Peter T. Daniels <grammatim at worldnet dot att dot net> wrote:

>> What would be *your* definition? surely you are qualified enough to
>> posit a pretty good one, no?
>
> As has been published in many, many places, my definition is:
>
> "A system of more or less permanent marks used to represent an
> utterance in such a way that it can be recovered more or less exactly
> without the intervention of the utterer."

Am I correct, then, in thinking that the word "utterance" implies that
this definition of "writing system" requires the existence of a spoken
(cf. written-only) language?

--
Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/