Most decipherments of early and unknown writing systems before the application of more distributionally oriented analyses since the unravelling of Linear B by Chadwick, Ventris and Kroeber have heavily relied upon the study of personal and place names in bilingual texts (cf. Aalto 1945, Doblhofer 1957;1960, Pope 1975, Parkinson et al. 1999). The crucial, yet peculiar position of names in writing thus has a long pedigree in the study writing systems, but it has never been fully explored. The IXth “Idea of Writing” conference, to be held in Paris between 25 June and 27 June 2012 hopes to fill this gap by bringing together specialists in the history and theory of writing systems from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, to address the theme of “names in writing”.

ABSTRACTS

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• How are names represented in non-alphabetic writing systems? Are there special signs, diacritics, classifiers etc. to mark names, and how do they differentiate between personal, place, ethnic and other types of names?
• What is the relationship between acts of naming in spoken and in written language, how do writing systems convey the special linguistic status of proper names in semantics, morphology, pragmatics etc. (cf. van Langendonck 2007)?
• How do elements of writing systems (letters, syllabic signs, glyphs …) function in anthropological name giving practices cross-linguistically and ethnographically?
• Where do the borderlines between the written and iconographic representation of names get blurred?
• What is the status of signatures and other individualizing authority or property marks in writing?
• What is the role of names in the decipherment of writing systems, in the analysis of writing precursors and of non-writing marking systems?
• Can linguistic and philosophical theories of proper names (Frege 1952, Kripke 1980, Anderson 2006, Coates 2006 etc.) be meaningfully extended to the domain of writing? How do written proper names challenge conventional notions of wordhood, representational semantics, semiotics etc.?
• How are names abbreviated, tabooed, referred to, punned upon, tracked, misspelled ... in writing systems?
• Are there systematic differences between the representation of names in ancient, borrowed, or young writing systems, arising in colonial contexts?
• What is the role of naming practices in triggering the initial development of writing systems and/or the initial process of phoneticization in early developmental stages of a given writing system?
• How are writing systems and their elements named and renamed? etc.

Most decipherments of early and unknown writing systems before the application of more distributionally oriented analyses since the unravelling of Linear B by Chadwick, Ventris and Kroeber have heavily relied upon the study of personal and place names in bilingual texts (cf. Aalto 1945, Doblhofer 1957;1960, Pope 1975, Parkinson et al. 1999). The crucial, yet peculiar position of names in writing thus has a long pedigree in the study writing systems, but it has never been fully explored. The IXth “Idea of Writing” conference, to be held in Paris between 25 June and 27 June 2012 hopes to fill this gap by bringing together specialists in the history and theory of writing systems from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, to address the theme of “names in writing”.

The organisers solicit papers including, but not necessarily limited to the following conference topics:

• How are names represented in non-alphabetic writing systems? Are there special signs, diacritics, classifiers etc. to mark names, and how do they differentiate between personal, place, ethnic and other types of names?
• What is the relationship between acts of naming in spoken and in written language, how do writing systems convey the special linguistic status of proper names in semantics, morphology, pragmatics etc. (cf. van Langendonck 2007)?
• How do elements of writing systems (letters, syllabic signs, glyphs …) function in anthropological name giving practices cross-linguistically and ethnographically?
• Where do the borderlines between the written and iconographic representation of names get blurred?
• What is the status of signatures and other individualizing authority or property marks in writing?
• What is the role of names in the decipherment of writing systems, in the analysis of writing precursors and of non-writing marking systems?
• Can linguistic and philosophical theories of proper names (Frege 1952, Kripke 1980, Anderson 2006, Coates 2006 etc.) be meaningfully extended to the domain of writing? How do written proper names challenge conventional notions of wordhood, representational semantics, semiotics etc.?
• How are names abbreviated, tabooed, referred to, punned upon, tracked, misspelled ... in writing systems?
• Are there systematic differences between the representation of names in ancient, borrowed, or young writing systems, arising in colonial contexts?
• What is the role of naming practices in triggering the initial development of writing systems and/or the initial process of phoneticization in early developmental stages of a given writing system?
• How are writing systems and their elements named and renamed? etc.