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

[Koontz John E <John.Koontz@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 31 Aug 2004, Jacques Guy wrote:
> 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.

But not always - right?  I see a fair number of ae sequences.  And one
might argue that there's no sign of this principle with the various
gallows characters, taking t and k as the straight stroke forms.  And o
seems pretty independent of this, too.  Am I missing something in the
characterization?  I guess I can google on stroke harmony + Voynich.

> In linguistic jargon, <i> and <c> (and <e>) are allographs of the same
> grapheme.

I'm not sure I'd go that far, based on the ae thing if nothing else.  I
think i occurs pretty much independent of a, too.

> 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".

Actually, these terms were in use in by structuralist linguists, and I
think their lack of subsequent popularity is due as much as anything to
the lack of interest of linguists in orthography per se.  Of course, the
emic/etic distinction is not central to Chomskian linguistics, though
everyone still learns it.

I think that grapheme, graph, and allograph are very useful terms to apply
to the analysis of the Voynich script, and I appreciate your bringing them
up, as I have been wrestling with how to use them in this context myself.

> 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.

My instinct is to see a glyph as a perceptual whole, a real element of the
orthographic string, whereas a graph is a constituent mark used in writing
glyphs that might be either part of a glyph or be a glyph in its right. A
feature in Chomskian terms!

For example the ae ligature is really two glyphs a and e in Latin terms,
though it tends to develop into a glyph in its own right in writing other
languages like Old English.

For graphs, in writing a t, there are two graphs, the stem and the
cross-stroke.  Or, ae, in systems where it is a glyph might be considered
to consist of two graphs, the a part and the e part.

The use of the term graph in the glyph : graph opposition, however, is
quite different from its use in the set grapheme, graph, allograph, where
the meaning of the element graph is more like that of the element glyph in
the former.  Perhaps it would be best to abandon the term glyph and speak
of graphemes, graphs, allographs, and sub-graphs or graphical
constituents?  The alternative is to speak of glyphemes, glyphs,
alloglyphs, and graphs. I haven't come up with a solution that satisfies
me.

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