11-11-2022, 01:06 PM
Since I can not attend at the Voynich conference I publish my questions to some of the papers in this thread. I will also send the questions via email to the authors. I suggest that this thread is not used to discuss the questions at least until after the Voynich conference is over.
Claire Bowern and Daniel Gaskell - Enciphered after all? Word-level text metrics are compatible with some types of encipherment.
In the paper from 2021 Claire Bowern explains the differences in word frequencies in the VMS by a) two different methods of encoding at least one natural language, b) different scribes, and c) different topics.
Did you suggest that these three different interpretations are all true or did you suggest that they contradict each other?
In the paper of Sterneck et al. you warn that "topic modeling relies on word frequencies and expects consistency across texts" [Sterneck et al. 2021, p. 4]. However the Voynich text isn't consistent across its sections. If we look into the text itself it becomes evident that "no obvious rule can be deduced which words form the top-frequency tokens at a specific location, since a word type dominating one page might be rare or missing on the next one." [Timm & Schinner 2019, p. 3].
Why do you assume that different word frequencies indicate topics if noticeable frequency changes even occur between folios?
Tokens containing the sequence 'ed' are common in Currier B and an exception in Currier A.
If you assume that the word frequency changes are caused by different topics, how do you explain the differences between folios sharing the same illustrations like Herbal A and Herbal B?
In Timm & Schinner 2019 the Voynich text is analyzed beyond the paragraph level. The paper comes to the conclusion that by reordering the sections with respect to the frequency of token <chedy> replaces the seemingly irregular mixture of two separate languages by the gradual evolution of a single system from "state A" to "state B".
Why this alternative explanation is not addressed?
You argue that some codes could increase the predictability of word formations.
Have you tested if some of the codes would result in text with statistical properties similar to the Voynich text?
In your paper from 2021 you argue that full reduplication is still in the realm of plausibility for for natural language text. The paper states that number of full word repeats goes up to 4.8 % for natural languages.
Given that you now describe the text as extreme predictable (whatever that means), did you still stand behind your statement about full word repeats in natural languages?
Jürgen Hermes - Polygrahia III: The cipher that pretends to be an artificial language.
The Voynich text is changing from page to page, since a token dominating one page might be rare or missing on the next one, they even depend on there postion within a page or line.
How did you explain that the words depend on the page if as you say the words were randomly selected from a code book?
How do you explain that words containing /ed/ like <chedy> are far more common in Currier A than in Currier B?
Kevin Farrugia, Colin Layfield and Lonneke van der Plas: Demystififying the scribes behind the Voynich Mansucript using Computional Linguistic Techniques.
An alternative model is a gradual evolution of a single system from "state A" to "state B", namely be reordering the sections with respect to the frequency of the word <chedy> [see Timm & Schinner 2019].
Why such an alternative model was not used for cross-checking the results?
Andrew Caruana, Colin Layfield and John Abela - An Analysis of the Relationship between Words within the Voynich Manuscript.
You mention the fact that skewed word pairs exists in the Voynich text.
How many of the skewed word pairs result in an existing word, e.g. like the words <ol> <chedy> would result in <olchedy>?
How many of the skewed word pairs consists of similar words like <chol>/<shol>, <daiin>/<dain> or <chedy>/<shedy>.
Massimiliano Zattera - A new transliteration alphabet brings new evidence of word structure and multiple "languages" in the Voynich manuscript.
Only a very limited number of letters occur with each other in certain positions of a 'word. For instance EVA-q is followed in 97.5 % of the cases by EVA-o, and EVA-n occurs in 97.4 % of the cases after EVA-i. A common idea is therefore to interpret glyph sequences like /qo/ and /iin/ as ligatures or letters. But even then the resulting glyph set is very predictable. For instance a group of EVA-i occurs in 94 % of the cases after EVA-a and a sequence /qo/ is followed in 84 % of the cases by a gallow glyph.
Didn't this behavior suggest that these restrictions are a feature of the Voynich text rather than a question of the transliteration alphabet?
Lisa Fagin Davis - Voynich Paleography
At the BSA Annual Meeting in 2020 you used the fact that "The very common character combination qo is almost completely absent in the zodiac pages and the rosettes page, but appears everywhere else" from René Zandbergens website as second method to cross check your identification of scribe four.
Why did you not mention this fact in your paper written later in 2020? Why did you instead announce to ask Prof. Claire Bowern to search for a pattern, which you already knew?
In your publications from 2020 you claim that you used the software Archetype to identify the five different scribes.
However, your screenshot for Archetype shows only 44 (43 +1) as the number of pages uploaded into Archetype. How did you identify the scribes for the other 180 pages without uploading them into Archetype?
In your paper from 2020 you argue that EVA-k is sometimes written in one stroke and sometimes in two strokes and that only the scribes 2 and 4 wrote EVA-k with two strokes.
How do you explain the observation of instances for EVA-k where an overlapping crossbar or an gap indicates that EVA-k was written in two strokes for your scribes 1, 3, and 5?
By applying Latin paleography to the Voynich manuscript it is assumed that scribes with some experience in writing that script. However, the text in the VMS is the only known example of its kind and represents an unique writing system. It is therefore possible that the writing system was only used to write the text we see in the Voynich manuscript.
Isn't it therefore a possibility hat the scribes were unexperienced in writing Voynichese at the start? Shouldn't we check for a scribe writing slowly and carefully at the start and is becoming more fluent during writing?
Claire Bowern and Daniel Gaskell - Enciphered after all? Word-level text metrics are compatible with some types of encipherment.
In the paper from 2021 Claire Bowern explains the differences in word frequencies in the VMS by a) two different methods of encoding at least one natural language, b) different scribes, and c) different topics.
Did you suggest that these three different interpretations are all true or did you suggest that they contradict each other?
In the paper of Sterneck et al. you warn that "topic modeling relies on word frequencies and expects consistency across texts" [Sterneck et al. 2021, p. 4]. However the Voynich text isn't consistent across its sections. If we look into the text itself it becomes evident that "no obvious rule can be deduced which words form the top-frequency tokens at a specific location, since a word type dominating one page might be rare or missing on the next one." [Timm & Schinner 2019, p. 3].
Why do you assume that different word frequencies indicate topics if noticeable frequency changes even occur between folios?
Tokens containing the sequence 'ed' are common in Currier B and an exception in Currier A.
If you assume that the word frequency changes are caused by different topics, how do you explain the differences between folios sharing the same illustrations like Herbal A and Herbal B?
In Timm & Schinner 2019 the Voynich text is analyzed beyond the paragraph level. The paper comes to the conclusion that by reordering the sections with respect to the frequency of token <chedy> replaces the seemingly irregular mixture of two separate languages by the gradual evolution of a single system from "state A" to "state B".
Why this alternative explanation is not addressed?
You argue that some codes could increase the predictability of word formations.
Have you tested if some of the codes would result in text with statistical properties similar to the Voynich text?
In your paper from 2021 you argue that full reduplication is still in the realm of plausibility for for natural language text. The paper states that number of full word repeats goes up to 4.8 % for natural languages.
Given that you now describe the text as extreme predictable (whatever that means), did you still stand behind your statement about full word repeats in natural languages?
Jürgen Hermes - Polygrahia III: The cipher that pretends to be an artificial language.
The Voynich text is changing from page to page, since a token dominating one page might be rare or missing on the next one, they even depend on there postion within a page or line.
How did you explain that the words depend on the page if as you say the words were randomly selected from a code book?
How do you explain that words containing /ed/ like <chedy> are far more common in Currier A than in Currier B?
Kevin Farrugia, Colin Layfield and Lonneke van der Plas: Demystififying the scribes behind the Voynich Mansucript using Computional Linguistic Techniques.
An alternative model is a gradual evolution of a single system from "state A" to "state B", namely be reordering the sections with respect to the frequency of the word <chedy> [see Timm & Schinner 2019].
Why such an alternative model was not used for cross-checking the results?
Andrew Caruana, Colin Layfield and John Abela - An Analysis of the Relationship between Words within the Voynich Manuscript.
You mention the fact that skewed word pairs exists in the Voynich text.
How many of the skewed word pairs result in an existing word, e.g. like the words <ol> <chedy> would result in <olchedy>?
How many of the skewed word pairs consists of similar words like <chol>/<shol>, <daiin>/<dain> or <chedy>/<shedy>.
Massimiliano Zattera - A new transliteration alphabet brings new evidence of word structure and multiple "languages" in the Voynich manuscript.
Only a very limited number of letters occur with each other in certain positions of a 'word. For instance EVA-q is followed in 97.5 % of the cases by EVA-o, and EVA-n occurs in 97.4 % of the cases after EVA-i. A common idea is therefore to interpret glyph sequences like /qo/ and /iin/ as ligatures or letters. But even then the resulting glyph set is very predictable. For instance a group of EVA-i occurs in 94 % of the cases after EVA-a and a sequence /qo/ is followed in 84 % of the cases by a gallow glyph.
Didn't this behavior suggest that these restrictions are a feature of the Voynich text rather than a question of the transliteration alphabet?
Lisa Fagin Davis - Voynich Paleography
At the BSA Annual Meeting in 2020 you used the fact that "The very common character combination qo is almost completely absent in the zodiac pages and the rosettes page, but appears everywhere else" from René Zandbergens website as second method to cross check your identification of scribe four.
Why did you not mention this fact in your paper written later in 2020? Why did you instead announce to ask Prof. Claire Bowern to search for a pattern, which you already knew?
In your publications from 2020 you claim that you used the software Archetype to identify the five different scribes.
However, your screenshot for Archetype shows only 44 (43 +1) as the number of pages uploaded into Archetype. How did you identify the scribes for the other 180 pages without uploading them into Archetype?
In your paper from 2020 you argue that EVA-k is sometimes written in one stroke and sometimes in two strokes and that only the scribes 2 and 4 wrote EVA-k with two strokes.
How do you explain the observation of instances for EVA-k where an overlapping crossbar or an gap indicates that EVA-k was written in two strokes for your scribes 1, 3, and 5?
By applying Latin paleography to the Voynich manuscript it is assumed that scribes with some experience in writing that script. However, the text in the VMS is the only known example of its kind and represents an unique writing system. It is therefore possible that the writing system was only used to write the text we see in the Voynich manuscript.
Isn't it therefore a possibility hat the scribes were unexperienced in writing Voynichese at the start? Shouldn't we check for a scribe writing slowly and carefully at the start and is becoming more fluent during writing?