In a course on “Writing systems” that I gave with the ulterior motive of
preparing a paper for this conference, I took up not only writing systems
that represent languages as normally understood, i.e. media for spoken
communication, but also some notational frameworks that do not
represent what are normally regarded as languages. I concentrated
especially on the highly developed notational frameworks that are used to
in occidental music and in mathematics. (These are notational
frameworks, not notational systems, since each encompasses
a large number of notational systems that differ from one another
with regard to how parameters are fixed and how the framework is
supplemented.) My concern here is with identifying ways in which
these notational frameworks represent aspects of structure such as
are found in languages or exhibit characteristics that show parallels
to linguistic phenomena.