Peter T. Daniels wrote:

>Mark E. Shoulson wrote:
>
>
>>John Cowan wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Well, he has a broad view of writing if it includes face painting!
>>>Writing is generally understood to be the communication of linguistic
>>>material in visual form, which excludes most of his examples (they
>>>communicate, but what is communicated is not linguistic).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>I'd have to agree there. Well.... there might be some wiggle-room;
>>Sampson (I recall) gives an example in his book of a semasiography (??
>>I might have completely misremembered this term), which manages to
>>relate a very specific and coherent letter, but all through stylized
>>drawings and conventions, not related to a specific language at all
>>(mathematical notation might be considered a small version of this,
>>since the math involved is not related to a specific language too).
>>
>>
>
>The point of that example is that meaning can be communicated _without_
>reference to a specific linguistic form; thus it's not writing by any
>useful definition of writing. See DeFrancis passim.
>
>

Mm, I probably misremembered the context. Reasonable enough. So this
is communication by symbols, without language, while writing is
*language* in symbols. I'll buy that.

~mark