Re: Script question and..

Aidan Grey wrote:
>    How many basic logographs are necessary, do you think? Any handy
> thoughts on what they would mean. I mean, I can't imagine that "taxable
> income" would have a logograph of its own,
If the language had a single word for "taxable income" I would imagine
there might be a logograph.  Generally speaking, words consisting of
multiple morphemes will be represented by multiple characters,
especially if the logographs are native to the language.  In a case like
Japanese, where the characters are not native to the language, there are
many cases of multi-morphemic words represented by single characters,
and of single-morpheme words represented by multiple characters.

>    Anyone have any ideas about how to get from the protoform *LEDSA to the
> final form _leis_?
Ledsa -> leedsa (lengthening of vowels before voiced consonants)
Leedsa -> leesa (loss of syllable-final stops)
Leesa -> Lees (loss of final -a)
Lees -> Leis (ee -> ei)

That's one way.  :-)

>    Anyone have better/other ideas?
The Common Kassi system was to combine charcters.  To represent coda -s,
one would write së (ë = /@/) underneath the character.  Thus, _reis_ (CK
had no /l/) would be represented by re-i-(little së underneath i).  This
is where the Classical Uatakassi coda diacritics came from.

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