Re: Number of writing systems

Doug Ewell wrote:

>
> 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?

Do Sign researchers refer to an act of signing as an utterance? If not,
what's their equivalent? (They didn't bother to use Stokoe's "cheremic"
in place of "phonemic," for instance.)

Or are you simply asking whether _language_ is what writing represents?
Yes.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...