The Voynich Ninja

(13-09-2020, 09:47 AM)Ruby Novacna Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Geoffrey, looking quickly at a text in Basque, I don't see an agreement with Voynich.

This is a Basque translation of the New Testament: "gure Jaunaren Testamentu Berria" = 'our Lord-GENITIVE Testament New-the'

I would expect medieval original Basque poetry for example to look rather different. But still, I get the point that any Basque will have longer words than the Voynich ms does. I do not contest or argue with that point.

But I think word length is the least of all our problems with the Voynich ms. It is not difficult to conceive of the Voynich ms vords as 1-syllable or 2-syllable segments, possibly morphemes, or possibly a more idiosyncratic segmentation. A sequence of multiple Voynich vords could possibly represent a single word in the language as we know it in its standard written form.

That is the only immediately obvious visible difference that jumps out at me as clearly evident. Can you specify some more particular differences that you have in mind? I am sure there are numerous differences, but I would like to see them spelled out so that we can discuss them objectively.

(13-09-2020, 10:11 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Don't do it man. Our problem right now is not "which language", it is "how is whichever language it is transformed into Voynichese". Counterintuitively, the latter needs to be answered first. But this needs more than simple substitution...

I don't see how we can go about an investigation of hypotheses about the latter question, without checking and testing them with actual languages, for which we need some candidate language or languages to test.

The biggest macro-scale issue about the Voynich ms for me is the question of actual natural language, in whatever form, vs. the recent arguments by the likes of Gordon Rugg and Andreas Schinner, et al., published in Cryptologia. They argue that the properties of the Voynich ms text are consistent with meaningless text produced by a stochastic method that could have been performed by a late medieval author. I don't like the use of the word "hoax" to describe this theory, since I associate that more with the idea of a more recently created forgery. (Who exactly was the author trying to fool with his hoax in the 15th century? Surely not the people into whose hands the ms fell centuries later.) But their arguments about the properties of meaningless text seem serious and need to be addressed. It may be a depressing hypothesis to consider, but as long as you are emphasizing the big picture view of analysis of the ms text, their theory needs to be kept squarely in mind.

(13-09-2020, 04:10 PM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.word length is the least of all our problems

I don't think of the length of words, but rather of their ending.

(13-09-2020, 04:27 PM)Ruby Novacna Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(13-09-2020, 04:10 PM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.word length is the least of all our problems

I don't think of the length of words, but rather of their ending.

The numerous words ending in "-n" are consistent with my hypothesis that Voynich character EVA [n] may represent this letter.
The numerous words ending in "-c" / "-co" are consistent with my hypothesis that Voynich character EVA [d] may represent old Basque orthographic "c", with [-dy] perhaps representing one or more of these specific common Basque suffixes.
Yes, the numerous words with final vowels are an issue. I mentioned this in my original post, suggested that perhaps final vowels are not written in the ms, and I admitted that this is a difficulty with the hypothesis.

Wow Geoffrey — your post feels like someone reached into my head and wrote out a whole series of thoughts and perceptions I had about a year ago. It's uncanny to encounter someone who's been down the exact same little rabbit hole I have. Gavin Güldenpfennig here at the Ninja was the one who first inspired me to look into the Basque language as a possibility for the VMs. From there, it was You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that made me wonder if there might be a match between Voynichese's rigid glyph positioning, and proto-Basque's rigid phoneme positioning. At one point I even made a chart based on Stolfi's core-mantle-crust paradigm, where I tried to assign a Voynichese glyph (in each word position) to each possible proto-Basque consonant (in each word position). I remember entertaining the possibility that EVA=[daiin] was the Basque word jaun (meaning "sir").

I then looked at the earliest Basque language texts by Bernard Etxepare (XVI century), and tried to match the high-frequency words with my chart's supposed Voynichese equivalent. Alas, common medieval Basque words did not seem to transform easily into common valid Voynichese words in the VMs. And that's where I abandoned the project.

I'll fully admit I went at this project wholly unscientifically, which is why I never shared it with the VMs community. I started with the result I hoped for, and then tried to make the data fit the result, which I'm well aware is circular logic / begging the question. For better or for worse, I've never been successfully socialized to be disgusted by this sort of "taking a stab at it". I think there's nothing wrong with inquiring based on nothing but a hunch, as long as: A) I never forget it's merely a hunch, B) I know when to quit when my hunch isn't panning out, and C) I don't try to draw any factual conclusions from this preliminary inquiry. It was recreation for me, and it was a pilot program, to see if a more scientific study of Basque-Vonichese correspondences was warranted. (I failed to support the idea that it was.) Some may say that I wasted time and effort that could have been better spent. I see it a little differently: I had an adventure and learned some new things, even if I never found the buried treasure. I certainly have no regrets learning more about the Basque language, even if it didn't necessarily get us any closer to solving the VMs.

I'll upload the chart I made, if it would be helpful to you, Geoffrey.

(13-09-2020, 03:47 PM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Marco, thank you for this analysis.

Your source for Linguae Vasconum Primitiae appears to be written in a more modern Basque spelling, not the author's original spelling in 1545. A short sample of the original with a comparison to modern spelling is presented You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. I am not saying the original spelling will drive down the conditional entropy from 3 to 2, but it is worth noting the actual spelling of the original text.

Thank you, Geoffrey.
The Wikipedia passages are too short to compute meaningful measures: for what is worth, the original text apparently has a slightly higher conditional entropy than the more modern spelling.
Anyway, these are details and do not make a substantial difference. Basque is and was written with a totally ordinary writing system producing a totally ordinary conditional character entropy close to 3.

(13-09-2020, 04:48 PM)RenegadeHealer Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Wow Geoffrey — your post feels like someone reached into my head and wrote out a whole series of thoughts and perceptions I had about a year ago. It's uncanny to encounter someone who's been down the exact same little rabbit hole I have. Gavin Güldenpfennig here at the Ninja was the one who first inspired me to look into the Basque language as a possibility for the VMs. From there, it was You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that made me wonder if there might be a match between Voynichese's rigid glyph positioning, and proto-Basque's rigid phoneme positioning. At one point I even made a chart based on Stolfi's core-mantle-crust paradigm, where I tried to assign a Voynichese glyph (in each word position) to each possible proto-Basque consonant (in each word position). I remember entertaining the possibility that EVA=[daiin] was the Basque word jaun (meaning "sir").

I then looked at the earliest Basque language texts by Bernard Etxepare (XVI century), and tried to match the high-frequency words with my chart's supposed Voynichese equivalent. Alas, common medieval Basque words did not seem to transform easily into common valid Voynichese words in the VMs. And that's where I abandoned the project.

I'll fully admit I went at this project wholly unscientifically, which is why I never shared it with the VMs community. I started with the result I hoped for, and then tried to make the data fit the result, which I'm well aware is circular logic / begging the question. For better or for worse, I've never been successfully socialized to be disgusted by this sort of "taking a stab at it". I think there's nothing wrong with inquiring based on nothing but a hunch, as long as: A) I never forget it's merely a hunch, B) I know when to quit when my hunch isn't panning out, and C) I don't try to draw any factual conclusions from this preliminary inquiry. It was recreation for me, and it was a pilot program, to see if a more scientific study of Basque-Vonichese correspondences was warranted. (I failed to support the idea that it was.) Some may say that I wasted time and effort that could have been better spent. I see it a little differently: I had an adventure and learned some new things, even if I never found the buried treasure. I certainly have no regrets learning more about the Basque language, even if it didn't necessarily get us any closer to solving the VMs.

I'll upload the chart I made, if it would be helpful to you, Geoffrey.

Thank you so much for sharing some details of your own investigation into this hypothesis. We can all save some collective time and energy, if we share and learn from each other's past efforts and the obstacles they encountered. (Hannig could have saved himself a lot of trouble if I had shared with him my own unsuccessful work on Voynich as Hebrew and its obstacles!) I very much appreciate your description of your investigation. I knew I couldn't be the first person to think along these lines! Whether it's right or wrong is another matter.

Yes, I would love to see the chart you made, if you don't mind uploading it. Thank you.

(13-09-2020, 05:00 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Anyway, these are details and do not make a substantial difference. Basque is and was written with a totally ordinary writing system producing a totally ordinary character conditional entropy close to 3.

These are the important kinds of insights you only get when playing around with writing systems and entropy calculations yourself. To go from 2 to 3 or vice versa you need massive structural changes.

(13-09-2020, 04:10 PM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This is a Basque translation of the New Testament

Hmm, I can certainly cherry - pick a few Voynichesque words from that short sample:-

"cure cu curi cuca ceren caren " and "Iain Iaincoazcoaz"

But in Voynichese the whole thing is like that.

(13-09-2020, 11:47 AM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(13-09-2020, 02:08 AM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.May I ask what other types of evidence within the ms itself that you would look for to generate a hypothesis about the possible language in which the text is written?

I would like you to demonstrate:

• Why a particular glyph should be identified as a vowel.
  
• Why a particular glyph should be a plosive/fricative/liquid/nasal/semivowel.
  
• Why particular words or affixes should be considered specific parts of the grammar.
  

The idea is that even without a candidate language, you should be able to demonstrate the principles of the underlying language. Starting from internal evidence only I want you to argue how you got to the idea that [r] = /r/ or [l] = /l/. Can you demonstrate that they fit into a class like liquids? That clusters such as [lk] = /lt/ make sense? That [chedy] = /hik/ "you (erg)" makes sense? What is "you" doing in the text? What verbs does it relate to?

I don't accept the idea that the linguistic properties of a text in a completely unknown writing system and unknown language can necessarily be analyzed in the manner and especially in such depth as you suggest, without any accompanying hypothesis at all about a candidate language, at least for the purpose of checking and testing one's hypotheses about these linguistic properties. The Linear B researchers had a lot of additional information to guide them when they developed hypotheses about such linguistic properties -- drawings of items and people and numbers that accompanied the text. They didn't analyze the text in a vacuum isolated from its context, and fortunately in the case of Linear B the context was practical, not fanciful. We enjoy no such advantages with the Voynich ms. We have the Pleiades, a Zodiac chart, and beyond that we are mostly guessing.

Is there any example in history of taking a text with no outside context whatsoever, and successfully analyzing its phonological or grammatical properties in the way that you suggest? I am sincerely asking this question, I would be very interested to know if it has ever been successfully done before with another text.

I actually do have some ideas and analysis that may at least partially answer some of your questions. In some cases these ideas and analysis may hold up outside the context of any particular language under consideration. But first I want to make my main point above, to question the extent to which phonological and grammatical properties of a text can be successfully analyzed without any surrounding context to guide us and without a hypothesis about possible candidate languages. Even when for example analysts say that "the properties of the text do not appear to correspond with the structure of any Indo-European language", they are implicitly considering an Indo-European language as their possible candidate language, and then rejecting that connection.