LING 270

Language, Technology & Society

Second Homework for Unit 2

Handed out: Monday, February 4, 2008

Due, in class, Monday, February 11, 2008

 

1.      (10 points) On Slide 25 for the slides for Unit 2 at http://catarina.ai.uiuc.edu/L270/Slides/unit2.ppt we went through an analysis of the layout of vowel diacritics for Devanagari in terms of the operators ↑, →, ↓ and ←:

 

Visit the page on syllabic alphabets at: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/syllabic.htm

 

Pick any of the alphasyllabic systems listed there, and do a similar analysis of the vowel diacritics for that system. Produce a table that looks like the boxed material in the one I have above for Devanagari.

 

As we discussed in class, some of these systems express some vowels with two or more pieces: you may want to review what we described for Kannada. In those cases, it is often the case that the two pieces involve separate operators: for example, the 'i:' diacritic in Kannada involves two pieces, one little hook above the consonant and something that looks like a backwards comma after the consonant. If your chosen script(s) have such cases you may indicate these 'complex symbols' as involving more than one operator, something like (for Kannada):

 

↑, →       /i:/

 

You will be graded on how clearly you present your analysis, so a tabular presentation, as requested above, is highly recommended.

2.      (10 points) Suppose that English had been spoken in the Aegean around 1500 BC and had adopted the script that we now know as Linear B. Clearly the script would be as ill-adapted for English as it was for Mycenean Greek. Suppose that the same methods were used to shoehorn English into Linear B. How might the following words have been written:

a.       dog

b.      mushroom

c.       bride

d.      mango

e.       street

f.        cumin

g.       picnic

h.       Urbana

i.         rotten

j.        melon

For the purposes of this exercise you do not have to use actual Linear B symbols (thought it would be cool if you do). It is sufficient to write it out as syllables as in the examples in the lecture notes. Thus: pa-ma-ko for pharmakon.

 

In any case, you should explain the reasoning behind your choices in each case. For example, one could justify the spelling pa-ma-ko  by observing that Linear B had no way to distinguish p from ph, and no way to write consonants that ended a syllable (the r and n).

 

Your analysis should make phonetic sense. In other words, it would be reasonable to use the syllable pa to represent English syllables ba, pa, but not the English syllable tha, for example.

 

3.      (10 points).You have a language with the range of possible syllables schematized by the following expression:

 

s?C1?VC2? where:

 

C1 is one of: p, t, k, m, n, l

C2 is one of: m, n, r

V is one of a, e, i, o, u

 

Make sure you understand what this expression means. If you do not, ask in class.

 

How many distinct symbols would be needed for a full syllabary for this language?

 

Now make up a syllabary of no more than 50 symbols to encode this system.