Chapter 3: Writing: Its history and its decipherment

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter I
2. Preface to the Third Edition V
3. Contents VII
4. Chapter 1: Introduction 1
5. Appendix to Chapter 1: Phonetics, phonetic symbols, and other symbols 18
6. Chapter 2: The discovery of Indo-European 29
7. Chapter 3: Writing: Its history and its decipherment 57
8. Chapter 4: Sound change 104
9. Chapter 5: Analogy and change in word structure 141
10. Chapter 6: Syntactic change 170
11. Chapter 7: Semantic change 189
12. Chapter 8: Lexical borrowing 223
13. Chapter 9: Lexical change and etymology The study of words 260
14. Chapter 10: Language, dialect, and standard 284
15. Chapter 11: Dialect geography and dialectology 308
16. Chapter 12: Language spread, link languages, and bilingualism 322
17. Chapter 13: Convergence: Dialectology beyond language boundaries 343
18. Chapter 14: Pidgins, creoles, and related forms of language 366
19. Chapter 15: Language death 392
20. Chapter 16: Comparative method: Establishing language relationship 398
21. Chapter 17: Proto-World? The question of long-distance genetic relationships 426
22. Chapter 18: Linguistic palaeontology: Historical linguistics, history, and prehistory 447
23. Chapter notes and suggested readings 486
24. References 513