The Voynich Ninja

In the thread about You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. marginalia, I asked a question about what shapes such as g and m did mean as medieval scribal abbreviations. One reply was by JKP who advised that these shapes were used for "-ris", "-tis" and "-cis" and provided the following picture.



Very helpfully, JKP annotated the instances of the symbol with their mappings to "-ris", "-tis" and "-cis".

Now, looking at these mappings, one can recognize that it is not shapes g and m as such that are abbreviations, but the tail loop exclusively. Namely, the loop means "-is" and is then appended to the previous letter. If the letter is "t", the result is "-tis". If the letter is "c", this yields "-cis". And so on.

Now, let's apply this logic to the VMS (why not?). The approach of the table in my title post would treat g or m as standalone characters which are comprised as "e + tail" and "i + tail", respectively. The "+" in these expressions may stand for just graphical coupling of two shapes (as the way of "inventing" a new letter for the alphabet), or it may stand for the arithmetical or logical "AND" operator signifying that "the essence of g is the essence of e AND the essence of the tail", whatever is behind this (numerical code or anything else).

Now, the approach of the "medieval scribal convention" would lead us quite another way - not to standalone "new" characters of the alphabet and not to arithmetical sum or logical "AND". Instead, it leads us to the "serial" hypothesis where the tail is a standalone shape - but not a character of the alphabet, rather an abbreviation symbol. The assumption that it is an abbreviation symbol explains why it is not found elsewhere except the end of vords (don't remember offhand if there are many exceptions from this rule, but I believe they are not many) - this would be just because it follows the common scribal convention for word endings (or is designed to mimic that convention).

The word "serial" as the term that I introduced means that g and m should be expanded into series:

g = eA
m = iA

where "A" stands for the expanded abbreviation (which could be "-is" if this is just borrowing from the common convention or it could be something else if this is a more cunning design).

If this hypothesis holds true, then, of course, wherever we encounter g or m, we would be sure that this is the vord ending - just by convention.

A similar logic could potentially  be applied to other tails encountered in the end of vords (needs more consideration). Actually, this might resolve the question of the "positional causality" of certain glyphs from a different perspective: the position does not determine the glyph, it determines only  truncation of a series (including the "base shape" and the sequence to be abbreviated) into a single perceived EVA glyph (while in fact it should be decomposed into two glyphs in abbreviated transcription and into two or even more glyphs in non-abbreviated transcription).

(14-09-2018, 02:51 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....


Now, looking at these mappings, one can recognize that it is not shapes g and m as such that are abbreviations, but the tail loop exclusively. Namely, the loop means "-is" and is then appended to the previous letter. If the letter is "t", the result is "-tis". If the letter is "c", this yields "-cis". And so on.
...

That's correct. That's why I call them Lego blocks and posted this pic on the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:

[attachment=2347]



You can add the "is" loop to anything, even in the middle of the word, although it is mostly at the ends of words and ris/cis shapes are also sometimes used as line or paragraph-end markers. In the VMS, the -is abbreviation is not just added to r/c/t, it is added to other glyphs, as well. I think I've posted some of them. Here are a couple of examples of g+is from manuscripts:

[attachment=2348]


The "-is" loop is also sometimes used to mean "-em" as in "Item" if scribes don't want to add the "z"-shaped wiggle (which is actually a sideways "m"). This is the one that looks like EVA-k (in Latin it's tis or tem):

[attachment=2349]



There are also "dis" abbreviations (d + is). But they are not quite as common as ris/tis/cis.

There are two implications of this approach to the VMS.

First, character entropies of the "truncated" version will be higher that those of expanded version. This is not the direction which we would like to see. However, values such as h0-h1 or h1-h2 may be also higher for the "truncated" version. (This is the desired direction of change). I did a brief check with the declaration of human rights in Latin, in which I changed all "-tis" and "-ris" endings (42 and 15 occurrences, respectively) with single characters T and R, respectively. And what I observed was change of h0-h1 from 0,45 to 0,54, and of h1-h2 from 0,78 to 0,79.

Second, treatment of certain EVA glyphs as of combination of other glyphs with abbreviation symbols effectively reduces the "core" alphabet. Most probably this will lead to situation when the size of the core alphabet is suspiciously small. What will be left? c, i, e, h, a, l, o and the gallows.

Abjad with positional abbreviations?

Positional abbreviations are not impossible.


In Latin, the y abbreviation is positional...

• At the beginning of words, it usually means con or cum.
  
• At the ends of words, it usually means us or um.
  
  

Wouldn't any given text trend towards high positional abbreviation, with often the same words, word types and word parts being abbreviated?

I did not mean that abjad with positional abbreviation is not possible, what I meant is the question of whether such combination is worth considering in application to the VMS.

What other options with small "core alphabet" can come to mind? Some numeric cipher maybe?

I guess there are two different meanings for "positional" in terms of scribal abbreviations...

• For example, the -is, -em, and "tail" abbreviations are usually at the ends of words because they don't have to attach to additional letters, and because they lend themselves to faster writing in those positions. There is a pattern to the positions.
  
• But there is also a positional requirement for some abbreviations (like y). When positioned at the beginning or the end, they mean different things. The y abbreviation usually means "us" or "um" at the ends of words but one would never use it for "us" at the beginning of the word. At the beginning it has to be "con" or "cum" (or something similar).
  

These abbreviations were flexible, but there still had to be some order for them to be readable.

...so what i did, is look for characters in manuscripts that are 100% identical to the [m] and share the same position in the word.

The difference with the EVA [m] and the examples above that can represent -tis, -cis, -em etc. etc. depending on the language is the tail.
The EVA [m] is ended with a tail to the bottom and to the left 
and all examples f.e. from Latin end with a tail, downwards or with a tail to the right.

That is important, because when you find the EVA [m] equivalent, that is, with the tail to the bottom left, 
I found that the meaning of that letter is then variable: in the one word it means abcxyz and the next word it means yz or xyz. etc.
Can not give source because of copyright issues. Hope this helps in ones research.

note: this topic is titled "Suggestions for decomposition of the Voynichese characters", and imo the Eva [m] is not a gallow character.

The direction of the tail for the "-is" abbreviation varies quite a bit, often right, sometimes straight, sometimes left.

JKP, do you have any idea what is the rightmost word, third row from the bottom?

Here we have this abbreviation appended to a German word, it seems.

gerichtet? gerichtlich?