hellog〜英語史ブログ / 2026-03-08

■ #6159. 文字史における3つの重要な局面 [grammatology][writing][alphabet]

　昨日の記事「#6158. Powell による文字の分類」 ([2026-03-07-1]) で参照・引用した Powell は，文字史における重大な転機が3つあったと記している．文字の分類を解説した直後に，次の文章が続く (51--52) ．

   Although this is a structural description, it is also a rough outline of the history of writing, understood as a technology that underwent broad and radical changes over millennia and came to serve ever more efficient and complex forms of communication and thought. The major changes were three.
   First was the discovery of the phonetic principle, the representation of the sounds of speech by graphic means. This discovery appears to have been applied three times in a more or less systematic way: in southern Mesopotamia, in China, and in Mesoamerica. But all these systems are only partly phonetic.
   The second major discovery was of a wholly phonetic writing. We cannot date the discovery, but perhaps as early as 1800 BC in the Near East and rather earlier in Crete, c.2100 BC (for the earliest "Cretan hieroglyphs"). While such writings are wholly phonetic, that is, most signs refer to sound and are not meaningful, they still cannot be pronounced except by a native speaker. Wholly phonetic writings made possible an immense constriction in the number of signs over the earlier logosyllabaries (made up of logograms and syllabograms) by focusing on a single semantic aspect of communication, namely sounds of the human voice speaking some "language." This advantageous constriction was gained at the loss of clarity provided by the many semantic nonphonetic elements of the earlier logosyllabaries.
   The third major shift was the invention of the Greek alphabet around 800 BC, a system that atomized the sounds of human speech, utilized symbols for these sounds, and made possible the approximate reconstruction of the sound of human speech, even by someone who does not speak the language.
   In studying the history of writing we must remember that a continuity of forms can mask an extreme shift in inner structure, while two sets of completely differing forms can function in the same way.

　1つめの重要な局面は「表音原理そのものの発明」，2つめは「完全な表音文字の発明」，3つめは「音素文字の完全使用の発明」と要約しておいてよいだろう．Powell の文字論や文字観は洞察に満ちている．しかし，一方で文字の経済合理性の側面のみに注目しているように見受けられる．
　第2の「完全な表音文字の発明」の局面について，中東でのアルファベットの発現だけでなく，さらに早い段階でのクレタ島のヒエログリフにも言及しているのは鋭い．

　・ Powell, Barry B. Writing: Theory and History of the Technology of Civilization. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.

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