The Voynich Ninja

...which reminds me of the 100x optical zoom of the moon surface that was made with a Leica instrument

Many thanks for the effort!

I don't think that the conclusion can be drawn just yet.

The figure is defined by edit distance, and the edit distance of course depends fully on orthography.

For this Chinese text, upper case and lower case have been kept seperate, and as a result the very frequent
word 'wo3' ends up in two spots at almost opposite points in the figure.

The intonation can be represented in different ways. Here, it is done with diacritics over the vowel, which is of course a valid option, but I wonder (from a closer look at the figure) if it was consistent.

Also, this graph considers composite words (two syllables) while the structure in Mandarin occurs at the level
of syllables.

The problem with these types of experiments is exactly the large number of permutations that one could try.

(19-02-2017, 08:26 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Many thanks for the effort!

I don't think that the conclusion can be drawn just yet.

The figure is defined by edit distance, and the edit distance of course depends fully on orthography.

For this Chinese text, upper case and lower case have been kept seperate, and as a result the very frequent
word 'wo3' ends up in two spots at almost opposite points in the figure.

The intonation can be represented in different ways. Here, it is done with diacritics over the vowel, which is of course a valid option, but I wonder (from a closer look at the figure) if it was consistent.

Also, this graph considers composite words (two syllables) while the structure in Mandarin occurs at the level
of syllables.

The problem with these types of experiments is exactly the large number of permutations that one could try.

Yes, the graph is not perfect. The same is true for the graph of the VMS. For instance we have the limits of the transcription alphabet used. Because of this EVA alphabet words like [shain] and [sain] are handled as similar but not words like [dain] and [chain]. We also know for sure that the transcription contains errors. But all this detail problems doesn't change the big picture. For languages the graphs show smaller networks and in the case of Chinese the networks for short words are connected to a larger network. The graph for the VMS is obviously different since he shows shows only one network. This means that all the words follow the logic of the VMS. The VMS contains only 229 word types which differ in more then two letters from any other word type  (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). But even for this word types it is possible to split them into two or more common VMS words.
If we would assume that the VMS text contains language and that a word of the VMS stands for a word in this language this would imply that the text of the VMS didn't contain any loan words. A language that didn't use names. In my eyes this is a contradiction.

There was indeed a problem with two letter words. I have removed the rule not to compare words with two or less letters:

[attachment=1151]

[attachment=1152]

Mandarin Chinese would only work if you split the words into separate syllables, as I stated earlier when I pointed out the similarity.

Vietnamese would probably be a better example, since it's already written this way yet also has a restricted phonotactic structure.  Conveniently it is also written using a Roman alphabet-based orthography, so it probably wouldn't be hard to download a book-length Vietnamese text and generate a graph showing the word network encompassing all the words.

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Also, I've already asked this, but can you create tables and graphs using your own sample texts and show that they in fact match what we see in the tables and graphs created from the actual VMS text?

(19-02-2017, 10:47 AM)Sam G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Mandarin Chinese would only work if you split the words into separate syllables, as I stated earlier when I pointed out the similarity.

Vietnamese would probably be a better example, since it's already written this way yet also has a restricted phonotactic structure.  Conveniently it is also written using a Roman alphabet-based orthography, so it probably wouldn't be hard to download a book-length Vietnamese text and generate a graph showing the word network encompassing all the words.

Can you post a link for such a text?

Well, I assume Vietnamese books are easy to find if you know how to search in Vietnamese...

I couldn't find an entire book in a single HTML file, so here's a book that has been divided into chapters:

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Actually, that last one is a translation of an English novel and has a lot of foreign names in it.  This book might be better:

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Here's a zip file of the book:

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Also, there are some Vietnamese books here, but they're in ePub and Mobi format:

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Although nice to see, the method of showing many statistical tables with numbers, 
and nice artificial network pictures does not show that the "auto copy theory" is based on anything scientific: it is still a picture and nothing more.

I could easily show big pictures on the contrary as well.

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(19-02-2017, 11:30 AM)Sam G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Actually, that last one is a translation of an English novel and has a lot of foreign names in it.  This book might be better:

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Here's a zip file of the book:

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Also, there are some Vietnamese books here, but they're in ePub and Mobi format:

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

In Vietnamese it is indeed possible to build a network of similar words. This is the case since many smaller networks build a larger network. The reason for this is that Vietnamese is a monosyllabic language and is using tone to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning. Therefore many short words are used. Ok, a large network of similar words is not an unique feature for the VMS.
But did this mean that we should assume that the text of the VMS represents a monosyllabic language? One feature that doesn't seam to fit is the existence of composed word types like 'olchedy' beside words like 'ol' and 'chedy'. BTW: Also the Vietnamese text contains repeated phrases like 'người đàn'. A feature that is missing for the VMS.

[attachment=1153]

[attachment=1154]

(20-02-2017, 11:28 AM)Davidsch Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Although nice to see, the method of showing many statistical tables with numbers, 
and nice artificial network pictures does not show that the "auto copy theory" is based on anything scientific: it is still a picture and nothing more.

I could easily show big pictures on the contrary as well.

Interesting to see that lines using a word up to eight times exist in the VMS. Maybe I should use it to illustrate this fact.