The invention of writing is the most important stage in the development of a language system. With the help of writing, people are able to transmit information in non-verbal ways. Thanks to writing, there are books, newspapers, cinema and the Internet, thanks to it you can read this article. The smallest sense elements of a letter are graphemes.
The concept
This term was introduced into linguistics by the domestic linguist I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay.
The branch of science that studies graphemes is called graphics. The words "grapheme" and "graphics" are of Greek origin (γράφω - "I write"). The concept of grapheme is opposed to the phoneme - the smallest unit of speech.
In linguistics, speaking of graphemes, they are enclosed in angle brackets: ⟨⟩, ⟨⟩, etc., by analogy with square brackets for phonetic transcriptions and slashes for phonemes (/ a /, / l /).
In alphabetic writing systems, a grapheme corresponds to a letter. But the concept of grapheme is wider, it includes not only the letter itself, but also various options for its design. Uppercase and lowercase, handwritten in different fonts, are all graphemes. Therefore, the number of graphemes is much greater than the number of letters of the alphabet.
In addition, graphemes include punctuation marks, mathematical symbols, ligatures, etc.
Non-alphabetic writing systems use hieroglyphs instead of letters. They are characteristic of many ancient and modern languages of the world: Ancient Egyptian, Yiddish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc. Graphemes of hieroglyphs consist of ideograms - conditional icons or drawings that convey the author’s thought. The peculiarity of the ideograms of some languages is that they can be understood even by people who do not speak this language.
Types of graphemes
In the language of grapheme can be of various types.
- Homophonic. These are graphemes that transmit the same sound.
- Allographs are different styles of the same letter.
- Auxiliary - graphemes, including punctuation and diacritics.
- Ligatures - continuous spelling of graphemes.
- Monographs are single-letter graphemes.
- Grapheme complexes - graphic units consisting of two or more graphemes (for example, English ch, sh, augh, etc.).
Relations of graphemes and phonemes
Often in the grapheme language the phoneme is represented, that is, the sound unit corresponding to the letter in this case (regardless of the style of writing). But this correspondence is not always manifested.
For example, two or more graphemes can correspond to only one sound. For example, the French combination of letters ch transmits the sound / w /. In English, the sound / o / can be transmitted by various combinations of graphemes, one of them is augh (taught, caught).
Another situation: one grapheme corresponds to several sounds. For example, in Russian, the grapheme ⟨⟩ can include two sounds - / st / and / e / (the word "play").
Soft and hard characters in Russian are also not phonemes, however, they have their own graphemes.
Graphemes also include spaces, punctuation, and numbers. Obviously, they do not have any phonetic content.
So, grapheme is the smallest significant unit of the graphic system of language - writing. It includes various letter styles, punctuation marks, numbers, hieroglyphs. It is important not to identify the grapheme with the other smallest structure of the language - the phoneme.