>> Let me ask one test question to see if I understand this: is the the
>> tall/deep distinction in Shavian featural?
>
>Mr. Read seems not to have been terribly familiar with phonetics. Most
>of the tall/deep rotations correspond to voicing, but then he spoils it
>by pairing l and r, m and n.

this "spoiling" seems to be a direct rip-off from gregg shorthand.

i'm surprised how often the present correspondence refers to tolkien
scripts and other scripts invented by philologers (which tolkien was) or
linguists or hobbyists, for fun or for experimental purposes rather than
for practical use. surely there is very little limit to the typological
characteristics of scripts invented by imaginative people. but what is
interesting *to me* at least is: what characteristics of scripts WORK for
communication in human societies? in other words, what characteristics can
be successfully processed by human psycholinguistic capacities? so i'm
interested in traditional yi script because, apparently, it *worked*; and
i'm also interested in the PRC govt-designed yi script (which is more like
an unusually large syllabary) because it also *works*, according to recent
reports; and by the same token i'm interested in the typologically rather
odd canadian scripts, because they also work very successfully. all these
cases teach us something about the human psychological capacity to process
graphic representations of language. but i'm less interested in tolkien
scripts, except as hobbies, because we have no evidence that they work in
natural social communication. cheers; bill
--
William Bright
Professor Emeritus of Linguistics & Anthropology, UCLA
Professor Adjoint of Linguistics, University of Colorado, Boulder
Editor, Written Language and Literacy
Editor, Native American Placenames of the United States
1625 Mariposa Avenue, Boulder, CO 80302
Tel. 303-444-4274
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William Bright's website: http://www.ncidc.org/bright