Defective script: Difference between revisions

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A '''defective script''' is a [[writing system]] that does not represent all the [[phoneme|phonemic]] distinctions of a language.<ref name="Sampson">{{cite book|last=Sampson|first=Geoffrey|year=1985|title=Writing Systems|publisher=Stanford University Press|isbn=0-8047-1756-7}}</ref>{{rp|36-38}}<ref>{{cite book|last=Coulmas|first=Florian|year=1996|title=The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems|publisher=Blackwell|isbn=0-631-21481-X}}</ref>{{rp|118}} For example, [[Italian language|Italian]] has seven [[vowel]]s, but the [[Italian alphabet]] has only five vowel [[letter (alphabet)|letter]]s to represent them; in general, the differencesdifference between [[Vowel#height|close]] {{IPA|/e, ɛo/}} and [[Vowel#height|open]] {{IPA|/oɛ, ɔ/}} areis simply ignored, though when stress marks, areif used they, may distinguish them. Among the [[consonant]]s, both {{IPA|/s/}} and {{IPA|/z/}} are written {{angbr|{{lang|it|s}}}}, and both {{IPA|/ts/}} and {{IPA|/dz/}} are written {{angbr|{{lang|it|z}}}}, though not many words are distinguished by the latter. [[Stress (linguistics)|Stress]] and [[hiatus (linguistics)|hiatus]] are not reliably distinguished.<ref>{{cite book|last=Danesi|first=Marcel|year=1996|title=Italian the Easy way|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_RuiM7-I7ScC|isbn=9780812091465}}</ref>

Such defectionsshortcomings are not uncommon. The [[Greek alphabet]] was defective during its early history. [[Ancient Greek language|ClassicalAncient Greek]] had distinctive [[vowel length]]: five short vowels, {{IPA|/i e a o u/}}, and seven long vowels, {{IPA|/iː eː ɛː aː ɔː oː uː/}}. When the [[Phoenician alphabet]] was adapted to Greek, the names of five letters were pronounced by the Greeks with initial consonants made silent, and were then used acrophonically to represent vowels. These were ''[[alpha (letter)|alpha]]'', ''e'' (later called ''[[epsilon|e psilon]]''), ''[[iota (letter)|iota]]'', ''o'' (later called ''[[omicron (letter)|o micron]]''), and ''u'' (later called ''[[upsilon (letter)|u psilon]]'') &ndash; <{{lang|grc|α, ε, ι, ο, υ}}> &ndash; five letters for twelve vowel sounds. Later the [h] dropped from the Eastern Greek dialects, and the letter ''heta'' (now pronounced ''[[eta (letter)|eta]]'') became available; it was used for {{IPA|/ɛː/}}. About the same time the Greeks created an additional letter, ''[[omega (letter)|omegao mega]]'', probably by writing ''omicrono micron'' with an underline, that was used for {{IPA|/ɔː/}}. [[Digraph (orthography)|Digraph]]s ''ei'' and ''ou'' were devisedadopted for {{IPA|/eː/}} and {{IPA|/oː/.}} Thus Greek entered its classical era with seven letters and two digraphs &ndash; <{{lang|grc|α, ε, ι, ο, υ, η, ω, ει, ου}}> &ndash; for twelve vowel sounds. Long {{IPA|/iː aː uː/}} were never distinguished from short {{IPA|/i a u/}}, even though the distinction was meaningful. Although the Greek alphabet was a good match to the consonants of the language, it was defective when it came to some vowels.<ref>{{cite book|author=Pierre Swiggers|editor=P.T. Daniels & W. Bright|title=The World's Writing Systems|year=1996|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-507993-7|chapter=Transmission of the Phoenician Script to the West}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=Leslie Threatte|editor=P.T. Daniels & W. Bright|title=The World's Writing Systems|year=1996|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-507993-7|chapter=The Greek Alphabet}}</ref>

Other ancient scripts were also defective. Egyptian [[hieroglyphs]] had no vowel representation at all, while the [[cuneiform script]] frequently failed to distinguish among a consonant triad like /t/, /d/ and /t'/ (emphatic /t/), or between the vowels /e/ and /i/.

Languages with a long literary history have a tendency to freeze spelling at an early stage, leaving subsequent pronunciation shifts unrecorded. Such is the case with English, French, Gaelic, Greek, Hebrew, Persian, and Thai, among others. By contrast, some writing systems have been periodically respelled in accordance with changed pronunciation, such as Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish and Japanese hiragana.

A broadly defective script is the [[Arabic abjad]].<ref name="DB">{{cite book|author1=Peter T. Daniels|author2=William Bright|title=The World's Writing Systems|year=1996|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-507993-7}}</ref>{{rp|561-3}} The modern script does not normally write short vowels, but for the first few centuries of the [[Islam]]ic era, long vowels were not written and many consonant letters were ambiguous as well. The Arabic script derives from the Aramaic, and not only did the [[Aramaic language]] have fewer [[phoneme]]s than Arabic, but several originally distinct Aramaic letters had conflated (become indistinguishable in shape), so that in the early Arabic writings 28 consonants phonemes were represented by only 18 letters—and in the middle of words, only 15 were distinct. For example, medial {{angbr|{{lang|ar|ـٮـ}}}} represented {{IPA|/b, t, θ, n, j/}}, and {{angbr|{{lang|ar|ح}}}} represented {{IPA|/d͡ʒ, ħ, x/}}. A system of [[diacritic]] marks, or ''pointing,'' was later developed to resolve the ambiguities, and over the centuries became nearly universal. However, even today unpointed texts of a style called ''{{transl|ar|DIN|mašq}}'' are found, where these consonants are not distinguished.<ref>{{cite book|author1=Richard Bell|author2=William Montgomery Watt|title=Bell's Introduction to the Qur'ān|year=1970|publisher=University Press|___location=Edinburgh|isbn=978-0-85224-171-4}}</ref>

A broadly defective script is the [[Arabic abjad]].<ref name="DB">{{cite book|author1=Peter T. Daniels|author2=William Bright|title=The World's Writing Systems|year=1996|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-507993-7}}</ref>{{rp|561-3}} The modern script does not normally write short vowels, but for the first few centuries of the [[Islam]]ic era, long vowels were not written and many consonant letters were ambiguous as well. The Arabic script derives from the Aramaic, and not only did the [[Aramaic language]] have fewer [[phoneme]]s than Arabic, but several originally distinct Aramaic letters had conflated (become indistinguishable in shape), so that in the early Arabic writings 28 consonantsconsonant phonemes were represented by only 18 letters—and in the middle of words, only 15 were distinct. For example, medial {{angbr|{{lang|ar|ـٮـ}}}} represented {{IPA|/b, t, θ, n, j/}}, and {{angbr|{{lang|ar|ح}}}} represented {{IPA|/d͡ʒ, ħ, x/}}. A system of [[diacritic]] marks, or ''pointing,'' was later developed to resolve the ambiguities, and over the centuries became nearly universal. However, even today unpointed texts of a style called ''{{transl|ar|DIN|mašq}}'' are found, where these consonants are not distinguished.<ref>{{cite book|author1=Richard Bell|author2=William Montgomery Watt|title=Bell's Introduction to the Qur'ān|year=1970|publisher=University Press|___location=Edinburgh|isbn=978-0-85224-171-4}}</ref>

Without short vowels or [[Gemination|geminate]] consonants being written, modern Arabic {{lang|ar|نظر}} ''{{transl|ar|DIN|nẓr}}'' could represent {{lang|ar|نَظَرَ}} {{IPA|/naðˤara/}} 'he saw', {{lang|ar|نَظَّرَ}} {{IPA|/naðˤːara/}} 'he compared', {{lang|ar|نُظِرَ}} {{IPA|/nuðˤira/}} 'he was seen', {{lang|ar|نُظِّرَ}} {{IPA|/nuðˤːira/}} 'he was compared', {{lang|ar|نَظَر}} {{IPA|/naðˤar/}} 'a glance', or {{lang|ar|نِظْر}} {{IPA|/niðˤr/}} 'similar'. However, in practice there is little ambiguity, as the vowels are more easily predictable in Arabic than they are in a language like English. Moreover, the defective nature of the script has its benefits: the stable shape of the root words, despite grammatical [[inflection]], results in quicker word recognition and therefore faster reading speeds; and the lack of short vowels, the sounds which vary the most between [[Varieties of Arabic|Arabic dialects]], makes texts more widely accessible to a diverse audience.<ref>{{cite book|author=Thomas Bauer|editor=P.T. Daniels & W. Bright|title=The World's Writing Systems|year=1996|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-507993-7|chapter=Arabic Writing}}</ref>

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However, in ''{{transl|ar|DIN|mašq}}'' and those styles of ''[[kufic]]'' writing which lack consonant pointing, the ambiguities are more serious, for here different roots are written the same. {{lang|ar|ﯨطر}} could represent the root ''{{transl|ar|DIN|nẓr}}'' 'see' as above, but also ''{{transl|ar|DIN|nṭr}}'' 'protect', ''{{transl|ar|DIN|bṭr}}'' 'pride', ''{{transl|ar|DIN|bẓr}}'' 'clitoris' or 'with flint', as well as several inflections and derivations of each of these root words.

The Arabic alphabet has been adopted by many Muslim peoples to write their languages. In them, new consonant letters have been devised for sounds lacking in Arabic (e.g. {{IPA|/p/}}, {{IPA|/g/}}, {{IPA|/tʃ/}}, and {{IPA|/ʒ/}} in [[Persian language|Persian]];<ref name="DB" />{{rp|747}} all the aspirate and retroflex stops in [[Sindhi language|Sindhi]]<ref name="DB" />{{rp|757}}). But rarely have the full set of vowels been represented in those new alphabets: [[Ottoman Turkish language|Ottoman Turkish]] had eight vowels, but used only three letters to notenotate them.<ref name="DB" />{{rp|758}} However, some adaptions of the Arabic alphabet do unambiguously mark all vowels: those for [[Bosnian language|Bosnian]], [[Kashmiri language|Kashmiri]],<ref name="DB" />{{rp|753}} [[Kurdish language|Kurdish]], [[Kyrgyz alphabets|Kyrgyz]], and [[Uyghur language|Uyghur]] and [[Bosnian language|Bosnian]] languages.<ref name="DB" />{{rp|748}}

When a defective script is written with diacritics or other conventions to indicate all phonemic distinctions, the result is called ''plene'' writing.<ref>{{cite book|author=Werner Weinberg|title=The History of Hebrew Plene Spelling|year=1985|publisher=Hebrew Union College Press|isbn=978-0-87820-205-8}}</ref>

Defectiveness is a [[cline (linguistics)|cline]]: the Semitic ''[[abjad]]s'' do not indicate (all) vowels, but there are also alphabets which mark vowels but not [[tone (linguistics)|tone]] (e.g. many [[Writing systems of Africa|African languages]]), or vowel quality but not vowel length (e.g. [[Latin spelling and pronunciation|Latin]]). Even if English orthography were regularized, the English alphabet would still be incapable of unambiguously conveying [[intonation (linguistics)|intonation]], though since this is not expected of scripts, it is not normally counted as defectiveness.<ref name="Sampson" />

==References==