Re: Script origin and typology

On 7/8/2024 4:26 PM, Christian Weisgerber wrote:

PTD recycled an old, unpublished talk of his for a submission to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.
 

          has anyone  had  an exchange with PTD   lately?