RE: VMs: [ha] [hb] not different languages

[Jacques Guy <jguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

4/08/2003 10:14:38 AM, Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


>IMO, the labels are a bit mysterious, whatever your theory. For those 
>holding a linguistic position, labels should surely provide some kind of 
>way to get under the VMS' skin (like the "Pleiades" label) - AIUI, the 
>history of referents in language is largely a history of 
>mutations/borrowings - yet here we see text written in a novel language 
>with no apparent borrowings at all.

We've been through all this. The labels could be specialized words,
precisely like the 12 Chinese characters used to refer to the twelve
signs of the zodiac, but which have nothing in common with the 
characters expressing the 12 associated animals. They could be
"alpha, beta, gamma, delta, eta..." spelt out in full, just like
the stars of a constellation are so distinguished.

It's all in the archives. And so is a lengthy discussion of [ha]
and [hb] which were then called Currier A and Currier B.


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