william bright wrote:

>
> >> 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

Both the "theorists" who worked for the Gregg company and the shorthand
teacher at a secretarial college in Chicago that I talked to said that
there's absolutely no reason to suppose that its featuralness makes it
any more efficient than if it were a random set of symbols; and also
that the phonetic background is not and should not be taught to
secretaries, since it doesn't make them better "reporters."

As a Brit, Mr Read ought to have been looking at Pitman rather than
Gregg!
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...