16-07-2022, 01:17 AM
I entirely appeciate the virtues of tackling Voynichese context-free - such studies are of course necessary and valuable - but I don’t understand why people can be allergic to bringing context to the conundrum.
My methodological model calls for an alignment of text, context and subtext, and I happily alternate between taking a microscope and then a telescope to the problem. The difficulty is a bit like that posed by particle physics: the laws that govern the micro level don’t knit with the laws that govern the macro. The quest is for a general theory.
Contextually, I am led to the conclusion that the language in question must be/should be/ought to be, Ladin. Others have come to the same conclusion. I am strongly of the view that the contextual evidence points to that.
But textually, the text doesn’t map to Ladin (or any other known language.) On the face of it, it least of all resembles a Romance language. There are decypherment theories abroad about “Old Latin” to which Ladin might conform, but it’s a stretch. Nothing like that fits cogently without a lot of massaging.
Nevertheless, I think what we see is an attempt to create a writing system for Ladin. I suspect our problems might lie more with the script rather than with the language.
Moreover, from context, I expect the content to be a sort of survey, with a lot of measurements and numbers generated by systematic studies, which may explain why the text seems like a sort of artificial lexicon with excessive repetition and combinatorics. Such things are less a feature of the language and more the result of the content.
I then test contextual hypotheses against the context-free reality of the text. If there’s no way to legitimately construe the data to the proposed context, it’s back to the drawng board.
But I certainly want to narrow the search with a contextual frame and think that constructive speculation about context is an important part of the slow two-step towards a solution.
I watched Stephen Bax on Voynich Ninja recently. I share some of his views. The script could be an attempt to craft a writing system for a previously oral-only language (he cited the Armenian script as an example.) He makes useful comments about that scenario.
His priviso is that it is a language community with an intellectual need for a script – at which point he wanders off to talk about Hungarian.
That is the point at which I want to apply a contextual focus and argue that Ladin had such an intellectual need in the relevant period (and in a region that is a strong candidate as the relevant locale.)
I am encouraged to discover that there is evidence that Ladin was first put to writing in limited ways as early as the 1300s (although our first extant samples are from 1700s.) The Ladin were overtaken by history and never formed a viable national identity, but there were times when Ladin was not as marginal a tongue as it is today.
The specific context I point to is the 1450s when Nicholas of Cusa was prince-bishop of Brixen and very famously came to blows with Verena von Stuben and the Ladin speaking Benedictine nuns of Sonnenberg, a squirmish in which the Ladin of Val Badia were the meat in the sandwich, as the saying goes. (It’s the same period in which the Ladin and their traditions were the focus of the rising tide of witch hunts.)
In any case, I readily admit the difficulties of matching the text to this (or any other) context. (And my own limitations with linguistics.) But for me, that is the way forward: text/context/text/context. Focus in. Stand back. (Bearing in mind the complications of subtext. There has to be motive, not just means and opportunity.)
Again: context-free studies are great. But I think it is useful to bring a contextual lens – or many – to the data, back and forward, searching for an unforced and cogent alignment.
The research problems are manifold. For a start, the modern presentation of Ladin is not a revealing guide to the language in the 1450s. Can anyone direct me to previous Voynich-Ladin studies that might help, even if to show how little it resembles Voynichese?
My methodological model calls for an alignment of text, context and subtext, and I happily alternate between taking a microscope and then a telescope to the problem. The difficulty is a bit like that posed by particle physics: the laws that govern the micro level don’t knit with the laws that govern the macro. The quest is for a general theory.
Contextually, I am led to the conclusion that the language in question must be/should be/ought to be, Ladin. Others have come to the same conclusion. I am strongly of the view that the contextual evidence points to that.
But textually, the text doesn’t map to Ladin (or any other known language.) On the face of it, it least of all resembles a Romance language. There are decypherment theories abroad about “Old Latin” to which Ladin might conform, but it’s a stretch. Nothing like that fits cogently without a lot of massaging.
Nevertheless, I think what we see is an attempt to create a writing system for Ladin. I suspect our problems might lie more with the script rather than with the language.
Moreover, from context, I expect the content to be a sort of survey, with a lot of measurements and numbers generated by systematic studies, which may explain why the text seems like a sort of artificial lexicon with excessive repetition and combinatorics. Such things are less a feature of the language and more the result of the content.
I then test contextual hypotheses against the context-free reality of the text. If there’s no way to legitimately construe the data to the proposed context, it’s back to the drawng board.
But I certainly want to narrow the search with a contextual frame and think that constructive speculation about context is an important part of the slow two-step towards a solution.
I watched Stephen Bax on Voynich Ninja recently. I share some of his views. The script could be an attempt to craft a writing system for a previously oral-only language (he cited the Armenian script as an example.) He makes useful comments about that scenario.
His priviso is that it is a language community with an intellectual need for a script – at which point he wanders off to talk about Hungarian.
That is the point at which I want to apply a contextual focus and argue that Ladin had such an intellectual need in the relevant period (and in a region that is a strong candidate as the relevant locale.)
I am encouraged to discover that there is evidence that Ladin was first put to writing in limited ways as early as the 1300s (although our first extant samples are from 1700s.) The Ladin were overtaken by history and never formed a viable national identity, but there were times when Ladin was not as marginal a tongue as it is today.
The specific context I point to is the 1450s when Nicholas of Cusa was prince-bishop of Brixen and very famously came to blows with Verena von Stuben and the Ladin speaking Benedictine nuns of Sonnenberg, a squirmish in which the Ladin of Val Badia were the meat in the sandwich, as the saying goes. (It’s the same period in which the Ladin and their traditions were the focus of the rising tide of witch hunts.)
In any case, I readily admit the difficulties of matching the text to this (or any other) context. (And my own limitations with linguistics.) But for me, that is the way forward: text/context/text/context. Focus in. Stand back. (Bearing in mind the complications of subtext. There has to be motive, not just means and opportunity.)
Again: context-free studies are great. But I think it is useful to bring a contextual lens – or many – to the data, back and forward, searching for an unforced and cogent alignment.
The research problems are manifold. For a start, the modern presentation of Ladin is not a revealing guide to the language in the 1450s. Can anyone direct me to previous Voynich-Ladin studies that might help, even if to show how little it resembles Voynichese?