I am proposing an alternative, graphocentric hypothesis for the origin of words. Words do not exist until they are written. The word-creator ('poet') draws on a piece of clay or paper whatever she has in mind, putting elementary concepts together like an architect who explains a house plan to the builders. The term 'ichnography' (trace-writing) evokes this analogy. The reader is trained to produce a phoneme for each grapheme and to phonetically put syllables together. The theory is consistent with the ancient meaning of 'poetry,' i.e., making [words] from scratch, a definition largely overlooked today.
Alphabets are software devised for creating
languages. They replace older arbitrary 2-dimensional drawing systems (e.g.,
logograms) with a small set of standard lines that everybody can learn. Myths
are short definitions of neologisms, or, I should say, neo-graphics. Mythemes explain new terms, a standard set of metaphoric relations between
concepts. For example, the 'geographical' mapping of an object relates its
primary use (a cooking pot 'lives' in the kitchen), kingship suggests
importance (the cooking pot is the 'queen' of the kitchen), marriage means
combination with other objects (the cooking pot 'marries' its lid), descendants
are products (steam cooking is the child of the cooking pot and the lid), death
is a replacement (the microwave oven slew the cooking pot), and so on. Mythological
genealogies are ancient systems of a hierarchical classification of objects and
corresponding names. The
set of traits that a poet chooses to include in an object's name is arbitrary and subject to poetic freedom. An alphabet
(or other types of a writing system) is the cornerstone at the origin of each
linguistic taxon. Changes within an alphabet are at the origin of new languages
within a linguistic family.
The letters are iconic units of meaning.
Primarily, letters lent their graphic form, e.g., O is a circle, a closed line;
the letter I is an open, straight line, an edge, an arm; M is a wave (up-down);
etc. They also represent physical forms or properties, topology, movement, or a
numeric value. Additionally, as ideograms, letters convey a handful of basic
notions associated with their shape. O represents round forms, e.g., an eye.
Words sharing letters have somewhat overlapping micro-semantic fields.
A computing language is an appropriate analogy. It consists of a limited number of elementary commands with predefined meanings (analogous to the letters). The programmers (poet) may combine these commands into concise functions (roots). They may then combine elementary commands with functions into an algorithm (word), and algorithms into fully functional programs (texts).
Like codons, small strings of letters
(digraphs, trigraphs, syllables) attain specific purposes and form morphemes
that can be recycled into new words. The letters are conveniently recombined to describe objects. Their order is crucial because their meaning is modulated by preceding and following characters. For support, the aspirated and the
duplicated consonants denote quantity, intensity, or recurrence; e.g., Th =
TTT…; MM in English hammer shows a repetitive up-and-down
movement; two eyes (OO) denotes a look.
Inverted strings correlate with antonymy; e.g., if MY (MU; as in myth, mummy) means inwards, to
insert, include, cover, hide, protect, YM (UM; as in thymus) means outwards,
to outgrow, extract, excrete, expose, unfold, discharge, reject, remove,
uncover. Th>Y>M is an antonym of M>Y>Th.
I use independent words featuring a string
to identify the underlying sememes and refine the interpretation of individual
letters (training set). I then use different sets of words (validation sets)
with the same or the inverted string to validate the predicted sememes. For
each mythological term, I retain the hypotheses compatible with the
related mythemes. I repeat the process until the network of thus interpreted
myths makes complete, coherent sense.