Sam, I'm not discounting the possibility of natural language, but I am skeptical. Three things would have to be seriously examined (or manipulated) for this to work like natural language... the spaces have to be taken with a grain of salt. If the spaces are not literal, then there appear to be nulls. Even after assigning nulls (and there are some good candidates), and taking a flexible approach to the spaces, there are still positional constraints that are unique to the VMS.
I'm not saying the text is meaningless. In fact, I think there may be something there. But it is not structured like natural language. Inserting vowel-like glyphs at regular intervals does not guarantee they are vowels and I think one of the difficulties for many people is thinking of them as shapes rather than vowels until their actual function is demonstrated.
(23-02-2017, 11:35 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Suggesting that some symbols represent vowels assumes that the symbols represent either letters or sounds.
Both are natural assumptions, but I have very severe doubts about them.
Like I asked above: what other possibilities are there that can account for the evidence and that can actually be demonstrated to work/exist in practice? Obviously it is easy to discount the significance of any number of language-like properties of the VMS text by claiming that some nonexistent, undemonstrated procedure could have also produced them.
Quote:The following symbols: q f p m y are demonstrably not to be identified with letters.
I would like to see the demonstration of this, especially in the case of
q and
y. To oversimplify, I think
f p m and
g can probably be thought of as variant forms of other letters that occur in certain contexts, though there's much more that could be said about this.
Sam: that's exactly what I also think at the moment.
JKP: one problem I see is that there are no concrete suggestions of what it is if it isn't either a natural language or procedurally generated nonsense...
(23-02-2017, 09:43 AM)Sam G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.First it was "no natural language has a word network". Now it's "no natural language with polysyllabic words has a word network". Looks like you're losing ground, but despite this you seem to have no interest in considering further evidence. Anyway, I've already talked about how a polysyllabic language could have the word network property, but despite the fact that you even quoted some of this below you did not actually address it in any way. Instead you're just mechanically repeating the same points over and over again.
Maybe you should read your first posts in this thread again. Your point was that different "grammatical forms" are typical for languages in general and that no network of similar words exists. Now your point is that theoretical a language with a network of similar words like that of the VMS can exist. Obviously I was able to convince you that a network of similar words exists for the VMS.
Indeed my first statement was not specific enough. Therefore I have made a more detailed statement. I didn't see any problem if there is some progress in a discussion and both sides learned something new.
Quote:Quote:The problem is that we didn't know if the VMS contains language or not.
Again, you did not actually address my point here at all.
I address your point. It is simply not my task to disproof your language hypothesis or Nick Pellings historical cipher hypothesis or Gordon Ruggs Cardan Grille hypothesis or T
homas E. O'Neils Gematria hypothesis etc. It is always possible that someone comes with a new hypotheses along. Therefore it is enough to ask you which language the VMS text represents or Nick Pelling which historical cipher he thinks the VMS text stands for. In the case of Gordon Rugg it is enough to point out that Rugg didn't give any reason why he is trying his Cardan Grille approach and that he can't explain why someone should use highly structured tables to generate a pseudo text. In the case of O'Neils Gematria it is enough to point out that he reads the same words differently all the time.
Therefore I find it more productive to discuss what the characteristic features of the VMS are and what this features say about the text of the VMS. My point simply is that before comparing the VMS with language we should look if the characteristic features of the VMS are compatible with the language hypothesis.
Quote:Quote:What characteristic features for the VMS exists beside the network of similar words?
One feature is the weak word order. In a text using human language grammatical relations should exist between words, and these relations should result in words used together multiple times. Therefore, the lack of repetitive phrases is surprising for the VMS. Moreover since the weak word order exists beside the network of similar words the existence of both features together is a challenge anyway.
There are many things that could be said about the VMS word order, but do you really believe that there are no natural languages with "weak word order"?
The problem is that beside the repetition of similar words there is no word order. "An additional observation is that in 24 out of 35 cases these repeated sequences use at least two words which are either spelled the same or very similarly." [see You are not allowed to view links.
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Quote:Quote:The shape of letter determines in some way how the letter is used within a word or within a line or within a paragraph. ...
What's more likely is that how the words are structured has influenced the design of the script.
No. For instance '
e' is common after '
k' and '
t' but not after '
p' and '
f'. Words like '
peShol' and '
feeedy' are unusually rare whereas words like '
keeedy' and '
teeedy' are common for the VMS.
A second example is that a gallow glyph following '
l' is most likely a glyph '
k' or '
f' but not a '
t' or '
p'. An example for a word using 'lk' is '
olkchedy' and an example for a word using 'lp' is '
olpchedy'.
With other words the shape of a glyph has some influence to the selection of the next glyph.
Quote:Quote:With other words we search for a system with many interesting features at the same time. It is using the same or similar words but not the same or similar word sequences. Additionally this system is changing over time. Did this features really describe language?
Yes, the properties of the VMS text are like those of an unencrypted natural language text, and cannot be explained in any other way that is known and can be demonstrated.
Now, how many of these properties that you have mentioned can be found in sample texts generated by your auto-copying code? My guess is: none.
It is not necessary to guess here. I have published an App to simulate the auto-copying hypothesis. See for instance my post from
08-02-2017, 07:23 PM in the thread. In fact all of the properties I know can be explained with the auto-copying hypothesis.
The auto-copying method is not an invention of me. In You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. I try to reverse engineer the way the text of the VMS was written. Maybe I have overseen something important in doing so but at least the auto-copying hypothesis is covering some of the properties of the VMS.
(23-02-2017, 12:18 PM)Sam G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Like I asked above: what other possibilities are there that can account for the evidence and that can actually be demonstrated to work/exist in practice? Obviously it is easy to discount the significance of any number of language-like properties of the VMS text by claiming that some nonexistent, undemonstrated procedure could have also produced them.
Quote:The following symbols: q f p m y are demonstrably not to be identified with letters.
I would like to see the demonstration of this, especially in the case of q and y. To oversimplify, I think f p m and g can probably be thought of as variant forms of other letters that occur in certain contexts, though there's much more that could be said about this.
No 'alternative' explanation than 'natural language' for the Voynich MS has ever been demonstrated successfully. but let's not forget at the same time that all attempts to
demonstrate 'natural language' as the solution have failed quite miserably.
The other point does not really belong in this thread. It could be discussed elsewhere.
To come back to the topic, the network of similar words in the Voynich MS is clearly real, and there is no doubt that it originates from the 15th century.
It also exists in SE Asian languages, but that does not mean that the Voynich MS text represents such a language.
By the way there is a minor point about the use of the term 'syllable'. What is called a syllable in Mandarin Chinese is actually a self-standing word, and the two-syllable words are actually composite words. Other languages (e.g. the Mon language as suggested) are really not strictly monosyllabic, and have syllables that do not constitute words.
(23-02-2017, 12:45 PM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Maybe you should read your first posts in this thread again. Your point was that different "grammatical forms" are typical for languages in general and that no network of similar words exists. Now your point is that maybe a language exists with a network of similar words that is comparable with the VMS. Obviously I was able to convince you that a network of similar words exists for the VMS.
I never said that there was no word network. The question is whether such a network demonstrates that the VMS is not a natural language and if not, then how to account for it. I have proposed both that it could be due simply to phonotactic rigidity, or due to a language in which most or all words are compounds of two or three basic elements. Obviously we don't know enough about how the language works to decide which if either of these possibilities is correct (and it could be a combination of factors). I am, however, fairly satisfied that there's nothing about the word network that suggests we're looking at something other than a natural language text.
Quote:Quote:Quote:The shape of letter determines in some way how the letter is used within a word or within a line or within a paragraph. ...
What's more likely is that how the words are structured has influenced the design of the script.
No. For instance 'e' is common after 'k' and 't' but not after 'p' and 'f'. Words like 'peShol' and 'feeedy' are unusually rare whereas words like 'keeedy' and 'teeedy' are common for the VMS.
A second example is that a gallow glyph following 'l' is most likely a glyph 'k' or 'f' but not a 't' or 'p'. An example for a word using 'lk' is 'olkchedy' and an example for a word using 'lp' is 'olpchedy'.
With other words the shape of a glyph has some influence to the selection of the next glyph.
I don't see how any of these points contradict the idea that the structure of the language has influenced the design of the script. Actually this looks like evidence in favor of the idea.
Quote:Quote:Now, how many of these properties that you have mentioned can be found in sample texts generated by your auto-copying code? My guess is: none.
It is not necessary to guess here. I have published an App to simulate the auto-copying hypothesis. See for instance my post from 08-02-2017, 07:23 PM in the thread. In fact all of the properties I know can be explained with the auto-copying hypothesis.
Yes, as I've already stated I've tried your app and found the text it produces to be nothing like the actual VMS text.
I'll ask once more: where are the word grids produced from texts generated using your auto-copying code? Can you show that they are complete with no gaps, like the ones you have made for the actual VMS text, or not? If you can't make such grids then I don't see how your auto-copying method can account for even what you seem to think is the most important property of the text, let alone the many other properties that I and others have pointed out.
(23-02-2017, 01:12 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.No 'alternative' explanation than 'natural language' for the Voynich MS has ever been demonstrated successfully. but let's not forget at the same time that all attempts to demonstrate 'natural language' as the solution have failed quite miserably.
I don't agree with this. It's true that attempts to connect the VMS to known languages have all failed miserably, but that really just indicates that it's written in some otherwise unknown language.
Lots of things about the VMS are consistent only with the natural (or perhaps artificial) language hypothesis. Like the consonant/vowel distinction - what other options are there? And when we start considering multiple properties together, everything is consistent with a natural language text and not with anything else.
It's hard to imagine what a demonstration that it's a natural language text would look like other than this. Even if we could understand the illustrations well enough to figure out the meanings of words and ultimately be able to read the entire text, you could still argue that it was a word-for-word cipher of a plaintext in some other language and we still just haven't found the right cipher mechanism yet.
Assuming we agree that the VMS was physically created in the 15th century, then even allowing that its creator might have been well ahead of his time in some way, if the VMS text is something "artificial" then we have to ask why this accomplishment has never been duplicated. This is despite radical advances in cryptography, linguistics, information theory, etc. since that time, as well as over a century of investigation into the VMS specifically. Actually, as I've stated elsewhere, this point is almost equally valid even if we allow the possibility that the VMS could have been a hoax made in the early 20th century.
Quote:To come back to the topic, the network of similar words in the Voynich MS is clearly real, and there is no doubt that it originates from the 15th century.
It also exists in SE Asian languages, but that does not mean that the Voynich MS text represents such a language.
I don't think the VMS is necessarily written in an East or Southeast Asian language, but I do think it's possible. The similarities are certainly strong, as has already been pointed out by Jorge Stolfi and Jacques Guy.
Another big problem I have with the idea that the text is something "artificial" in any way is that many of the salient properties of the text, such as restricted phonotactic structure and extensive use of reduplication, are found in many languages of the world, but not in Europe. So did a 15th century European somehow just intuitively know that such languages could exist without having actually seen one?
As I intended to point out in You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. , the questions about word structure (shown in all the nice diagrams) and whether the text is meaningful or not, are separated by a few steps.
My observation that it is far from certain that the Voynich symbols represent 'letters' (as they are usually understood) also does not automatically imply that the text would not be language, and that it would be meaningless.
There are arguments in favour of 'language' and there are arguments against it.
Notably the 2007 paper of Andreas Schinner in Cryptologia argues against a meaningful text precisely because of (among others) the vertical structures.
I can only say that I don't know either way.
(23-02-2017, 02:58 PM)Sam G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (23-02-2017, 01:12 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.No 'alternative' explanation than 'natural language' for the Voynich MS has ever been demonstrated successfully. but let's not forget at the same time that all attempts to demonstrate 'natural language' as the solution have failed quite miserably.
I don't agree with this. It's true that attempts to connect the VMS to known languages have all failed miserably, but that really just indicates that it's written in some otherwise unknown language.
...
..
Perhaps it is not too difficult to create a natural text which is consistent.
I've never tried, but it does not say anywhere in any "rulebook" that we should use all words and letters.
Problem with trying such a thing and coming up with a particular text and publishing that, one puts you in a particular corner immediately.
The text will, of course, never be accepted as a possible solution because it will simply use words and letters where they are convenient.
Such as, for example in the unaccepted decryption of a You are not allowed to view links.
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