ThomasCoon > 02-10-2016, 02:25 AM
-JKP- > 02-10-2016, 03:24 AM
(02-10-2016, 02:25 AM)ThomasCoon Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I know that we have a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. on gallows characters but I have a theory about benched gallows (cKh, cTh, cPh, cFh) that has statistical support.
In my You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. I showed that <qo> is followed by <k> or <t> 80% of the time in the VMS corpus (4 out of 5 times). It is followed by <l> only 5% of the time, <e> 2% of the time, and <ch> less than 1% of the time. So, there is a clear pattern: <qo> comes in front of a gallows character.
There are a very small number of times (less than 100) where <qo> comes before a benched gallows. So there are three options for interpretation:
- 1) The benched gallows can be deconstructed as <qokch> or <qotch>, which makes statistical sense (qo before gallows is normal).
- 2) The benched gallows can be deconstructed as <qochk, qocht> or <qoeke, qoete>, but all of these combinations together only appear 9 times in the VMS.
- 3) The benched gallows are independent sounds, but they rarely follow <qo> (about 1.7% of the time, or less than 1-in-50 times, that <qo> is used).
...
Sam G > 02-10-2016, 03:59 AM
ThomasCoon > 02-10-2016, 05:33 PM
(02-10-2016, 03:59 AM)Sam G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The scribe made a deliberate effort to write either kch or cKh, so I don't see why the distinction should be considered meaningless.
Quote:Also, you cite the fact that they often do not occur in the same place as evidence that they are equivalent, but then also cite the fact that they sometimes do occur in the same place as evidence that they are equivalent... it's hard to imagine what evidence that they are not equivalent would look like.
-JKP- Wrote:Consider this as part of your analysis... a letter is sometimes inserted under the bench, between the gallows and the end of the bench. It doesn't happen often, but it happens often enough that I'm pretty sure it's deliberate rather than some kind of error correction.
Sam G Wrote:In fact it seems that the reason why the gallows letters are tall and why ch has the shape that it does is precisely so that the combination cKh will be possible.
Anton > 02-10-2016, 06:01 PM
david > 02-10-2016, 10:18 PM
ThomasCoon > 03-10-2016, 01:09 AM
Sam G > 03-10-2016, 04:53 AM
(02-10-2016, 05:33 PM)ThomasCoon Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(02-10-2016, 03:59 AM)Sam G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The scribe made a deliberate effort to write either kch or cKh, so I don't see why the distinction should be considered meaningless.
I'm not sure I agree - because someone made an effort to write something differently does not conclude that there is a distinction. This is observable: for example in English we can write <it's> or <it is> with the same meaning, but with distinct formats.
Quote:Quote:Also, you cite the fact that they often do not occur in the same place as evidence that they are equivalent, but then also cite the fact that they sometimes do occur in the same place as evidence that they are equivalent... it's hard to imagine what evidence that they are not equivalent would look like.
Sorry if that was vague, maybe this will clear it up: the benched gallows appear very rarely after qo- (they follow <qo> about 2% of the 5300 times that <qo> is used), but when they do appear, very often a <gallows>+<ch> parallel word can be found (maybe even every time - I'll have to check).
ThomasCoon > 03-10-2016, 03:17 PM
(03-10-2016, 04:53 AM)Sam G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Perhaps, but certain things about the VMS like the low entropy suggest that there's not a lot of orthographic variation going on in general.
Quote:And I still think my point about the script apparently being designed with cKh in mind is a strong indicator that it's meaningful.
Quote:I still see the same problem - a similarity is cited as evidence of equivalence and a difference is cited as evidence of equivalence. What would be evidence that they are not equivalent?
Anton > 03-10-2016, 04:36 PM