Logogram
Logogram
!Egyptian hieroglyphs, including logograms such as the sun disk (⊙, visible several times here)
Types of logographic systems
Some of the earliest recorded writing systems are logographic; the first historical civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, China and Mesoamerica all used some form of logographic writing.
Types of logographic systems
All logographic scripts ever used for natural languages rely on the rebus principle to extend a relatively limited set of logograms: A subset of characters is used for their phonetic values, either consonantal or syllabic. The term logosyllabary is used to emphasize the partially phonetic nature of these scripts when the phonetic domain is the syllable. In Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, Ch'olti', and in Chinese, there has been the additional development of determinatives, which are combined with logograms to narrow down their possible meaning. In Chinese, they are fused with logographic elements used phonetically; such "radical) and phonetic" characters make up the bulk of the script. Ancient Egyptian and Chinese relegated the active use of rebus to the spelling of foreign and dialectical words.
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