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Mind the gap: Why is there no general purpose ideographic system?
1School of Philosophy, Research School of the Social Sciences, Australian National University, Acton, ACT, Australia Kim.Sterelny@anu.edu.au.
Abstract:
Morin has identified an intriguing puzzle about human communication systems, and one element of the solution: Inscriptional sign systems pose more coordination problems, making sender/receiver coadaptation more difficult. But I reject his view of written language, concluding that inscriptional sign systems can be generalist. The upshot is a cost-based proposal about why generalist ideographic systems are essentially unknown.
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