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