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

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Jacques,

At 19:37 04/08/2003 +1000, Jacques Guy wrote:
> 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.

My point is simply that none of the theories devised for labels seems to 
correlate with any other theories. If they were (say) phonetic Chinese, 
surely we could guess a set of correlations based on the length of the 
(spoken) phrase (as the signs would almost certainly be in the same order)?

> They could be
> "alpha, beta, gamma, delta, eta..." spelt out in full, just like
> the stars of a constellation are so distinguished.

Incidentally, does anyone know when the stars of a constellation were first 
listed in this way?

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling..... 


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