Dear Achille, we widely agree, but, I simply meant more general, more
fundamental principles.
On 10/1/2021 6:47 PM, Achille Felicetti wrote:
Dear Martin,
Please find our comments inline.
Very generally, in order to observe a sign as a sign, we need a
context fitting to some hypotheses what people would put signs on,
characteristics suggesting a feature as human made, but most
importantly a finite selection of potential patterns. The latter
condition is absolutely necessary. The result will be a ranked list
of best fitting patterns.
We agree that some characteristics of some signs (e.g. their shape,
the physical properties of how they are traced, etc.) can contribute
to the process of interpreting them as intentionally produced human
products.
In principle, in fact, it is not the specific characteristics of the
signs but their properties of occurrence on a surface that
discriminate their interpretation as part of a (writing) system or
not: for example, the recognition of Linear B or the interpretation of
the signs of the Phaistos disc as “scripture” depend on the reciprocal
relationships that the elements have among themselves, which therefore
lead to the hypothesis of the existence of a system. It is a matter of
fact that, within a given system, /"tout se tient"/ as Saussure and
Chomsky underline.
Yes, of course, this is exactly what I meant below: "The arrangement of
characters into texts are also standardized by a writing system".
Well, yes, I meant the above very generally. You may find mason marks
somewhere on a block of stone, a single sign possibly, at no particular
position, but you find on blocks of the same context, or a comparable
context, similar isolated, deliberately applied scratches, people have
learnt to recognize as being functional.
In short, I maintain that recognizing a text /can be prior to/
recognizing single signs.
We fully agree also on this point.
I believe the definition of the "writing system" needs to
differentiate the character set sufficiently from the other
constituents of a writing system.
The arrangement of characters into texts are also standardized by a
writing system. The arrangement rules of a writing system for signs
in a text create also characteristic, recognizable patterns. There
are enough archaeological cases, I assume, in which a text can be
recognized as such without any readable character on it.
Hence, there are in addition observable arrangement features of a
writing system.
Note that all results of observation in an encoded propositional form
require that the observation itself applies hypotheses about the
forms the feature to be observed can appear in.
We don't entirely agree on the existence of a set of predefined
possibilities; rather, we would say that there is a number
of concomitant phenomena that makes interpretation of the world
possible, in this case, the activity of “writing". It is possible
to create infinite writing systems with infinite varieties in the
signs that compose it, because, indeed, what is important is that the
internal coherence of the system is preserved.
Of course, this is not what I said😁
We must VERY carefully distinguish, what we infer as rules from multiple
observations. If we observe a bustrophedon writing, there is still a
linearity in the characters and EVEN indication of direction. It is
"character - space - character -space..., and spaces use to be similar,
lines are horizontal. You will not write 1 2 3 4 5 6 in the order 2 1 4
3 6 5. Why not? Could be cryptography. *How many* characters would you
need in a linear sequence to understand that they have to be read in "2
1 4 3...order? and yet, the arrangement cannot be random, but must
follow a rule. The old art of cryptography tells us a lot about variants
that make a text unrecognizable. If the character order is random but
only known to one sender and receiver, we have already a big problem
deciphering!
If by "arrangement of characters into texts" you mean things like, for
instance, the “ductus”, i.e., the direction of the writing of the text
(from right to left, from left to right, etc.), this is actually not
a "rule" of the writing system as well, but just the application of a
possible model to a text. It is true that a writing system can have a
preferred ductus and that this can eventually lead to the
standardisation of a certain use, but this does not concern the system
itself: if I write in English from left to right (or in a specular
form, as Leonardo da Vinci used to do for Italian), the internal rules
of the system (differentiation of signs, combination of letters etc.)
remain unchanged. The reader is simply less used to a different use.
I don't mean ductus, or any specific kind of arrangement. I mean
whatever the necessary arrangement rules are.
I think you miss the concept of sequence here, which is the basis of all
arrangements. Language is linear - sequential, and writing will have a
concept of corresponding linearity and regularity of distances between
signs. It's a bit like rhythm in music.
In fact, some writing systems do not have a preferential ductus (see
for instance Archaic Greek). Thus, a certain set of observable
disposition characteristics occur IN the text, not in the writing
system. This is a subtle but necessary semiological difference.
Sure, simply, the arrangement rules are of different nature. The concept
of sequence cannot be abandoned. Otherwise, you have a pot of letters,
and the reader should put them in an order to create the intended
message. That would, obviously, not work for longer and not pre-agreed
messages.
Whatever the nature of the necessary rules are, either they are a priori
known, or can only be inferred from longer examples, and yet, inference
will not work without a sequence hypothesis.
See also Korean script. It is not as linear as ours😁, but still a
regular path, a bit convoluted.
A variant of the latter occurs when reading a sloppy hand-written
text, e.g., when I read my grandpa's notebook. The character set can
only be either Latin or Sütterlin. I can distinguish the latter by
recognizing a few very characteristic signs in the overall text.
Then, I need to identify more and more words in the text until I am
trained to more and more of Grandpa's own variants of the Sütterlin
character set. This depends on the size of the sample. Only then I
can go back and recognize within the continuous lines single signs.
As for the Sütterlin, again this phenomena does not refer to the
system but just to the shape of the signs, the way they are linked
together etc., and therefore it concerns their “style", not the
internal differentiability of the signs themselves. Within the Latin
script ecosystem, the Sütterlin has exactly the same stylistic
significance of the Caroline minuscule.
This is not correct. I can show you my Grandpa's notebook. It is real.
Internal differentiability of the signs themselves is definitely not
always given. I do not know a priori if he writes Latin or Sütterlin. He
did both. The first thing I do, check until I recognize a distinct
Sütterlin. But when he wrote Latin, he may throw in a Sütterlin some
times. Sloppy ligature and shorthand does not always allow to
differentiate the signs. I need many examples until I am familiar with
recognizing small words as a whole characteristic for him individually,
because the signs are fused.
In summary: the possible styles that can be manifested in writing
are infinite, as long as the signs maintain a degree of internal
recognition (i.e., the “differential" value remains unchanged) and
remain recognisable by the reader. See the letter “T” example in the
attached image from Saussure’s “Course” (CLG, section 165) for more
details.
I actually do not agree. Infinite is a big word. Mathematically, with
infinite arrangements and styles, you can interprete any text as being
any other text.
Simply, we must be more clear what are the real features we rely on. I
kindly invite you to do a reading exercise in my Grandpa's notebook😁.
Styles need to maintain a similarity with the standard shape. What
deviations are tolerable to be recognized by human brain has some
constraints. Currently, newer neural networks do a good job identifying
the rules behind the human anticipation of symbol similarity.
I think the text below is a bit too simplistic. It refers to
characteristics that are not relevant, but nevertheless to a "within
certain limits". It does not distinguish the consistency between
characters in the same text, in texts of the same writer, and between
texts of of different writers. It does not say what the "certain limits"
consist of. But this is what we need to understand. Isn't it?
All the best,
Martin
We hope this helps :-)
Regards,
Francesca & Achille
--
------------------------------------
Dr. Martin Doerr
Honorary Head of the
Center for Cultural Informatics
Information Systems Laboratory
Institute of Computer Science
Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH)
N.Plastira 100, Vassilika Vouton,
GR70013 Heraklion,Crete,Greece
Vox:+30(2810)391625
Email: [email protected]
Web-site: http://www.ics.forth.gr/isl
_______________________________________________
Crm-sig mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.ics.forth.gr/mailman/listinfo/crm-sig
