The Solid Form of Language: An Essay on Writing and Meaning

Description

"Drop a word in the ocean of meaning and concentric ripples form. To define a single word means to try to catch those ripples. No one’s hands are fast enough." With this concise and broadly informative essay, renowned poet, typographer and linguist Robert Bringhurst presents a brief history of writing and a new way of classifying and understanding the relationship between script and meaning. Beginning with the original relationship between a language and its written script, Bringhurst takes us on a history of reading and writing that begins with the interpretation of animal tracks and fast-forwards up to the typographical abundance of more recent times. The first four sections of the essay describe the earliest creation of scripts, their movement across the globe and the typographic developments within and across languages. In the fifth and final section of the essay, Bringhurst introduces his system of classifying scripts. Placing four established categories of written language - semographic, syllabic, alphabetic and prosodic - on a wheel adjacent to one another, he uses the location, size and shape of points on the wheel to show the degree to which individual world languages incorporate these aspects of recorded meaning. Bringhurst’s system is based on an appreciation that indeed no one’s hands are fast enough and that no single script adheres to or can be understood within the confines of a single method of transcription. Readers will find this combination of anthropology, typography, literature, mathematics, music and linguistics surprisingly accessible and thought provoking. The text is accompanied by diagrams and typographic examples that make for an experiential study of the relationship between writing and meaning. This book is a Smyth-sewn paperback with a letterpress printed jacket. The book was designed by Robert Bringhurst and Andrew Steeves, and printed on Zephyr Laid paper. The cover was hand-printed letterpress on St. Armand handmade paper.

Get the book

Amazon.com

Search the book

eBay.com

Search the book

Similar books

• 

  The Solid Form of Language: An Essay on Writing and Meaning : Robert Bringhurst

  By Robert Bringhurst

  Publisher's brochure advertising of "The solid form of language : an essay on writing and meaning" by Rovert Bringhurst. Includes excerpt from the essay, short information about the author and short information about Gaspereau Press.

• 

  First Language Lessons for the Well-trained Mind: Level 4

  By Jessie Wise, Sara Buffington

  Answer Key: Rule: Usually add s to form the plural. Singular Noun Plural Noun car cars Rule: Add es to nouns ending in s, sh, ch, x, or z. Singular Noun Plural Noun beach beaches Rule: If a noun ends in y after a consonant, ...

• 

  Ghosts in Solid Form: Paranormal Research Series

  By Gambier Bolton

  This book chronicles the results of a series of experiments, carried out in England, over the course of seven years, at the turn of the twentieth century, regarding the phenomena known to paranormal investigators as materialization of ...

• 

  Language, Writing, and Mobility: A Sociological Perspective

  By Florian Coulmas, Senior Professor for Japanese Society and Sociolinguistics Florian Coulmas

  These metaphors suggest a view of languages as natural beings of which a pure, original form can and should be found and used ... and establishing the legitimacy of a language.7 Writing means pouring something liquid into solid forms.

• 

  Pendragon Reborn

  By J R French

  ... converse in any language. My solid form is fluid at my control, so bullets or arrows would just pass through me. It is sort of like being immortal and invincible. Thought becomes form, but since thought is mutable, so am I. “Take ...

• 

  Questions on Wittgenstein (Routledge Revivals)

  By Rudolf Haller

  Professor Haller has spent his career exploring these themes, and is one of the foremost authorities on both Wittgenstein and contemporary Austrian philosophy.

• 

  Decrypting Power

  By Ricardo Sanín-Restrepo

  Insofar, when any form of power begins to regularize the access to language and to define qualifications for the encounters ... power is taken out of its free circulation and turned into a “power in a solid state” (Sanín-Restrepo 2016).

• 

  Language Dispersal, Diversification, and Contact

  By Pieter Muysken, Mily Crevels

  This book addresses the complex question of how and why languages have spread across the globe: why do we find large language families distributed over a wide area in some regions, while elsewhere we find clusters of very small families or ...

• 

  Atlas of the World's Languages

  By R.E. Asher, Christopher Moseley

  (1928) Bella Bella Texts. (Columbia University publications in anthropology, 5.) New York. —— (1933) (ed.) Handbook of American Indian Languages, III. New York: Augustin. —— (1947) 'Kwakiutl grammar with a glossary of the suffixes.

• 

  Solid State Theory, Volume 1: Basics: Phonons and Electrons in Crystals

  By Gerd Czycholl

  In addition to describing the special and most important solid state phenomena, the aim of this treatise is therefore ... the quasiparticle concept, in order to learn the special working method and language of the solid state physicist.