Mathieu Publishes Book Review
Lionel Mathieu, Senior Lecturer in French, has published a review of an introductory book on the scientific study of writing in the history of language, in Linguist List.
Introducing Historical Orthography (Condorelli, 2022) is the first comprehensive introduction to a burgeoning field of scientific inquiry, focused on the genesis, development, and evolution of humanity’s singular achievement: writing. The book offers readers interested in historical linguistics a broad overview of how writing systems have changed over time, discussing the field’s raison d’être, its theoretical underpinnings, scientific methods, and exploratory horizons. Other topics of discussion include the documentation of historical writing systems around the world, their multiple levels of analysis, as well as the various internal and external forces and processes that have influenced, shaped, altered, even extinguished, orthographies in a variety of languages over the long course of time. Connections between several linguistics subfields (e.g. phonology, morphology, syntax) and cognate fields (e.g. paleography, philology, history) are established and examined.
Mathieu’s review can be found here.