C Shape: An Inventory of C and C Images-Objects Represented in the World; An Ongoing Study on Shapes

Abstract

This article presents a description and inventory of the C Shape within an ongoing research project on Shapes, which treats the letters and symbols of phonetic alphabets as shorthand or abbreviated images of real objects in the world. The project proposes two atomic Shapes, the Strait and the Kurve, motivated by the observation that alphabetic forms, transcription symbols and ancient Greek-Latin forms are consistently built from smaller building blocks, and uses Shapes thinking as a meta-language for meaning categorization. Its objective is to provide descriptive material for practical work, such as teaching, on which theories can be built, and to link knowledge across disciplines. The article reviews earlier descriptions of C: its historical development from Egyptian and Phoenician forms through Greek, Etruscan and Latin, its presence in several Indo-European alphabets and absence from languages such as Ewe, and the author's earlier dictionary-based pronunciation rules for English words spelt with C, with regularity of 99.65% for [k], 98% for [s] and 83% for [tʃ]. It then describes C as a distinct curved Shape and inventories its occurrences in objects and images. The article concludes that C represents objects-images and concepts in the world and therefore has meaning, that part of this meaning may come from Aktionsart relations, which need further research, and that C Shape is an interdisciplinary study area.

Abstract prepared by the editorial office from the full text of the article; the authors did not supply one.