Re: Optimum number of symbols

Jake X wrote:
> Although, in a 'conceptual' system that uses symbols to represent gramatical
> formants (in other words, a system that transcribes grammar instead of
> sound), nothing I've written applies. For example, in that system, the
> English plural ([s], [z], [ez]) would be represented as one syllable (like
> "pl"). As far as I know, this type of system has never survived
> historically. Does anyone know of a conlang like that?
Well, Indonesian (informally?) uses the number "2" to indicate
reduplication, which is used for plural.  I can't remember any examples,
so I'll fake it up with English.  It would be as if we said "bookbook"
for the plural of "book", but wrote it "book2".

Japanese also has a reduplication mark used with kanji, so that
_hitobito_ (people, reduplicated form of _hito_ - the /b/ in the second
part is due to the common voicing process in compounds) is written with
the kanji for _hito_ (person) followed by the reduplicative marker.

In my logographic experiment, I had markers that were added to the
logographs to indicate grammatical function, such as a marker that would
mean "plural", one that would mean "passive", and so on.  I'm not sure
how naturalistic that would be, tho.  Probably not very.  :-)

For that matter, English uses -ed for (most) regular past tenses, with
its pronunciation being /d/, /t/, or /@d/ depending on context, and 's
for possessive, being either /s/, /z/, or /@z/, and plural is -(e)s.  Of
course, this is because those were historically single sounds, /@d/ and
/@s/, with sound changes creating the variations and conservativeness
keeping the same spelling, except that the {e} in -es was dropped when
the sound was dropped, I've often wondered why we did that, but we
didn't with -ed, writing, say, "helpd" instead of "helped" - it would
certainly make spelling easier if you didn't need to double consonants
in words like "robbed".  I often do, in fact, use {d} in personal
writing for the past tense, e.g., "robd" instead of "robbed".  My guess
is that the schwa must've been dropped from the plural before it was
dropped the past tense.

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