[Lingtyp] Is written language a separate modality?

[Joo Ian]

Dear all,

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).

For example in written English, an utterance may have different pragmatic values depending on the existence of punctuation.
1a. Yes.
b. Yes
(1a) and (1b) "sound" (or "seem") different, and this distinction has no phonetic equivalent in spoken English.

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: -이 /-i/ after a consonant, -가 /-ga/ after a vowel. In written Korean it is common to see sentences like:
2. 민준(내 친구)이 왔다. Mincwun (nay chingu) -i wassta. 'Minjun (my friend) came.'
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/.

Also, there are paralinguistic visual parameters, such as font: a written message written in bold, italics, underlines all deliver pragmatically different impressions. In addition, there are emojis that resemble (but are not equivalent to) manual gestures used in spoken languages.

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.

From Hong Kong,
Ian Joo
http://ianjoo.academia.edu

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