Kinematography and the Limits of Writing-System Typology

This working paper is the typological capstone of Writing and Representation in Sutton SignWriting. It asks what writing-system typology should call a system that writes articulatory-spatial-kinetic form. The paper proposes kinematography as a candidate term for writing whose primary representational work is the durable inscription of articulatory-spatial-kinetic form. The term is offered as a pressure test, not as settled field terminology. The paper argues that if such a term becomes necessary to describe what SignWriting is doing structurally, the problem may be that current writing-system typology lacks a stable place for a real kind of writing.