Re: OFFLIST: Re: Non-linear full-2d writing (again)

On 1/31/06, Tom Chappell <tomhchappell@...> wrote:
> --- Sai Emrys <sai@...> wrote:
[talking about Jefferson Wilson's Glyphica Arcana]

> > > His symbols symbolize something like "distinctive
> > features".  His
> > > glyphs symbolize something like compound-complex
> > words and/or simple-
> > > to-medium phrases.
> > *nod* Though 'simple' seems to have a really low bar
> > (viz. the symbol
> > representing God, or Explore, or etc - while these
> > do in fact
> > represent very complex meanings, I think it a major
> > mistake from what
> > I know of category representation, frames, etc., to
> > try to 'write out'
> > these meaning rather than merely point to them.
......
> > > He hadn't, the last time I looked, explained how
> > to derive the
> > > meaning of a glyph from the meanings of the
> > "elementary symbols" of
> > > which it was constructed, and their relationships;
> > nor, given an idea
> > > or concept, how to construct the "glyph" to
> > represent it.  (No
> > > obvious connection, in other words, between a
> > glyph's visual
> > > structure and its semantics.)  That's why I
I think it's relevant to forward here a message Jefferson
sent me off-list a while back, about just this topic:


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jefferson Wilson <jeffwilson63@...>
Date: Dec 22, 2005 4:12 PM
Subject: Re: (offlist) Re: [CONLANG] Glyphica Arcana Page
To: Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...>


Jim Henry wrote:
> On 12/21/05, Jefferson Wilson <jeffwilson63@...> wrote:
>>Jim Henry wrote:
>>
>>>You say that glyphs are composed from symbols, and then
>>>you give examples of complete glyphs, but don't explain
>>>how they are composed from their component symbols.
>>>It would help to take one or two of the simpler glyphs like "Explore"
>>>and explain step-by-step how it is composed -- maybe
>>>one example from the common system and one from
>>>the arcane system.
>>
>>I'm not sure I understand.  How does this differ from saying
>>"words are composed of letters in the following pattern . . ."?
>>What more information do you need?
>
> Maybe I misunderstood.  It sounded like the component
> symbols actually contribute to the meaning of the overall
> glyphs in a way the indiviual phonemes of a root
> morpheme do not.
Onomatopoeia may contribute to the meaning of a word, but that
doesn't make word composition any less arbitrary.

> If the composition of glyphs from
> component symbols is purely arbitrary, you should
> make that clearer.  But I had the impression,
> based on the special terms for the various positions the
> components can fit into, etc., that the glyphs are
> like compound words and the components are like
> root morphemes -- not that the glyphs are like root
> morphemes made up of an arbitrary sequence
> of phonemes.  If that is the case, you should give more detail
> about how that works, with examples.
There are two ways of looking at this:

1) Just because you can create green by mixing yellow and blue
doesn't mean that "green" has the meaning of "mixing yellow and
blue."

2) The meaning of the symbols don't define the glyphs, the
meaning of the symbols are defined by the glyphs.

I'm afraid I still don't understand what you're after.

--
Jefferson
http://www.picotech.net/~jeff_wilson63/rpg/

====

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...>
Date: Dec 22, 2005 4:54 PM
Subject: Re: (offlist) Re: [CONLANG] Glyphica Arcana Page
To: Jefferson Wilson <jeffwilson63@...>


On 12/22/05, Jefferson Wilson <jeffwilson63@...> wrote:
> Jim Henry wrote:
> > On 12/21/05, Jefferson Wilson <jeffwilson63@...> wrote:
> >>Jim Henry wrote:
> > If the composition of glyphs from
> > component symbols is purely arbitrary, you should
> > make that clearer.  But I had the impression,
> > based on the special terms for the various positions the
> > components can fit into, etc., that the glyphs are
> > like compound words and the components are like
> > root morphemes -- not that the glyphs are like root
> > morphemes made up of an arbitrary sequence
> > of phonemes.  If that is the case, you should give more detail
> > about how that works, with examples.
> There are two ways of looking at this:
>
> 1) Just because you can create green by mixing yellow and blue
> doesn't mean that "green" has the meaning of "mixing yellow and
> blue."
>
> 2) The meaning of the symbols don't define the glyphs, the
> meaning of the symbols are defined by the glyphs.
OK, that's clearer.  Somehow the page section beginning

>For most purposes a glyph has a minimum of five symbols:
>the focus, horizontal, vertical, oblique, and transcendent.
gave me the false impression that the glyphs are like
compound words of which the symbols are component
morphemes.  You might should revise this section
and say there some of the things you've said to me
in the last couple of emails, to make it clearer that
these seven or nine physical positions are more
like possible phoneme slots in a syllable (e.g. CSVN ) than
component morphemes in a compound word.

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry