From: Michael K. Neylon (mneylon@engin.umich.edu)
Date: 14-Feb-95 (1:21:15 GMT)
Subj: First vocabulary

Based on someone's preceding message that the last 14
lines minus the last in the 3rd message are naming
the planets, then I suggest that we are seeing the
first vocabulary beyond mathematical symbols coming
out of the message.  Namely:

'xzx' = sun/star
'wyw' = small planetary object (asteroid, comet)
'zyz' = medium planetary object (moon)
'1y1' = planet

Furthermore, we have 'proper' names of '2', '797', '898',
'323', '434', and '4y4'.  (We have also said that '0'
is a Tau-Cetian).

Based on the above, I have a couple of possibilities:

1) The fact that 'wyw', 'zyz', and '1y1' all represent
planetary bodies would seem to indicate that the 
symbol 'y' represents 'planetary body'.  That is, we
are dealing with a root-building language, similar
to some Latin.  Of course, there is not enough 
vocabulary to say this.

2) Whether the above is true or not, I believe that
the symbols 'x','y','z','1','2','3','4','7','8', and
'9' represent phonetic units in the Tau-Ceti language.
So far we only have one and two-'syllable' words, but
I won't be surprised to see more later.  If these
symbols are phonetic parts, then I also strongly suspect
that the Tau-Cetis communicate via tones...why would
a message try to transmit the actual words when 
information is just sufficient?  If humans were to send
a message out to space, how would we transmit our words?
We couldn't, because it's not as simple as just 
writing it down.  But if we used tones, then all we'd
have to do is to transcribe the tones, which isn't that
difficult. 

Anyway, just a few additional thoughts...


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