The Voynich Ninja

Rugg's Cardan grille method is far more interesting than I originally thought. That does not mean that I think that the Voynich MS was generated in that way, but it allows for some interesting analyses. Whenever I have more time   I may write something up on that topic.

The point I would like to make now is that this is a typical case where some human pattern would naturally emerge if it were applied. A human application of this method would look very different from a computer simulation.

(04-09-2019, 03:51 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In conclusion any encryption theory of the Voynich must take a realistic account of what would have been mentally practical for the author.

I second this point. The output of low tech, analog, human randomization methods is harder to simulate with a computer model than one might intuitively think. This is because the factors that go into a random drawing of the old-fashioned kind are too many, subtle, and varied to be completely quantified. But complete quantification is kind of what a computer does. I'm not arguing it's inappropriate to use a piece of software to model a proposed analog random output generator. After all, unless Voynich studies has an eccentric billionaire patron, no one is going to pay human research subjects to spend hours a day for many days in a lab drawing lots and writing down the resulting vords on parchment by hand. But what I am saying is, the builders and users of random word generators should never assume a priori that their tool models the analog generation process they propose nearly exactly. Voynich-bot builders need to ask themselves: What aspects of the 15th century analog method does my machine not model well? And, do these discrepancies likely account for the statistical differences between my machine's output, and the real VMS's text, and how do I know? These questions deserve a thorough discussion in the "possible sources of error" and "further avenues for research" that conclude any good laboratory report.

Hi!
Excuse me for my late inclusion into this topic. I couldn't join it owing to lack of time.
Marco wrote:

Quote:Something that doesn't fit the nice picture (I don't think this has been mentioned in this thread yet):
Many of the labels that occur more than once appear to refer to different things.
...
I attach the results of my search for repeating single-word labels. This was based on the transcription file by Zandbergen-Landini. (Detailed -You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..)

Thanks to Marco and VViews for their great work and finds concerning the repeating labels! I think the analysis of those ones received too little attention and weren't well anlysed and explained. 
RobGea wrote:

Quote:Quick list of ways a single label could apply to multiple things:
Attributes / properties   
Relationships / mappings
Numeric / quantities     
Multiple meanings 
Multiple encryptions       
Multiple languages       
Multiple sounds/Homonymy   
Categories
Metadata
Nonsense

Ok. I agree. But the knowledge of this itself doesn't help. Did anyone try to find some common thing between those labels for different objects? Or common homograph? How many people examined and tried to make identifications of a particular word or word combination? As for the multiple encriptions, I'm just not sure how they can be recognized in the text. 
For the observation I chose the word otol. Marco compared two cases with this label (f77r and f77v) in another thread, but I want to mention all the interesting occurences of this word. As I don't quite agree with Marco's table, I decided to attach the images, so you can decide about the correctness of example, the more that I like visuality. 
It is notable that the word otol appears not only in the "cosmo", "bio" and "pharma" sections, it also appears as a footnote or title on the first page (f1r).
Cosmo. Language/Hand - unidentified (Currier table):
[attachment=3461] f68r1. The label to a star. 
[attachment=3462] f68v1. One of the 3 words of the section label (otol ches otaly). (To the point, otaly is also popular label in different sections.) 
Obviously, these two cases of otol imply the same word and meaning.
Zodiac. Language/ Hand - unidentified:
[attachment=3463] f71r. One of the labels in the Aries diagram #1 otol chdy
Probably it relates to the labels in the "cosmo" section, but maybe - not.
Bio. Language/Hand - B:
[attachment=3465] f77r. The one-word label to a kind of outlet of the vas-like object.
[attachment=3466] f77v. The two-word label to a part of the vas-like object.
Most likely, these two labels must be related to each other. Maybe, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. reflects the general name, and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. shows more certain object. Can this word be related to a star? I have some doubt. It is possible, of course, but if so, the rest of the stars from f68r1 or their most part probably must match the other parts of the labels in the "Bio" section. They doesn't. Perhaps it is some special star. The other explanation - different languages/hands. Unfortunately, the hands of the "Cosmo" and "Zodiac" sections is not pointed. 
Pharma. Language/Hand - A:
[attachment=3467] f102v2. The label to the picture of a leaf.
If this word doesn't correspond to the same word in the language B, it must be related to the same words in the language A.
F1r. Language/Hand - A:
[attachment=3468] f1r. The on of the 2-word footnote (title) otol daiiin. 
This is the most interesting issue. Is it corresponded to the label that designates a leaf?  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and f102v2 are detected to be in the language A. As Currier's table doesn't point the language of the "Cosmo" and "Zodiac" sections, I tried to do it myself as much as I can. I made it most easy way - comparing words of those sections to f1r. Notable, "Astro" sections have 45 common words with You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (not repetitions). Thus, I think it can be considered Language A, likely with some inclusions of the different language (names of stars, etc.)
Common words for You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and "Cosmo", and "Zodiac" sections (marked yellow):
[attachment=3469]
I must admit that the language may be relevant for interpretation of the label. I can't only understand why there are so many coincidences.In the great part of cases the repeated label appears in the "Cosmo" and in the "Bio" section either, sometimes, in the "Pharma" section, pointing to quite different objects. Are those words just common words without any specificity? What the first page is about? 
For example, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. mentions 3 words which also appear as labels of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (otol, ykal and okain). Does it mean something? Words dal and dar that present among the labels of the "Bio" section appears all over the text including f1, as well. As I noted dal often appears in the diagrams which divided in sections. Maybe, this word mean something like: a section, a part, a portion?
Unfortunately, I'm not able to figure out all of this. Maybe someone will find an answer how all this can be connected and what it can mean.

(06-10-2019, 10:50 PM)Searcher Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
Ok. I agree. But the knowledge of this itself doesn't help. Did anyone try to find some common thing between those labels for different objects? Or common homograph? How many people examined and tried to make identifications of a particular word or word combination? As for the multiple encriptions, I'm just not sure how they can be recognized in the text.
...

I created a color-coded concordance of every token in the Voynich Manuscript. It took more than two years of dedicated effort to trace all of the tokens and their relationships to one another. The explanations that go with the concordance come to more than 1,000 pages. I also documented common endings and beginnings for each token that appeared to be expanded in regular ways.

I broke up the VMS "sections" into smaller subgroups so I could track them more precisely (I posted examples in the past on other threads).


I was looking for patterns for particular Vords... Do they show up in subject areas that are related? Are they associated with particular kinds of images? Do they follow certain linguistic patterns? Are they associated with certain other words? Are there subject-matter patterns within specific sections (like the zodiac-figures section, for example)? Cam we find tokens for words like leaf/root/stem, earth/air/fire/water, hot or cold?


It did not result in the kind of patterns one would expect if the VMS tokens were considered to be words (with respect to the placement of the spaces), so I went back through it and started documenting word pairs. This was also a long and arduous challenge and more difficult, because where do you choose the word breaks? Which ones might go together? Are there word breaks within tokens? How do patterns in the illustrated sections related to the text on the unillustrated folios? etc...


After putting in such an incredible effort to find patterns/relationships, the only noteworthy patterns that I saw were that the cho Vords showed up more often in the plant sections and the oh words more often in the star-related sections. The other commonalities did not yield the kind of linguistic patterns one would expect.

(06-10-2019, 10:50 PM)Searcher Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
...
Ok. I agree. But the knowledge of this itself doesn't help. Did anyone try to find some common thing between those labels for different objects? Or common homograph? How many people examined and tried to make identifications of a particular word or word combination? As for the multiple encriptions, I'm just not sure how they can be recognized in the text.
...

At a minimum, this homonymy is evidence suggesting that the "labels" are not referential to the object it is next to. (Proposals of attributes or metadata for their function reflect this.) Yet, (deictic) referentiality is the basic function of a label, especially in what looks like an encyclopedia, so we have a mismatch between form and function but these "labels." One upshot that it is probably impossible to solve the VM through the "labels" since we are not justified in assuming that they actually do what labels do. Another upshot is that they--and the rest of the "language"--may well be asemic.

(07-10-2019, 03:52 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
After putting in such an incredible effort to find patterns/relationships, the only noteworthy patterns that I saw were that the cho Vords showed up more often in the plant sections and the oh words more often in the star-related sections. The other commonalities did not yield the kind of linguistic patterns one would expect.

Sounds like disappointing results for such a lot of work. But thanks for the work.

Stephen, what hit home for me (and I had long suspected but tried not to assume until there was evidence to confirm or at least strongly indicate it) were a number of observations...

• that the spaces might not be what they seem to be (it's one thing to suspect it and another to see that tokens that appear to be visually the same don't relate to one over the length of the manuscript in ways one would expect or in ways that tie together certain sections or certain passages of text with certain diagrams in normal ways),
• if there is meaning, then the lack of expected patterns might strengthen the evidence of it possibly being a verbose code, but if so, it would have to be one that somehow manipulates what we perceive as spaces (and what may not look like spaces might have that function) because otherwise there is still the problem of positionality,
• it might be patterns added one after the other in semi-regular ways according to some plan (but not the way Hyde and Rugg described it) but which 1) either have no linguistic meaning or 2) which depend on interpreting something other than alphabetical letters,
• that the transcripts (including my own, of which I have created four) might not reflect the correct divisions of glyphs or some levels of detail that might have meaning but which are being transcribed in the same way rather than as separate components (I am aware via Nick Pelling that Glen Claston created something like this but I haven't explored it yet because I am still looking into some possible precedents in medieval literature for some of my own research),
• if there IS meaning in the tokens there might be some kind of revolving system so that a specific token of a certain form might not match one of the same form in terms of what it encodes later in the manuscript*, or
• the message might not be in the tokens as per "words", it might be steganographic (which has been mentioned numerous times, but the lack of linguistic-relationship patterns may strengthen the argument that we should be looking at it differently).

*This is the one that seems most likely to yield something potentially linguistic but it is only one of many possibilities and not the easiest one to unsnarl.


I have a few other thoughts, but these were the primary ones that seemed relevant in trying to explain the lack of results that came out of such a long and thorough inquiry.

(07-10-2019, 03:52 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I was looking for patterns for particular Vords... Do they show up in subject areas that are related? Are they associated with particular kinds of images? Do they follow certain linguistic patterns? Are they associated with certain other words? Are there subject-matter patterns within specific sections (like the zodiac-figures section, for example)? Cam we find tokens for words like leaf/root/stem, earth/air/fire/water, hot or cold?
It did not result in the kind of patterns one would expect if the VMS tokens were considered to be words (with respect to the placement of the spaces), so I went back through it and started documenting word pairs. This was also a long and arduous challenge and more difficult, because where do you choose the word breaks? Which ones might go together? Are there word breaks within tokens? How do patterns in the illustrated sections related to the text on the unillustrated folios? etc...

Thank JKP for the reply and your efforts, of course! The issue of the word pairs is pretty interesting, although not easy. Maybe, studying of those pairs even can help to understand whether the Voynich words are really separate words or only an illusion. Interesting that many words of the word pairs in the VMs change their sequence inside of their word combination.
Just a couple of examples. Some of the word pairs of the labels of 75v, while not exist in the text in a strict sequence, but appear there in a changed position to each other:
dary dal (f75v) – dal dary (f45r)
daldy dal (f75v) – dal daldy (f89v1), daldy dalor (f45r).
Just to note, daldy dalor is not an exact match, but it appears along with dal dary on the same page (herbal section, Hand A).
Continuing the theme of the label / word otol, I'd note that the most frequent combination with the word otol in the herbal + pharma sections are otol daiin (7 times, also 3 occ. of qotol daiin, daiin otol - 1 occ., daiin qotol - 2 occ.) and otol chol (7 occurences). It is notable that otol daiiin from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. doesn't occur anywhere in the VMs. As allways the issue of i, ii and iii is still here. Is it the same as otol daiin? Anyway the fragment of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. absolutely doesn't clarify this: "... daiin daiiin dain dain daiin qol chy dain v or daiin dain...". 
In the same time, more repeatable word combination with otol in the Bio section is otol chedy (5 occurences). Nevertheless, one of the labels of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. - otol shedy isn't occur in the text, instead of this, shedy qotol occurs 2 times (one - in the first line of the same page), and qotol shedy (once - on the f77r). [Thereby I still consider q-sign a null]
In conclusion, otol daiin of the herbal part and otol chedy of the Bio section are likely two different otols, but I think it doesn't mean - different words for otol itself. 
The word otol of the Cosmo section rather stands alone.

(07-10-2019, 09:11 PM)Searcher Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Anyway the fragment of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. absolutely doesn't clarify this: "... daiin daiiin dain dain daiin qol chy dain v or daiin dain...". 

One of the most disheartening things about the VMS.. Eventhough I've always thought it's a natural human language that conveys something, I don't think these repeating sequences (or this particular one) can be explained in that way.. They may well be numbers or something like that; but the idea of null words/sentences seem to be a kindof fit to me. Null sentences inserted could be gibberish, and the author, having to make stuff up out of thin air, went with repetitions like these... Any studies done on the possibility of these obvious duplications as nulls exist?

-JKP-, I just wanted to say how much I respect the enormous amounts of time and energy you have invested in parsing the text of the VMS from scratch. I'm speaking here not only of the cataloging and inventorying the connections (or lack thereof) between vords, but also the making of your own full transcription. I'd have to say you're probably one of the most qualified people alive to weigh in on what the VMS contains, textually.

The vord-cataloging project you mention in this thread is a project I was considering doing, and it makes me happy to see that someone has beat me to it (and probably stuck with it longer than I would have!). I may yet come up with a similar project that builds upon the work you've already done, though. I'd be interested in running any such ideas by you first, to make sure that I'm not repeating work you've already done, or falsifying hypotheses you've already falsified.

(08-10-2019, 02:20 PM)RenegadeHealer Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.-JKP-, I just wanted to say how much I respect the enormous amounts of time and energy you have invested in parsing the text of the VMS from scratch. I'm speaking here not only of the cataloging and inventorying the connections (or lack thereof) between vords, but also the making of your own full transcription. I'd have to say you're probably one of the most qualified people alive to weigh in on what the VMS contains, textually.

The vord-cataloging project you mention in this thread is a project I was considering doing, and it makes me happy to see that someone has beat me to it (and probably stuck with it longer than I would have!). I may yet come up with a similar project that builds upon the work you've already done, though. I'd be interested in running any such ideas by you first, to make sure that I'm not repeating work you've already done, or falsifying hypotheses you've already falsified.

Thank you for the kind words. I'm still trying to figure out some way to share this information, but it's a challenge because you can't just dole it out piecemeal, the whole point of the project was to step back and take a broad view of the patterns and relationshipis that ran through the whole manuscript (while also considering how it might relate to the imagery). As soon as I try to chop it up into digestible morsels, the "relationships" part of it comes unraveled, but I'm working on it. I'll keep trying.