--- Steven Botterill <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>
> >Con gran' respetto: they do nothing of the sort. They read cxxxiv:
>
>
> >cee ex ex ex eye vee. The human mind has to translate them into
>
> >something meaningful, according to several not particularly sensible
>
> >conventions.
>
>
> Con uguale rispetto, that doesn't seem to me to be quite true. Once
> past a very early stage of language acquisition, the brain doesn't
> interpret graphic units by breaking them down into their constituent
> parts and re-assembling them ("cee ex ex ex eye vee") - it interprets
> the unit as such. My guess is that a Roman confronted with the
> grapheme "c" would have "said" (mentally) not "cee" but "centum",
> would
> have read "iv" not as "eye vee" but as "quatuor", and so on. There's
> some very interesting stuff in this general area in Paul Saenger's
> recent <underline>Space Between Words</underline>, which has some
> fascinating things to say about the physical experience of reading
> manuscripts with and without word-divisions and the consequences of
> the
> shift from the Roman (undivided) mode to the divided mode of later
> manuscripts.
>
>
> >Incidentally, I am doing the funeral of a Mr Lawrence Botterill
>
> >tomorrow - any relation?
>
>
> If Mr Botterill (pace all'anima sua) was from Leics or Northants, we
> may well have an ancestor or two in common :-)
>
>
> Best wishes,
>
>
> Steven Botterill
>
>
> Associate Professor of Italian Literature
>
> Acting Chair, Department of Italian Studies
>
> Acting Coordinating Chair, Italian/Scandinavian/Slavic Administrative
> Cluster
>
>
> Department of Italian Studies
>
> 6303 Dwinelle Hall #2620
>
> University of California
>
> Berkeley, CA 94720-2620
>
>
> (510) 642-6246 (voice)
>
> (510) 642-9884 (FAX)
>
>
> http://ls.berkeley.edu/dept/italian/botterill.htm
>
>
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