Re: Polysemy

On Sunday, November 16, 2003, at 06:49 PM, David Peterson wrote:

> Why is polysemy intolerable?
>
> Ray wrote:
>
> <<_nb_ = 'all, every' and _nb_ = 'lord';
> _sn_ = 'brother' and _sn_ = '(to) kiss' [verb]>>
>
> In the writing system, of course, there was no confusion with Egyptian.
> So, for example, the /nb/ that was used to mean "every" had no
> determinative, whereas the /nb/ that meant "lord" had a human
> determinative.
Not always.  The determinative could be added but wasn't always used.

But I'm well aware of use of determinatives.  I don't think they're
appropriate for BrSc.
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On Sunday, November 16, 2003, at 07:46 PM, Mau Rauszer wrote:

> David Peterson  <ThatBlueCat@...> 2003.11.16. 13:49:34 -5h-kor írta:
>
>> Anyway, it should also be noted that though Egyptian never wrote the
>> short
>> vowels, they always wrote the long ones.   It was as if they felt the
>> short
>> vowels didn't make a difference, but the long vowels did.   Thus far, I
>> haven't
>> seen a writing system that doesn't   have a way of marking some kind of
>> vowel at
>> all.
>
> Well, according to my knowledge of Egyptian, they _did_ not indicate the
> vowels
Yep - all the authorities I've consulted have so far been in agreement
that the
Egyptians _never_ indicated vowels, whether long or short.  Indeed, I was
not
aware that we were able to determine even if egyptian had phonemic vowel
length.

> but tehere are some consonant signs which modern scolars read
> as if they were vowels, ( probably because they were semivowels or were
> lost
> like the l-like sound which is transliterated as a 3-ish sign and was
> used to
> transscibe 'a' in foreign names during the New Kingdom )
Oh yes - that's so.  It seems to be a convention to pronounce laryngeal &
glottal
consonants as [a] and, when convenient to do so, /j/ as [i] and /w/ as [u]
, just
sticking in [E]everywhere else.

> Biblical Hebrew (and I guess, Phoenician too) also did not indicate
> vowels but
> later scribes devised the system for the vowels to preserve the
> pronounciation
> since Hebrwe has become a dead language.
>
> Jus tell me if I'm wrong.
No; AFAIK you are correct.  I'm sure there have been and probably still
are some
pure abjads about.  I'm sure John can enlighten us   :)

Yours,
-- Mau



Ray
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