What is natural in writing?
Andy Warren-Rothlin · Nov 4, 2018, 9:44 AM · Last modified: Sep 28, 2026, 11:38 AMThis field of research is new to me - I'd be interested to know if other MAP users have read or written in this area. It seems to have important applications to translation, metaphor and lexical studies, and scripts.
Author: Meletis, Dimitrios
Source: Written Language & Literacy, Volume 21, Number 1, 2018, pp. 52-88(37)
Abstract: Naturalness Theory (NT) is founded on the notion of naturalness and claims that when a linguistic phenomenon can be processed by humans with little effort, both sensomotorically and cognitively, it is deemed more natural compared to other, more complex phenomena. Drawing on evidence such as language change, language acquisition, and language disorders, various parameters of naturalness (e.g., biuniqueness, constructional iconicity) have been postulated, which focus on the phonological and morphological subsystems of language. This paper offers an outline of how naturalness can be adapted to grapholinguistic phenomena. Comparative graphematics (cf. Weingarten 2011), extended to comparative grapholinguistics, is assessed as a method that can be used to reveal naturalness parameters which apply to both material (graphetic) and linguistic (graphematic) aspects of writing. The reduction of extrinsic symmetry across various scripts will be discussed as an example. By integrating these preliminary theoretical ideas into the framework of NT, it is demonstrated that so-called Natural Grapholinguistics could offer promising new insights as well as a tertium comparationis method for future comparative analyses of scripts and writing systems.
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Author: Meletis, Dimitrios Source: Written Language & Literacy, Volume 21,Number 1, 2018, pp. 52-88(37) Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/wll.00010.mel previous article view table of contents next article
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Naturalness Theory (NT) is founded on the notion of naturalness and claims that when a linguistic phenomenon can be processed by humans with little effort, both sensomotorically and cognitively, it is deemed more natural compared to other, more complex phenomena. Drawing on evidence such as language change, language acquisition, and language disorders, various parameters of naturalness (e.g., biuniqueness, constructional iconicity) have been postulated, which focus on the phonological and morphological subsystems of language. This paper offers an outline of how naturalness can be adapted to grapholinguistic phenomena. Comparative graphematics (cf. Weingarten 2011), extended to comparative grapholinguistics, is assessed as a method that can be used to reveal naturalness parameters which apply to both material (graphetic) and linguistic (graphematic) aspects of writing. The reduction of extrinsic symmetry across various scripts will be discussed as an example. By integrating these preliminary theoretical ideas into the framework of NT, it is demonstrated that so-called Natural Grapholinguistics could offer promising new insights as well as a tertium comparationis method for future comparative analyses of scripts and writing systems. Keywords: comparative grapholinguistics; cross-linguistic studies; grapholinguistics; natural grapholinguistics; naturalness; naturalness theory; script; writing system Document Type: Research Article Publication date: November 2, 2018 Share Content
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Hi Andy, Recently, I have been involving in an NGO alltheword.org, applying natural language processing or computer aided translation.
I have been pondering what do 'natural' and 'artificial' mean? What is natural in languages? I think human language tend to be more and more artificial than I thought. I think there can a spectrum of naturalness and artificialness. I would consider language may tended to be more natural in the instance of the language use for creation of light. Once human is formed, language is a form or forms of human science, arts and culture. If there is no boundary or dichotomy between natural language and artificial language, what would be the implementations? What cause the naturalness? How do we compare the naturalness of speech, knots, writing, sign(language) and other ways of representation of human thought?