Re: VMs: MS408 Character Development

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

On Wed, 29 Jun 2005, Dennis wrote:
> 	I'm glad you brought this up!  D'Imperio noted how most of
> the characters may be formed from just /i/ and /e/ strokes.

This general phenomenon is the source of the frequent hypothesis that the
script might encode one set of letters, probably consonants, with
sequences like i, ii, iii, ..., c, cc, ccc, ... (c = EVA e).  In such an
approach one probably has to assume that other elements like a or o
combine with these sequences to provide additional combinations.  Many of
the other characters which tend to occur between such sequences (or
finally) seem to consist of i or c plus some "flourish" element, e.g., EVA
m = i + flourish, or d = c + rather similar flourish.  These might simply
be the last i or c in a sequence plus a different kind of stroke element,
probably representing a vowel.

This approach as such doesn't account for the gallows set or the
horizontal bar that links some letters, especially ch (c-bar-c).

I would maintain that any analysis performed on the EVA text should also
be repeated on the EVA text resolved into something "simpler" along these
lines.

That is, instead of

f  a ch  y  s    y  k  a l  a r    a t  a ii n  Sh   o l    ...
1f a c-c cy cs . cy 1k a il a ir . a 2k a ii in cs-c o il . ...

Here I'm coding the "flourishes" with the EVA encoding I've extracted them
from and using 1 and 2 for the two kinds of initial gallows stroke, k and
f for the two kinds of gallows termination, and dash for the horizontal
bar.

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