Re: Latest on Hamptonese

[Dennis <ixohoxi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

	Thanks a million, Jorge, for looking at the Hamptonese
problem!  I need all the help I can get! 

Jorge Stolfi wrote:
> 
> I am a bit skeptical about the "African writing" connection. From the
> material you have gathered, my impression is that Hampton would hardly
> have had a chance to know about those writing systems; and, even if he
> did, I doubt whether he would associate those "pagan" scripts with his
> Christian beliefs.

	I've found one article on Afro-American "spirit
writing".  It wasn't very helpful in itself, but it has
a bibliography that might have what I need.  The
article implied that Afro-American "spirit writing" is
based on African writing systems like those at the
links I gave and that current practitioners might not
remember their pagan origins.  In any case, none of the
African writing systems really look like Hamptonese.  I
really need to discuss this with Lynda Hartigan

>     > Hampton repeated the syllables "nuh" and "tuh" a lot, but even
>     > if you pull those out as nulls, it's still mumbo-jumbo ...
> 
> I can't see Hampton using devious tricks like nulls in his writing. In
> my mind, he must have been more concerned with aesthetical or mystical
> qualities of the script (including historical or logical consistency,
> as he perceived them) than with secrecy per se.

	I agree.  Hampton may have thought that the syllables
nu and tu have mystical significance, and therefore
repeated them at times, perhaps like an incantation.

> He may also have invented the script to get around his apparent
> difficulty with English spelling, and/or as a kind of shorthand.

	That would accord with the "phonetic" hypothesis I'm
currently using.  The 14 vowels and 17 consonants that
I see in Hamptonese accords fairly well with the 12
vowels and 23 consonants that I see in phonemic
English, much better than it accords with  standard
English orthography or a Malayo-Polynesian language
like Chamorro.  I also think that Hampton thought that
his script had mystical significance.  Every piece of
his Throne is labeled both in English and Hamptonese.  

>     > Here are corresponding positions on two tables of
>     > the 10 Commandments:
> 
> These commandments seem awfully short. Could it be a syllabic script,
> or a logographic system?

	I doubt either.  I currently recognize 31 characters. 
The most common consonant y has two variants that might
in fact be separate letters/phonemes (sound
familiar?).  I also have seen a few more characters in
text that I haven't yet transcribed.  However, I doubt
that the real total reaches 40.  That doesn't indicate
either a syllabic or a logographic script.  

	With the Ten Commandments, I thought that his
equivalents are single words, perhaps mnemonic.  

> Anyway, the correspondence between the two lists argues strongly
> against the "glossolalia" theory.  These symbols must have been
> perfectly meaningful to James!

	I agree.  He also has recognizable words in the pure
text.  My next steps will probably be:

1)  Build much larger corpora of both Hamptonese and
phonemic English.
2)  Go through and break out the easily visible tokens
with hyphens.  
3)  Use Son of Glotto to identify the larger tokens
made up of smaller ones.
4)  Use TACT and Son of Glotto to look for patterns of
the tokens.

> I tried pairing the two lists (in your original transcription
> alphabet) according to the their similarity:
> 
> [ warning - longish lines, fixed-width font required ]
> 
>   page p10               page p9            Dennis's
>   ---------------------  -----------------  tentative
>   J-num  line  text      line  text         "translation"
>   -----  ----  --------  ----  -----------  --------------
>     ---  top   viD       top   viD(?)
> 
>       I  2     kUlh      2L    kUvh
>      II  3     wphDv     3L    wphxv
>     III  4     Thrjv     ---   ------
>      IV  5     Tfvyv     4L    fvyv
>       V  6     Thpvdo    5L    khpv{?}do
>      VI  7     Tkwddv    6L    cdddv{?}     I   no other gods
>     VII  8     Twwkvp    7L    wwkpv        II  no graven image
>    VIII  9     Tnrrrvp   8L    cnrrrvp      III no name of God in vain
>      IX  10    chpkp     9L    whpkp        IV  remember the Sabbath
>     ---  ---   -----     10L   fvyv         V   honor father & mother
> 
>       X  11    wsodnp    2R    ksodny{?}p
>      XI  12    kjgvhs    3R    udvhs
>     XII  13    uJhos     4R    khos
>    XIII  14    Tjvso     5R    jvso
>     XIV  15    Tmolv     6R    molv         VI   no murder
>      XV  16    Tyygosv   7R    yyd{?}osv    VII  no adultery
>     XVI  17    Tnvgv     8R    Dvgv         VIII don't steal
>    XVII  18    Tgyonv    9R    KgcoYv       IX   no false witness
>   XVIII  19    kgyol     10R   Ugccol       X    don't covet
>     XIX  20    khDvp     bot   UhDvp
> 
>     ---- 21    viD       ---   ---
> 
> Or perhaps J-III is the
> "last commandment" that is mentioned elsewhere in his biography, and
> it hadn't been revealed yet when he wrote p9?

	I don't remember a "last commandment".  Where did you
see that?

> I presume that your tentative matching of the Old Testament
> commandments with James's list was based on the roman numerals in p9.
> To me, those numerals seem merely decorative, and do not seem to match
> the Hamptonese lines. However, your pairing has a curious feature: all
> of the "negative" commandments, except one, start with a "T" in the p10
> list (which is absent in p9).

	I agree, on p10 the numerals are decorative, and the
"T" is some sort of ordering character.  I didn't
notice the thing about the "negative" commandments.

> Also, line <p10:9> (OT Commandment III) contains an "rrr" combination,
> and your comments seem to say that "rrr" is rare elsewhere; and line
> <p10:7> (OT Commandment I) has "ddd". Could it be that "rrr" = God,
> "ddd" = gods?

	Could be, but one of the remarkable things about
Hamptonese is the way in which repeated characters
constitute a single unit, as rr does.  That would make
it less likely that he would write a unit within a word
to indicate the plural.

> The English on page 9 says "The Old and the New Covenant Recorded by
> St. James". Considering the roman numerals on p10, it looks as if
> James's "Commandments" list was some personal revelation, with 19
> entries, presumably combining the Old Testament ten with nine new ones.

	Good thought.
 
> (From my Sunday School days I vaguely recall that the Catholic Church
> has an extra seven Commandments, which I confess I don't remember any
> more. But James came from a Baptist family; does the Baptist Church
> have its seven Commandments, too? Or are his signing as "St. James"
> and his references to the Virgin Mary hints of Catholic influence in
> his beliefs?)

	Where do you see a reference to the Virgin Mary?  The
Catholic Church does have the "seven deadly sins" -
greed, gluttony, rage... I don't remember them. 
They're not usually mentioned in the Protestant
churches, but individual pastors may discuss them. 
Hampton never joined a church in Washington DC, and his
beliefs were probably highly idiosyncratic.  Your ideas
are entirely plausible.  

	However, I feel sure that he had precedents that I've
not yet found.

Thanks a million, Jorge,
Dennis