Overview

What counts as a word in a newly written language is not a simple matter. This volume brings together ten new case studies from around the world that shed light on the complex process of determining word boundaries. This process relies not just on linguistic analysis, but also on literacy principles such as readability and ultimately on the acceptability of the decisions to the communities using the orthographies. Any reader wishing to understand the principles behind word boundary decisions will benefit from this book. Orthography developers will learn through the experiences and struggles documented in a wide variety of case studies how compromises around word boundary choices are reached and how decisions evolve over time. The Orthographic Word in Languages of the World is a welcome addition to the research around orthography development, specifically the less common subdomain of word boundaries.

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9781556715754

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Reviews

Word breaks are the orphan of orthography development, with the challenges they present tending to be overlooked, deprioritized or ignored altogether. Practitioners seeking guidelines, models and inspiration have hitherto been limited by a sparse repertoire of research. This welcome volume brings ten new contributions from around the world, single-handedly increasing the extant literature by about 50% by my calculations: a giant leap forward in a neglected subdomain. David Roberts Independent Scholar

Author Information

Helen Eaton (PhD, 2002, University of Reading) is a Senior Linguistics Consultant with SIL Global based in Tanzania. She has been working with language communities in Tanzania on orthography development since 2002.

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