The Voynich Ninja

Thx Sam, did not know that. It's strange that Guy did not decompose EVA d.

I agree that j might be more approprate than z.

Notwithstanding the curious examples above in this thread, the absence of a standalone vertical is something strange. If certain glyphs can be decomposed into vertical + something, then why vertical can not stand alone?

(28-02-2016, 08:34 PM)Sam G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[...]  I've wondered if the scribe (who I think was a copyist) had trouble distinguishing between <d> and <j>, and if there should actually be more instances of <j> in the text.

If there was a scribe / copyist, and particularly if he had no opportunity to check back with the person who created the original or draft, then all sorts of interesting things could have happened.

Just imagine that Eva-k and Eva-t were one and the same character, but not written very consistently. The scribe could have decided that these were two different ones, and always wrote it clearly as one or the other.
D'Imperio makes a point about this: they do appear to be written clearly as one or the other, yet in the 4 times repeating 17-character sequence there is one character which is written twice with the extra 'hook' and twice without, as if they are equivalent.

I can think of arguments both for and against this idea.....

The most obvious argument 'for' is the near-replaceability of the two characters. The 50% figure that was computed before can be checked statistically. I've been too lazy to do it, but it would work as follows.
Assume that they are the same, and replace all 't' by 'k' in the MS.
Now make the list of all words with a 'k'. (One can decided whether or not to count the embedded gallows as well).
All the words in this list that appear only once in the MS will add to the fraction: 'not replaceable'.
The number of such words can be guessed from Zipf's law, but could also be counted.
Of all words that appear twice, statistically half will be replaceable and half 'not replaceable'.
Of all words that appear three times, statistically one fourth will not be replaceable, etc. etc.

This assumes that the choice k vs t was made by the scribe with a 50/50 probability. With a different ratio, other fractions emerge.

It would seem interesting to see how the ratios behave especially for these lower-frequency words, and how close the ratios are to the expected figures for a random process.

Quote:rene
Just imagine that Eva-k and Eva-t were one and the same character, but not written very consistently. The scribe could have decided that these were two different ones, and always wrote it clearly as one or the other.

D'Imperio makes a point about this: they do appear to be written clearly as one or the other, yet in the 4 times repeating 17-character sequence there is one character which is written twice with the extra 'hook' and twice without, as if they are equivalent.

Aha, Rene, i did not know that. myself, i came to the conclusion that p=f=p  is the only possible replacement, based on my letter-word-analysis. 

Based on that, i am very confident and sure that  t is not k is not t

Quote:If there was a scribe / copyist, and particularly if he had no opportunity to check back with the person who created the original or draft, then all sorts of interesting things could have happened.

@ReneZ The lines in the always fit perfectly into the available space. Currier described this behaviour as: "The ends of the lines contain what seem to be, in many cases, meaningless symbols: little groups of letters which don’t occur anywhere else, and just look as if they were added to fill out the line to the margin." [see Currier You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.]. 

Even the limited line length at the start of page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. doesn’t mean that the scribe was running out of space there.  The same is true for the pages You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and f115v. During writing this pages the starting point was shifting to the right. 

One explantion for this observation is that the scribe was creating at least the end of the lines during writing. What other explanation did you see for the fact that ends of the lines always fit into the available space?

(29-02-2016, 02:55 PM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What other explanation did you see for the fact that ends of the lines always fit into the available space?

Actually, we can't say whether the ends of the lines fit or do not fit, because we do not know where are the plain text line endings.

Apart from that, an interesting possibility is that the page text was created in several passes, where at least some line endings (say, those of full-lines) may have been put down in the first pass. See You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

It's not just an interesting possibility, there are many signs that the text (at least on some pages) was laid down in more than one pass. I've collected many examples and once you start to see them, you can't help saying to yourself, "Whoa, what exactly is going on here?"

It's one of the reasons I almost never consult my printed copy of the VMS (which I printed on a high-end printer) because you need close-up monitor examination of the high-res scans to see it.

(29-02-2016, 05:32 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It's not just an interesting possibility, there are many signs that the text (at least on some pages) was laid down in more than one pass.

Please, name some examples.

(29-02-2016, 06:58 PM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(29-02-2016, 05:32 PM)-JKP- wrote: Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It's not just an interesting possibility, there are many signs that the text (at least on some pages) was laid down in more than one pass.

Please, name some examples.

Torsten, I'm working 13 hours a day. I don't have time to round it up on command. I have to take a hit-and-run approach to the forum and the blog. If I have a few moments and I'm uploading or downloading a file, I read and post. Otherwise, I'm very busy. I'm sorry. If you look you will see it in many places. It's a very significant aspect of the manuscript.

Quote:I don't have time to round it up on command.

I only want to understand what you mean. Maybe you mean pages like You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. or You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. maybe you mean something else. The pages f75r and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. have an illustration and the place is separated into some sections. On such pages I also would say that the scribe was writing on each section separately. Is that what you mean?

(29-02-2016, 09:06 PM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Quote:I don't have time to round it up on command.

I only want to understand what you mean. Maybe you mean pages like You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. or You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. maybe you mean something else. The pages f75r and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. have an illustration and the place is separated into some sections. On such pages I also would say that the scribe was writing on each section separately. Is that what you mean?

Some pages are easier to see than others but it occurs in numerous places.

This isn't the most obvious one but it's one where I think you might be able to see it without straining your eyes too much.

Go to the plant page 56v. Now zoom in on the bottom paragraph. Now sit back and look at it very carefully, slowly.

Notice that the row of EVA-l (the one that looks like an x with a rounded top) is darker than the others, running diagonally down from the fourth line. Look also at the same character to the lower left that repeats three times in subsequent rows.

Okay... now think about how a quill pen is used. You dip the ink, you wipe off excess ink, you write, it starts to fade, you get a few more characters out of it, then you redip, wipe the excess so you don't get dark blobs and continue.

So why is that diagonal row of EVA-l darker that the text in front of it AND behind it on almost all those lines? If the text in front is light then the ink ran out and the scribe redipped BUT the text following is also a lighter ink, as though it was written at the same time as the text in front of the EVA-l. The EVA-l hasn't been over-written, it was written only once. On some of them it looks like only the EVA-l was added, others it looks like EVA-ol was added.

There are parts of the VMS where there are letters added to the beginnings of lines in another hand but this is different, it looks like the same hand in two passes.



By itself it might not mean anything. It LOOKS like it was done in two passes but... one example is usually not enough to  be sure, but I found many examples and I'm pretty sure, especially in another section, that the scribe left spaces and went back for another pass and sometimes it's not one character, it's two at a time and it seems to especially occur near the ends of lines if it's more than one character.

Think of the significance of this. If it's random, no need to do it in several passes. If it's constructed in a certain way, maybe it's easier to commit it to the page this way, and says something about the underlying structure.



I was working on a blog about this, with pictorial examples (so it's easier to see), but there you go. Check it out.