The whole manuscript has parts that look inserted. The ink is different, but not in a normal, ink-running-out way. The entire document has parts that look like they were laid down in more than one pass.
And, there are exceptions to everything. It's not really a smooth writing style when you look at it letter by letter (when you create a transcription, you look at every letter in detail).
Look at this one, for example. It looks like the crossbar was written in two passes, rather than being a continuous line and the left c is elevated (which is often not the case):
[
attachment=1410]
(29-05-2017, 05:53 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.However, the observation that the crossbar usually aligns well with the second 'c' and less with the first 'c' to me suggest that the crossbar and the second 'c' were written in one stroke.
That's my impression too. The crossbar-secondC combination looks like an upside-down 2, and I think it was usually written as a 2 in reverse order (staring with the horizontal line and adding the final curved C without lifting the pen from the page).
(29-05-2017, 06:11 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.To me, looking at Marco's example, the most logical explanation for the length of the "bar" is that it was added before the gallows. Basically the order Marco suggests seems correct, but I'm not sure why the gallow wouldn't be added last.
Nice gif by the way, did you do that in photoshop by erasing the parts in reverse order?
Writing the gallow before the crossbar and the second c seems more practical to me: you don't have to estimate in advance the space needed for the gallow (i.e. the length of the crossbar).
Yes, that's how I made the gif (actually with Gimp, but you can do the same with Photoshop).
(29-05-2017, 07:45 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Having thought about it some more, I feel like the order Marco suggests would certainly be the most logical approach, for two reasons:- it respects the left-to-right writing order of the main glyphs. The crossbar can be seen as dotting i's and crossing t's, i.e. to return to a letter to finish it.
- it would allow for a more accurate length of the crossbar since the gallow is already there.
But I also really think that the gallows look inserted. That's a bit strange, since, in our current paradigm of c-K-c, it would mean that the order of writing the letters is 1-3-2.
Now it's still hard to tell whether this is the case or not, and any conclusions drawn from it are highly speculative. To me it might indicate either of these things:- The scribes were really copying these glyphs and didn't think of them as sounds. They were "drawing" rather than writing.
- Or, in the scribes' mind, bench glyphs form a unit, that can be optionally stretched to add in a gallow.
Or something else or nothing...
Now you know the problems I'm having with figuring out this character. At first it seems obvious it should be written left to right. But the more I examine bench gallows I think the
ch must come first and the gallows inserted into it.
As you hint, this could
totally alter what we make of the character depending on what it reveals about the working of the scribe's mind. If the scribe knew nothing about the script (a position I don't actually accept) then any order would be possible. But if the scribe knew how the script worked he would incorporate that knowledge into how he wrote. Writing the bench round the gallows is, mentally speaking, very different from inserting the gallows into the bench.
(29-05-2017, 08:24 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (29-05-2017, 05:53 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.However, the observation that the crossbar usually aligns well with the second 'c' and less with the first 'c' to me suggest that the crossbar and the second 'c' were written in one stroke.
That's my impression too. The crossbar-secondC combination looks like an upside-down 2, and I think it was usually written as a 2 in reverse order (staring with the horizontal line and adding the final curved C without lifting the pen from the page).
Isn't the crossbar a separate stroke from either of the two
e shapes? I have always imagined benches being made of two
e strokes, then a third stroke for the crossbar going from right to left. Quite different from what you've depicted.
That said...I'm left-handed, and so what I imagine in my head as the expected order might be rather odd because of that.
Quote: (29-05-2017, 06:11 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.To me, looking at Marco's example, the most logical explanation for the length of the "bar" is that it was added before the gallows. Basically the order Marco suggests seems correct, but I'm not sure why the gallow wouldn't be added last.
Nice gif by the way, did you do that in photoshop by erasing the parts in reverse order?
Writing the gallow before the crossbar and the second c seems more practical to me: you don't have to estimate in advance the space needed for the gallow (i.e. the length of the crossbar).
Yes, that's how I made the gif (actually with Gimp, but you can do the same with Photoshop).
I think this is empirically testable! That is, if the scribe
did have to estimate the length of crossbar without the gallows then he should have often gotten it wrong. Using the gap between the second gallows leg and the
c stroke of
kch as a standard, then the gap between the second leg of the gallows and the
h stroke of
ckh should show either 1) more variability as the scribe misguesses, or 2) a much bigger space as the scribe is overcautious.
(29-05-2017, 11:18 PM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (29-05-2017, 08:24 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (29-05-2017, 05:53 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.However, the observation that the crossbar usually aligns well with the second 'c' and less with the first 'c' to me suggest that the crossbar and the second 'c' were written in one stroke.
That's my impression too. The crossbar-secondC combination looks like an upside-down 2, and I think it was usually written as a 2 in reverse order (staring with the horizontal line and adding the final curved C without lifting the pen from the page).
Isn't the crossbar a separate stroke from either of the two e shapes? I have always imagined benches being made of two e strokes, then a third stroke for the crossbar going from right to left. Quite different from what you've depicted.
Hi Emma, once again you have brought up a new and intriguing subject. Thank you
In post 7 you wrote:
"That only confirms what we already knew about the writing order of ch. Specifically, that the cross bar is drawn after ee, and is drawn from right to left. The leftmost e is typically the worst aligned".
I guess you are here referring to some discussion about
ch I am not aware of. As I already said, my impressions are quite superficial and I don't remember reading specific discussions on this subject. I am not completely sure that gallowless benches are drawn the same way as bench gallows, but I would be curious to know more of the evidence suggesting that that the crossbar goes right to left.
Doesn't the fact that the leftmost char is less aligned than the rightmost one suggest that the process is not symmetric? Isn't the idea that the crossbar and the rightmost h are drawn in a single stroke a good explanation for what we can observe?
If the crossbar were added after the
ee, shouldn't we observe frequent cases like the attacked "fake", where you also have "vertical errors" where the crossbar joins the right
e ?
PS: an example from You are not allowed to view links.
Register or
Login to view. that seems to me to suggest that "short" crossbars in gallowless benches are (at least sometimes) actually written in two halves, like the two EVA characters
c h suggest.
I was thinking about this...
The difficulty is that the resulting graphical shape (the composite glyph such as e.g.
cth) may or may not be written in (and, consequently, may or may not betray) the sequence in which it was
designed to be written.
As a rough analogy which I can quickly invent, imagine that you have two shapes, one like capital greek lambda, the other one like a dash, and when you write them sequentially top to bottom, they comprise a triangle. The sequential order is to write the lambda first, and the dash in the second place, but if you already know in advance that in a certain place you need this "lambda-dash" sequence (which results in a triangle), you may just draw a triangle in any way convenient for you, and this will not betray that it is (or, strictly, is intended to be) in fact a lambda-dash.
Same thing with benched gallows. I was looking at double-legged benched gallows. The example is from f49v, lines 11 and 12. In line 11, the two crossbar sections are not collinear. In line 12 they are joined at an angle.
[
attachment=4709]
This makes me think that the core base shapes are
k and
t with a short centered crossbar, to which various Voynichese glyphs can be prepended and appended. This is clearly seen in the example by JKP in post #10 above.
Another example by JKP, You are not allowed to view links.
Register or
Login to view. line 4, is not any misalignment. It's just a
h being prepended.
it's more difficult to judge for single-leg gallows.
Here's a very good example: You are not allowed to view links.
Register or
Login to view.