| written language | The form of a natural language invented over five thousand years ago, by which it may be preserved; what makes w. l. possible is the linear nature of the linguistic presentation of ideas and the persistent quality of their conventional representation; typically a w. l. consists in either ideographs to represent the ideas directly or signs to represent the sounds of corresponding linguistic utterances; w. l. consists of character strings with symbols selected from a characteristic set; cf. Chapter 4, §1, ¶1 |