RE: VMs: Has anyone been down this route before?

[Jacques Guy <jguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

30/08/2004 9:05:50 PM, "Brian Tawney" <btawney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


>aifhhy

f is a gallows

Voynichese writing is characterized by what I once called
"stroke harmony", that is, a character ending in a straight
stroke, such as <a> which ends in an <i>-like stroke, is
usually followed by a character that starts in a straight
stroke. In linguistic jargon, <i> and <c> (and <e>) are
allographs of the same grapheme. The fact that there is
no standard terminology to describe these phenomena does
not help either. "Allophones", "phonemes" yes, they are
well accepted terms. But not "allograph" and "grapheme".
In fact, we should have a term "graph" parallelling "phone"
but "glyph" is the standard term. And, to add to the confusion,
I have never come across the logical "glypheme" and "alloglyph"
which should be used.

>Unfortunately, I'm not sure where I picked up this transcription, since I
>was trolling the web.  Could someone point me at a more orthodox one?

The transcription is as fine as can be.

>Shukraan.

Bingo! You know at least some Arabic. 

So consider the various shapes of the letters.
You have four (very different) forms for "ha",
don't you? Initial, medial, final, isolated.
These are allographs of the same grapheme.
Just like the two slightly different sounds
of /k/ in English "coo" and "key" are 
allophones of the same phoneme.

The Voynich transliteration is "phonetic"
not "phonemic" (if the terms were accepted,
I would write: "glyphetic" not "glyphemic"
or "graphetic", not "graphemic")

Perhaps this sounds like mumbo-jumbo to you.

I find the same problems in trying to
explain the properties of the Easter Island
hieroglyphic writing, so it's nothing new
to me, and I can understand your skepticism.


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