VMs: The nature of the symbols...

["John Grove" <John@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

	Such a nice paragraph to re-read. For those not familiar with Currier's
notation:
o = EVA o
8 = EVA d
9 = EVA y
z = EVA s

Then the i series...

IG = EVA j (correspond with the d)
x = EVA l (correspond with the y)
2 = EVA r (correspond with the s)
v = EVA n (corresponds with the b -- not noted by Currier as it is fairly
rare)

1. THE NATURE OF THE SYMBOLS.

I've looked at most of these letters under a magnifying
glass, so I think I know how they were all actually made.
These letters: <o>, <8>, <9>, <z>, all seem to start with a
"c"-curve, which was made first, in this direction
[counter-clockwise], so we have: <o> = [<c> written first,
counter-clockwise, next its mirror-image, clockwise], <8> =
[<c> first, then horizontal line starting from its top,
going right, looping up and counter-clockwise, continued
with a down flourish ending below the line, to the left],
<9> = [first <c>, then flourish at top of c, going down,
ending below the line], <z> = [first <c>, then flourish at
top of c, going up and counter-clockwise]. The forms all
have counterparts starting with <i>: <ig>, <x>, <2>, etc. We
also have <a> = <c>+<i>. All the letters containing an
initial "c"-curve are also the only letters that can be
preceded in the same word by the little letter that looks
like "c," e.g. <c89>, <ccc89>. On the other hand, the
letters <x> and <2> (which have very high frequencies) can
*never* be preceded by <c>, *ever*; they are instead
preceded by <a>.

The final letters (that is, the ones I call finals, although
they can also occur elsewhere) are in two series, one
preceded by <a> and the other by <o>, giving a series of
sixteen:

       < v    iv    iiv     iiiv   >
       < x   (ix)  (iix)   (iiix)  >
       < 2    i2   (ii2)   (iii2)  >
       < ig   iig  (iiig)  (iiiig) >

The ones in parentheses are very low-frequency; the others
all occur with respectable frequency. In addition, these
combinations of symbols which appear as finals may occur
separately -- "unattached finals", as I call them. A large
number of unattached finals is a characteristic of
"Language" B, and *not* "Language" A, by the way.

All this indicates to me that considerable thought was put
into how this mess was made up. We have the fact that you
can make up almost any of the other letters out of these two
symbols <i> and <c>; it doesn't *mean* anything, but it's
interesting.
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