From: naddy@mips.inka.de   
      
   PTD recycled an old, unpublished talk of his for a submission to   
   Language Log:   
      
   Script origin and typology, part 1   
   https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=64775   
      
   Script origin and typology, part 2   
   https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=64822   
      
   Some interesting thoughts in there, e.g.:   
      
     If, however, a language is not monosyllabic—as in, for instance,   
     Indo-European or Semitic or Uralic or Altaic—the chances are   
     rather less good that the picture put for one word would have the   
     same sound as another word or one very like it, as with the   
     Sumerian ti example. And that is why writing could get started   
     in Sumerian, in Chinese, in Maya, and probably in Dravidian; while   
     the best candidate for writing where it didn’t get started—the   
     Inca civilization—did not use a monosyllabic language, and so   
     came up with quipus for accounting, but not with writing.   
      
   --   
   Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy@mips.inka.de   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)