitalized data
collection and corpora). And third, it advocates for a comparative
approach in the study of historical orthography as it “encourages new
perspectives of exploration, which may not necessarily be obvious to
those working exclusively on the orthography of an individual
historical language” (p. 195). By comparing the written histories of
individual languages, parallels and discrimination of internal and
external factors shaping historical writing systems may be uncovered
and better understood. Condorelli nevertheless reminds readers that
these advantages are not without challenges (e.g. the lack of answers
to rightful research questions, the object and locus of analysis, the
potential neglect of (sub)areas of inquiry, or the siloing of a
community of researchers detached from cognate fields within
historical linguistics). The author concludes with a call for greater
agreement amongst scholars over the field’s theoretical margins and
definitional contents.

EVALUATION

By assuming the self-proclaimed role of “selective synthesiser” (p.7)
of existing materials and knowledge on historical orthography, the
author offers readers of all stripes the pleasure of accessing broad,
informative and state of the art content emanating from this
burgeoning field of scientific inquiry. Condorelli writes that “[t]he
book is envisioned mainly as a pedagogical resource used in the
classroom, but given the current gaps in the field it may also serve
as a scholarly point of reference” (p.7). Indeed, neophyte readers
will be enthralled by the wealth and breadth of information, while
scholars and researchers will appreciate the author’s overt
signalization of areas lacking or deserving greater inquiry to advance
and flesh out the field of historical orthography.

While the prose is generally accessible to most readers, some sections
of the book, such as the sections on paper and typography (in Part I),
can nevertheless appear to be too technical and overly detailed for a
student readership (even those with an advanced linguistics
background).

The introduction to the book is particularly refreshing in its genuine
care and outlook for the field. The author goes to great length to
inform readers of the particular considerations related to defining
and delineating a relatively young field of theoretical and empirical
inquiry. It brings readers along in all of the reflections on unifying
scholarly traditions, perspectives, and language-specific works that
can contribute to characterizing a coherent and identifiable
discipline. Readers will appreciate Condorelli’s transparency in the
terms used, the works cited, and the editorial choices made (for his
intended purposes). The author is also to be commended for providing
readers with various ways to manipulate his book, both in terms of its
readability (i.e. possibility for both linear or piecemeal reading),
and in terms of its utility (i.e. possibility for use as a textbook or
a scholarly resource).

Readers will also undoubtedly appreciate the author’s effort towards
objectivity in Part III of the book (Analysing Orthography), which
discusses methodological approaches to the study of historical
orthography. In addition to their clear presentation and explanation,
Condorelli transparently exposes both the merits and drawbacks of each
approach, allowing (neophyte) readers to grasp the intricacies and
interrogations at the heart of a researcher’s work.

Despite defining key terminology either in the text or in footnotes,
if the intent of the book is to be used as a textbook, a glossary of
terms at the end of the book would seem appropriate and useful to
students. It is acknowledged that this apparently straightforward
addition may actually turn out to be quite complex given the multitude
of definitional divergences amongst scholars (as is often mentioned by
the author). Notwithstanding, an attempt towards providing a glossary
in future editions of the book would certainly assist the
student-reader in their understanding of foundational concepts.
Furthermore, other elements of textbooks that would enhance the
readability and use of the current book, would be the addendum of key
takeaways (in the form of bulleted points) at the end of each part (or
individual chapters). These summative ideas could be further broken
down into, on the one hand, factual matters (i.e. current knowledge
base), and, on the other hand, remaining areas/questions of inquiry
(i.e. exploratory horizons). These features would be a welcomed
addition from a student-reader perspective.

In terms of formatting, one can spot a number of rectifications
needed. For instance, Figure 5.2 on page 86 doesn’t feature what it is
purposed to feature: namely, both instances of ligatured and
non-ligatured sequences of graphemes are identical (when they should
illustrate a contrast). Some typographic errors in the text can also
be found; for instance, on
page 70, ‘wordc’ instead of ‘word’, on page 87, ‘quasi-literature’
instead of ‘quasi-ligature’, on page 90, ‘centred’ instead of
‘centered’, and on page 185, ‘tramission’ instead of ‘transmission’.

All in all, ‘Introducing Historical Orthography’ is an essential
introductory book for any student and scholar interested in the study
of humanity’s singular achievement: writing.

REFERENCES

Condorelli, M. & H. Rutkowska (eds.). Forthcoming. The Cambridge
Handbook of Historical Orthography. Cambridge University Press.

Condorelli, M. (2022). Introducing Historical Orthography. Cambridge
University Press.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Lionel Mathieu holds a PhD in linguistics from the University of
Arizona. He is a Senior Lecturer in French in the Department of
Romance Studies at Boston University. His research interests in
linguistics focus primarily on the phonology-orthography interface in
second language acquisition, bilingualism, loanword adaptations, and
historical linguistic



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