Vord length distribution

[-JKP-]

Obviously positional characteristics of glyphs have little to do with languages or numbers and everything  to do with the writing systems used to represent them.

Positional characteristics of glyphs (if they are numeric) have a great deal to do with numbers.

31 is not the same as 13.  143 is not the same as 413. VI is not the same as IV. Without the position, you can't interpret the numbers.

Hi JKP, you wrote that "this is not typical of natural language, but is absolutely essential for numbers". What you are saying now seems to me to be the same for written languages and written numbers. 31 is different from 13 and 'no' is different from 'on'. I am still missing your point. Isn't position also typically relevant for written languages?

In written languages, both combinations often exist (at and ta) and generally can appear in different parts of a word. For example attack, batter, begat, etc., beginning, middle, end. So, yes, position is important to comprehending the meaning, but the pattern itself occurs in many parts of the word.

This is not how the VMS works. Certain glyphs can precede others but almost never follow them. Also, certain glyphs have a very high propensity for certain positions in the tokens.


Some of these characteristics are also found in Roman numerals, which were the primary numeric system up until the very end of the 14th century when Indic-Arabic systems began to become more popular. With Roman numerals (as one example) there is a more rigid format. You might see MMDVIII but you are not going to see MVMII or MVIMI. Thus, positionality is more common (and less flexible) than words.

Even supposing there are numeric symbols in the VMS, it doesn't have to be all numbers, letter-glyphs can be (and were) mixed with number glyphs. But if there are numbers and it's a system that was known at the time (rather than an invented one), the numeric portions are less likely to vary as much as a purely word-based system.

The VMS is very heavy with these kinds of patterns together with the an/ain/aiin/aiiin patterns: