Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: Optimum number of symbols

From:Mike S. <mcslason@...>
Date:Sunday, May 19, 2002, 19:15
From: "Raymond Brown" <ray.brown@...>
> 1. What is the optimum number of symbols? > 2. If the optimum number is in the hundreds (or thousands!), what would > each symbol represent?
Here is my two cents... I think that the first question should proceed from the second rather than vice-versa. In other words, what the symbols optimally represent will dictate their numbers. The first choice is whether you want the symbols to represent sound or idea. Representing ideas with symbols turns out to be the more natural approach for humans: symbols, being visual units, much more readily conjure up a mental image than suggest a sound. In is no accident that the first writing systems were essentially series of little drawings. The innovation to use symbols to represent sound is a highly abstract idea that was actually quite an important advancement in the history of humans, and we often neglect to realize that it took centuries for these systems fully to develop. But of course they did develop. The problem with having symbols represent ideas, aside from the daunting size of the symbol set, is that in all languages to date, words do not display a one-to-one correspondence with ideas, primitive or otherwise, and thus using a true idea-based writing system to represent actual linguistic constructions is extremely problematic. Any such system will be riddled with complexity and irregularity, in addition to its daunting size. It remains to be proven whether a constructed language could be designed to overcome these shortcomings. However, if one *could*, it might turn out to be most elegant-- imagine, going full circle back to ideograms, and using writing to directly represent pure thought, while at the same, not forsaking a direct correspondence to linguistic expression. Pleasant to contemplate indeed, but not necessarily feasible. This seems to make a sound-based system inevitable. In this case, there are three options for symbols: morpheme/word level representation, syllabic representation, or phoneme representation. Morpheme/word representation is a practical improvement over idea-based graphemes, but shares the same problem of daunting size. In addition, new borrowings will always precipitate new symbol creation, or some modification/combination of existing symbols. Thus, I think complexity and irregularity are inevitable, and that this system will probably never be the optimal choice. The next step down is syllabic representation. The efficiency of this system will depend directly on the phonological structure of the language. In languages with no more than thousand basic syllables, I would arbitrarily say that this system should be considered. Better would be the 200 syllables mentioned by the author, although this figure clearly represents an unusually simple phonology. Obviously, languages like English simply do not lend themselves well to this kind of system, and probably not many others do either. Thus, in most cases, I would have to say the phonemic system is probably optimum; except for languages with very simple syllable structures, I think the simplicity and efficiency of the phonemic system easily trumps all contenders. If you are inclined to think this is mere bias, consider this: many conlangers have designed their own alphabets, but how many have designed syllabic sets? If anyone *has* designed a complete syllabic system, I'll bet my hat that it implements markers or some similar regular device to correspond directly to final nasal, vowel length, or some other phoneme-level distinction. Possibly without knowing it, they are, in fact, conceding the superior efficiency of the phonemic system.
> I know some artlangers have devised their own scripts. > 3. Have such scripts been alphabetic (like JRRT's Tengawr and Dwarvish > runes), or have you used some other system? > 4. Were you motivated by any thoughts of 'optimality' or just doing it for > the fun of creating? > > Finally: > 5. Have any designers of auxlangs and/or engelangs devised a special set
of
> symbols for their languages? If so, why? > > Ray (in questioning mode)
I never went beyond the Roman alphabet, except that I have looked at the cyrillic out of curiosity to see how my creations would fare there. Regards

Replies

And Rosta <a-rosta@...>
Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>