Sven Osterkamp

Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Department of East Asian Studies, Faculty Member

455 Followers 474 Following 2 Co-authors12,033Total Views top 5%1 Public Mention

Books

2011: Nicht-monosyllabische Phonogramme im Altjapanischen. Kritische Bestandsaufnahme, Auswertung und Systematisierung der Fälle vom Typ oñgana

[Non-monosyllabic phonograms in Old Japanese] Reviews: Narrog, Heiko / Whitman, John (2013). ... more

136 Views

Papers

2023: Yoshio Gonnosuke and his comparative Dutch–Japanese syntax: Glimpses at the unpublished second part of Siebold’s “Epitome linguae japonicae”

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte / History of Science and Humanities [ISSN 1522-2365] 46.1, 2023

After outlining the life and works of interpreter Yoshio Gonnosuke, this paper introduces the man... more After outlining the life and works of interpreter Yoshio Gonnosuke, this paper introduces the manuscript witnesses of his hitherto unstudied comparative Dutch–Japanese syntax written in the mid-1820s, which was modelled on Pieter Weiland's Nederduitsche spraakkunst (1805). This is followed by a closer look at the process of compilation and publication of Philipp Franz von Siebold's “Epitome linguae japonicae,” of which only the first part was published in 1826. Evidence is provided to confirm Yoshio's involvement in this work and to suggest that Yoshio's syntax was in fact intended to form the core of its unpublished second part.

2 Views

2023: The textual history of the Jesuit Compendia in Latin and Japanese as seen from the newly identified manuscript at Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel

Historia Scientiarum [ISSN 0285-4821 (online: 2436-9020)] 32.2, 2023

In late 2019, the present author identified a hitherto unnoticed manuscript of the Japanese versi... more In late 2019, the present author identified a hitherto unnoticed manuscript of the Japanese version of the Jesuit Compendia of philosophy, theology and cosmology among the holdings of Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, Germany. Unlike the single previously known manuscript witness it contains all three parts, allowing us for the first time to study the cosmological part in its initial Jesuit translation into Japanese. At the same time, we are now in a much more favorable position to elucidate the textual history of the Compendia by comparing the two manuscripts of the Japanese version and the single known manuscript of the underlying Latin version. This similarly applies to issues of authorship and the question of the European models behind the Compendia, for which the Wolfenbüttel manuscript offers us new insights to be discussed in this paper.

7 Views

2021: The Last Days of Old Japanese: Early Heian gloss texts and the periodization of Japanese language history

Studies in Asian Historical Linguistics, Philology and Beyond [ISBN 978-90-04-44855-1], 2021

2 Views

2021 (Jan 2022): <Th>e ubi<qu>ity of polygra<ph>y and its significan<ce> for <th>e typology of <wr>iti<ng> systems

Written Language & Literacy, 2021

It has often been assumed that there is, or should be, a one-to-one correspondence between graphs... more It has often been assumed that there is, or should be, a one-to-one correspondence between graphs and linguistic units in writing systems as the norm. This is not merely doubtful in terms of descriptive accuracy. Conceptualizing writing systems in such a way also has profound consequences for the application of typological categories to specific cases. In this paper we first suggest a working definition of polygraphy, also touching upon its demarcation from adjacent concepts such as ligatures and diacritics. Having demonstrated that polygraphy is in fact fundamental to a significant number of typologically diverse writing systems, we argue in favor of a typology of writing systems taking the ubiquity of polygraphy into due account, with definitions going beyond one-to-one correspondences as the default.

Keywords: typology of writing systems, polygraphy, polygraphs, digraphs, diacritics, ligatures

18 Views

2021: Challenging the Dichotomy Between Phonography and Morphography: Transitions and Gray Areas

by Sven Osterkamp and Gordian Schreiber

Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century, /gʁafematik/, June 15–17, 2020, Proceedings, Part I, 2021

Traditionally, glottographic writing is divided into the two fundamental categories of phonograph... more Traditionally, glottographic writing is divided into the two fundamental categories of phonographic and (logo-, or increasingly) morphographic writing, each with further more fine-grained subdivisions where necessary. In recent decades, various revisions to the earlier either/or approach have been proposed, leading to more flexible typological models that, e.g., allow for a mixture of different types of phonography with different amounts of morphography in a given writing system. While it is thus common to acknowledge the mixed nature of writing systems as a whole, graphs or strings of graphs forming functional units (such as digraphs) are nevertheless typically assigned to either of the two basic typological categories. On closer scrutiny, however, there is an abundance of cases challenging this strict dichotomy on the level of graphs.

Having reviewed the different notions of logo- or morphography found in the literature, this paper revisits the fundamental distinction between phonography and morphography in writing systems, drawing upon cases from the following areas: First, we will address transitions from morphograms to phonograms as well as from phonograms to morphograms. The dividing line between morphograms and phonograms is, however, not always easy to draw, thus leading us to gray areas and indeterminable cases. Finally, we will have a closer look at semantically motivated phonograms, as even in phonography the level of semantics is not necessarily irrelevant altogether.

Sven Osterkamp

Log In