Writing Systems

Writing arose ex nihilo three times in antiquity, in Mesopotamia, China, and Mesoamerica. Writing appeared in Egypt unrelated to any other, but possibly influenced by Mesopotamian writing. The modern understanding of what constitutes writing and how writing reflects language is a result of analyzing how writing arose and evolved, and the ways it is structured in relation to the language(s) represented. The starting point for both aspects is with the decipherment of early inscriptional artifacts, in particular the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone. It has become clear that in the perception of human languages the syllable is the salient unit, and this matches the fact that writing systems, both ancient and modern, are built fundamentally on the syllable. Writing first appears where the languages are heavily monosyllabic. Monosyllabicity allows for the extensive rebus use of graphs. The resultant ambiguity is resolved using phonetic or semantic determinatives attached to the original graph. In Mesopotamia and Egypt determinatives were separable, allowing for the complete desemanticization of the primary graphs giving them the versatility necessary to write words, affixes, grammatical formatives, and so on, based solely on sound. In China the determinatives became permanently welded to the primary graphs, inhibiting desemanticization. Writing in Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica has left no descendants; all writing systems in the modern world, unless consciously created or devised, are descended either from Egyptian or from Chinese.