This book develops a formal computational theory of writing systems. It
offers specific proposals about the linguistic objects that are represented
by orthographic elements; what levels of linguistic representation are
involved and how they may differ across writing systems; and what formal
constraints hold of the mapping relation between linguistic and
orthographic elements. Based on the insights gained, Sproat then proposes a
taxonomy of writing systems. The treatment of theoretical linguistic issues
and their computational implementation is complemented with discussion of
empirical psycholinguistic work on reading and its relevance for the
computational model developed here. Throughout, the model is illustrated
with a number of detailed case studies of writing systems around the world.
This book will be of interest to students and researchers in a variety of
fields, including theoretical and computational linguistics, the
psycholinguistics of reading and writing, and speech technology.