(03-10-2020, 12:34 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But for practical purposes, say you want to study Voynichese nouns, wouldn't you get the best odds by focusing on standalone words that accompany drawing elements?
Let's say, they may be "preposition+noun" constructs, which would introduce significant mess.
Right, we don't know what they are. Best we can do is go with the scenario that gives the best odds, I'd say. And treat the results with care.
The VMS does not seem to be a "best odds" scenario in itself, that's the problem. There have been many "best odds" attack attempts from various angles, and none of those has been decisive. Somehow we've still not found the correct angle.
(03-10-2020, 02:08 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The VMS does not seem to be a "best odds" scenario in itself, that's the problem. There have been many "best odds" attack attempts from various angles, and none of those has been decisive. Somehow we've still not found the correct angle.
So are you saying we should focus on the worst odds? To me we should always focus on the best odds even if people haven't yet found a way to decipher the Voynich by considering the most probable scenarios.
I'm saying we should focus on methodology, taking in consideration restrictions imposed by results already available.
Blindly trying the "best odds" here and there is doomed to fail if there are no best odds at all for the particular application. As an example, one can try best odds with the text analysis ad infinitum with no success just because the text flow was not left-to-right, top-to-bottom, to begin with.
I think the default assumption for "isolated" vords should be that they are nouns. (Defining what the word noun means is another exercise. In this situation I suppose name or thing as opposed to idea or concept make most sense.) By "isolated" vords I mean those that separate, distant and apparently unconnected vords. For example there are vords on the 9 rosette page that are separate, distant and unconnected from other vords; when these are adjacent to drawings as they are then I find it hard to use any other word than label as I don't find the concept of a "floating" vord plausible.
When some suggest labels could be adjectives or numbers I would be surprised if that in general, historically, that is not an unusual scenario compared to the scenario that they are nouns. Finding one manuscript where that is the case does not mean the probability overall that a label is an adjective is not very small. Then one has to ask are we saying all labels are adjectives or numbers or just some? Do all labels of one type correspond to the same part of speech? So are some small plant labels adjectives, some numbers and some nouns or are they all of the same type? Statistically I would imagine that "rare" words are much more likely to be nouns. I believe that "rare" words are disproportionately more common amongst labels. (Numbers in particular face their own problem in justifying them as labels.)
(03-10-2020, 03:28 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think the default assumption for "isolated" vords should be that they are nouns.
That's of course the most natural default assumption, but it immediately meets difficulties. For example, consider "otol". Let me quote myself (figure omitted):
Quote:3. The mysterious star of "otol"
The diagram in f68r1 contains the star labeled as otol. It is the rightmost star in the diagram, and it is the most frequently mentioned star in the whole VMS (see Section 6 below). What is more interesting, we meet otol in some remarkable contexts throughout the VMS.
First, we meet it as early as in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. - and not in the regular flow of the text (which would be nothing more than just statistically common for an "important" star frequently referred to), but in the righ-margin-aligned text block in line 18 (the last line of paragraph 3), which reads otol daiiin. The word "daiiin" occurs 18 times in the VMS, but in no case except You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. it is preceded by a star name.
We do not know what is the designation of these right-aligned patterns. They have been proposed to represent section titles (the section description being subject of paragraphs of f1r, thus You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. serving as a "table of contents"). Another possibility is that they represent page numbers in the table of contents. Within the framework of the "section title" hypothesis, a star name used in the generalized decription (which section titles would usually be) deserves attention. What word could be used as a star name and, at the same time, as some generalization? The Arabic "Kochab" (which literally means "star") comes to mind; are there any other options?!
Moving to f55r, we find, in the last line of that folio, another remarkable phrase: ockhy daiin otol, where ockhy is another Voynich star. So we have two star names separated by daiin. Of course, we do not know whether some punctuation mark is not supposed here in between.
otol is not uncommon in astrological folios: beside f68r, it is twice encountered in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (right page), then in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (left page), You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (central and right pages). It is introduced several times in the Zodiac pages, among those in the "grey Aries" page in "otol ypsharal" - the label for the star held by one of the persons.
So far we considered only exact matches, but there are also some "star labels" in the Zodiac pages beginning with "otol": like otolaiin in grey Aries or otolchd, otolchey and otoloaram in white Aries; also there are some "person labels" beginning with "otol": like otolam in Gemini or otoly in Scorpio. In addition, two star names in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. also begin with otol - that is, otolchedy and otolchcthy.
Back to exact matches, we find even more striking appearances of otol - in the visual contexts seemingly unrelated to the star topics. See Fig. 1.
Fig. 1. Appearances of "otol" in unexpected visual contexts: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (left), You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (centre), You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (right)
So otol appears to be a widely used notion, suitable for the following applications:- serving as the name of some quite important celestial object;
- possibly also serving as morphological part of other star names;
- possibly serving for a certain generalization;
- serving for description (direct or by means of association) of a number of unidentified objects: anatomic/distillation (?), leaf/root of some plant (?);
- possibly serving as morphological part of description (direct or by means of association) of "personified" objects in the Zodiac pages.
What celestial body (Sun and Moon excluded) in what language could serve so many purposes at once?
(03-10-2020, 03:44 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Finding one manuscript where that is the case does not mean the probability overall that a label is an adjective is not very small.
Given that the VMS is in itself a work which is by no means commonplace, I would shun conclusions derived from commonplaсe analogies.
(03-10-2020, 04:05 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Quote:What celestial body (Sun and Moon excluded) in what language could serve so many purposes at once?
(03-10-2020, 03:44 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Finding one manuscript where that is the case does not mean the probability overall that a label is an adjective is not very small.
Given that the VMS is in itself a work which is by no means commonplace, I would shun conclusions derived from commonplaсe analogies.
As other people are aware of, those are exactly the kinds of things that I have observed and I have my own explanation for them. Namely that the Voynich contains "filler" text which conforms to a certain structure. So words like otol, okol, otor, okor... are essentially what I term "null" words. Since I first learnt about repeated words I suspected that they were fillers. So I stand somewhere between the people who think all the text in the Voynich is nonsense and people who think none of the text in the Voynich is nonsense. I think some is meaningful and some meaningless. Anyway if we put such "otol" like words to one side we have a number of unusually rare words, such as we find with plant labels, and the question is then how we explain those as adjectives or numbers.
(03-10-2020, 04:05 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Given that the VMS is in itself a work which is by no means commonplace, I would shun conclusions derived from commonplaсe analogies.
I tend agree with this point as the fact that in some ways the Voynich stands alone makes comparison difficult. Though in truth it is the text itself that stands out more than any other aspect of the manuscript, so in other respects comparison is more meaningful. Whether one considers the function of labels a "text" issue or not is debatable.