One of the shortcomings of the default vord I am using – QOKEEDY – is that it fails to account for the curve/line patterns observed by Brian Cham (amongst others.) It contains no glyphs based upon the minim (or backslash or ‘line’.) There is clearly some interplay, or system, based upon the curve/line distinction, and it is clearly not unimportant, but this is obscured when we try to identify patterns from a transcription. We can see how, for instance, vord endings change to (what we assume to be) hard consonants, but this change also entails a shift in the script from glyphs based on the c-curve (or circle) and those based on the minim. The script itself accommodates such transformations.
For this reason I concluded some time ago that the script and the text written in it are all of a-piece. There is a unified design. As best I can describe that design, it is made to mutate. The design of the script allows common textual transformations often entailing a single, simple change of quill stroke. The script is made for the language. It is designed to accommodate the typical structures and habits of the text. The script is not a forced fit. It goes seamlessly with this text.
But we miss this feature of the text if we dwell on QOKEEDY (in transcription or not) as a default pattern: it is entirely made up of c-curve glyphs with no hint of any c-curve/line patterns. If we say the ending [-eedy] ‘hardens’ into [-aiin] the change in the script is from sequences of c-curves to sequences of minims, and these script/glyph changes extend across (and often do not coincide with) what we take to be syllable units. Or do they? Whatever its limits, or whatever the exceptions, there is no denying a curve/line phenomenon, and its relation to other observed textual patterns of a higher order is an important question.
That is, there is every appearance that the script and glyph system embodies inherent structures, and there is the question of whether such lower order structures are the basis of higher order patterns? Which of the higher order patterns are based in the very design of the script, or which of the higher order patterns have necessitated such a script design?
In any case, identifying patterns in an EVA transcription can only be the beginning. Then there is the question of how those patterns are accommodated by the glyph set. The curve/line system is assuredly fundamental in some way – the script, or a large group of glyphs, is largely based on that primal binary. It is certainly utilitarian: it allows the scribe to change certain glyphs into certain others with a minimum number of strokes. The script has been designed with the scribe’s work in view. But more than that the changes the script makes easy and fluid also seem to be grammatically signifcant.
The obvious observation is that the curve/line system is designed to make easy the transitions that occur at the end of vords. The pertinent and outstanding feature of the system is that the line (backslash, minim) follows the c-curve (often with the hybrid [a] signalling the transition) and so the line-based glyphs (and sequences thereof) appear in the latter part of vords.
Brian Cham’s observation that the gallows glyphs are outside of this stream of ccccc\\\\\ again underline’s the notion that (many) vords have a “core” that seems unassailable, as if the vord is a carrier for that “core” or is a bed into which the “core” is placed. The “core” is always among the c-curves (i.e. in the first part of the vord) and it is clear that the line (minim) sequences have to do with vord endings. Still, the curve/line distinction is not the consonant/vowel distinction but has some other foundation.
R. B.
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