ABSTRACT
The exchange between Taffy and her father also casts doubt once more on the titular claim that an account of the origin of writing is what follows, and so it queries Taffy's position as originator. In such criticism the oral is always configured as providing direct or near direct access to an ostensible reality whereas the written is seen in comparison as distanced from that reality and, moreover, as causing that distance. However, the Head Chief's assessment of Taffy's achievement suggests that it is not after all a problem of writing as such, but a problem to do with pictures' which will be evaded one day by the letters of the Roman alphabet. The Alphabet-necklace' is also conveyed in terms of a narrative sequentiality as One of the first things that Tegumai Bopsulai did after Taffy and he had made the Alphabet'.
