The Voynich Ninja

When paying attention to how gallows are written in relation to other glyphs, it soon becomes clear that some (many) are "floating" between words, as if  they were not part of them. There is no way to tell when these gallows belong to the word on the left or on the right, both or neither. Transliterations don't acknowledge this fact, usually pushing the gallows to the right and (sometimes) inserting a space on the left when the space is larger than usual. Because of the random choice of space insertion in transliterations, most statistics on words are unreliable.

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I fully agree with the issue on word spaces.
Even just in the small sample clip, one can see more doubtful cases, also not involving a gallows.

(16-11-2022, 12:01 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Because of the random choice of space insertion in transliterations, most statistics on words are unreliable.

This observation might account for one pattern I've just been trying to look into over the past couple days -- one that might also be referred to as "floating gallows," but in another sense.

Taking the hypothesis that gallows aren't an inherent part of words, but are only added to words, I tried comparing the statistics for all words containing [k] and [t] against the statistics for the same words without them (in paragraphic text only, leaving out labels, etc.).

Sometimes a reasonably common word with [k] or [t] doesn't have an attested counterpart without the gallows.  For example, there are no tokens of [qoey], [qochdy], [ool], [oey], [yeey], or [chchey].  That could be a problem for the hypothesis.

On the other hand, there are sometimes also curiously complete sets of words in which a gallows can be found inserted at every point in a relatively common gallows-less word -- almost.

Take [cheey], which has 133 tokens in its gallows-less form.  If we limit ourselves to discrete words, we have:

[kcheey] 3 and [tcheey] 6
[cKheey] 10 and [cTheey] 13
[chkeey] 13 and [chteey] 1
[chekey] 5 and [chetey] 4
[cheeky] 21 and [cheety] 3
*[cheeyk] 0 and *[cheeyt] 0

The only place in [cheey] where we never find a gallows inserted to form a discrete word is at the very end.

But we do find the hapax legomena [cheeykam] and [cheeytal] -- which is what we might expect if the insertion of a gallows had filled in a space in [cheey.am] and [cheey.al].  We also find:

[cheey.k*] 6 and [cheey.t*] 4
[cheey,k*] 4 and [cheey,t*] 1

-- in which a following gallows has been attached in transcription to the next word, with fully half (5/10) of such cases being flagged as ambiguous (with comma breaks).  Maybe these latter cases look like nablator's examples.

All of which could be taken to suggest that these various words [kcheey], [cKheey], [chkeey], and so forth might be better analyzed as a consistent [cheey] with a gallows inserted at different points (or "floating" from place to place?) than in terms of a word morphology built around [k] or [t] occupying a consistent "core"-type slot.

If that were so, then perhaps a gallows could legitimately be placed midway between two words just as well as anywhere else -- although that could risk undermining the very definition of the Voynichese "word."

(16-11-2022, 03:09 PM)pfeaster Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Take [cheey], which has 133 tokens in its gallows-less form.  If we limit ourselves to discrete words, we have:

[kcheey] 3 and [tcheey] 6
[cKheey] 10 and [cTheey] 13
[chkeey] 13 and [chteey] 1
[chekey] 5 and [chetey] 4
[cheeky] 21 and [cheety] 3
*[cheeyk] 0 and *[cheeyt] 0

The only place in [cheey] where we never find a gallows inserted to form a discrete word is at the very end.

But we do find the hapax legomena [cheeykam] and [cheeytal] -- which is what we might expect if the insertion of a gallows had filled in a space in [cheey.am] and [cheey.al].  We also find:

[cheey.k*] 6 and [cheey.t*] 4
[cheey,k*] 4 and [cheey,t*] 1

-- in which a following gallows has been attached in transcription to the next word, with fully half (5/10) of such cases being flagged as ambiguous (with comma breaks).  Maybe these latter cases look like nablator's examples.

All of which could be taken to suggest that these various words [kcheey], [cKheey], [chkeey], and so forth might be better analyzed as a consistent [cheey] with a gallows inserted at different points (or "floating" from place to place?) than in terms of a word morphology built around [k] or [t] occupying a consistent "core"-type slot.

Hi Patrick, the chkeey list of variants is impressive. I think it's worth adding that Stolfi's grammar discusses a "core" gallows preceded and followed by "mantles" made of e-sequences and benches, so the different positions of k in the variants of chkeey are accepted by his model (but 'cheeyk' is accepted as well). Also, his grammar predicts that this kind of movement is basically impossible in the case of mantle-less words like 'qokaiin' or 'otaldy'.
Stolfi's grammar is certainly perfectible (e.g. it allows much movement for the gallows in 'olkar') and reading word-spaces in the ms is often unclear, but I think that the concept of Voynichese words, however problematic, is quite useful. Your system where you remove all spaces and re-introduce them on the basis of a set of rules seems like a possible way out from the difficulty of transliterating spaces.

Patrick, while that's an interesting observation, what would we do with words like [cheokey] or [chotey]? Removing the gallows would result in [cheoey] and [choey], neither of which exist. I think that the gaps would be difficult to explain as it wouldn't apply to a single word, but to a whole series:

[kcheoey] 1 and [tchoey] 0
[ckheoey] 0 and [cthoey] 0
[chkeoey] 0 and [chtoey] 0
[chekoey] 0 and [chotey] 9
[cheokey] 3 and [choety] 1
[cheoeky] 0 and [choeyt] 0
[cheoeyk] 0

We would be faced with a situation where a gallows could insert itself into a word in one of seven or six slots, but chooses the same slot 75% to 90% of the time.

(16-11-2022, 03:09 PM)pfeaster Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The only place in [cheey] where we never find a gallows inserted to form a discrete word is at the very end.

Yes, gallows can move a lot, with strong preferences for the beginning, next to vowels (counting [c] and [h] as vowels, they function just like [e]). Insertion near or at the end is less frequent. I've been trying to find evidence for equivalences from statistics but the numbers ore often low and with these preferences there is no guarantee that equivalent forms will have similar frequencies.

The other case is when gallows fill a (usually large) space between words. Some conspicuous large spaces are left but many are filled with gallows.

I have a wonderful theory to explain almost everything but this is an introductory post for observations, I'll create a separate thread for the theory.

(16-11-2022, 03:09 PM)pfeaster Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(16-11-2022, 12:01 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Because of the random choice of space insertion in transliterations, most statistics on words are unreliable.

This observation might account for one pattern I've just been trying to look into over the past couple days -- one that might also be referred to as "floating gallows," but in another sense.

Taking the hypothesis that gallows aren't an inherent part of words, but are only added to words, I tried comparing the statistics for all words containing [k] and [t] against the statistics for the same words without them (in paragraphic text only, leaving out labels, etc.).

Sometimes a reasonably common word with [k] or [t] doesn't have an attested counterpart without the gallows.  For example, there are no tokens of [qoey], [qochdy], [ool], [oey], [yeey], or [chchey].  That could be a problem for the hypothesis.

On the other hand, there are sometimes also curiously complete sets of words in which a gallows can be found inserted at every point in a relatively common gallows-less word -- almost.

At the risk of either stating the obvious or otherwise not contributing:

A logical explanation is that the gallows don't function the same each time they are used.  Certainly the idea of classifying a word differently depending on whether it exists only with or both with and without a gallows has been suggested before (e.g. the nebulous Grove words).  

Is it possible that the actual function of the gallows changes and that change can been seen depending on whether it is a "necessary" component of word to make it a "valid" Voynichese word as compared to a component that can be placed anywhere within an otherwise "valid word"?

I'm sure it is not lost on anyone that the second of these two "functions," actually a non-function, is a null.

Is there some way to test whether the possible function of gallows that move within otherwise "valid" words is acting as a null?

(16-11-2022, 04:46 PM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Patrick, while that's an interesting observation, what would we do with words like [cheokey] or [chotey]? Removing the gallows would result in [cheoey] and [choey], neither of which exist. 

The unattested words [cheoey] and [choey] are similar to some other examples I listed, although I didn't also list corresponding words with gallows, which I should probably have done, if only to underscore how high-frequency some of them are: 

[qoey] 0, but [qokey] 95, [qotey] 20
[qochdy] 0, but [qokchdy] 47, [qotchdy] 19, [qopchdy] 16; [qocKhdy] 1, [qocThdy] 1, [qocPhdy] 2
[ool] 0, but [okol] 56, [otol] 61, [opol] 2
[oey] 0, but [okey] 52, [otey] 36; [oeky] 1
[yeey] 0, but [ykeey] 47, [yteey] 27
[chchey] 0, but [chcKhey] 28, [chcThey] 6, [chcPhey] 3
 
The token quantities involved in the two cases you mention are a bit lower (our counts are a little different, but not much): 

[cheoey] 0, but [kcheoey] 1, [cheokey] 2, [cheotey] 2
[choey] 0, but [chokey] 6, [chotey] 4; [choeky] 2, [choety] 1

(16-11-2022, 04:46 PM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think that the gaps would be difficult to explain as it wouldn't apply to a single word, but to a whole series:

[kcheoey] 1 and [tchoey] 0
[ckheoey] 0 and [cthoey] 0
[chkeoey] 0 and [chtoey] 0
[chekoey] 0 and [chotey] 9
[cheokey] 3 and [choety] 1
[cheoeky] 0 and [choeyt] 0
[cheoeyk] 0

We would be faced with a situation where a gallows could insert itself into a word in one of seven or six slots, but chooses the same slot 75% to 90% of the time.

True enough, but I don't mean to suggest that gallows placement is necessarily random, or that each position is equally likely.

What I was hoping to dig into was the question of whether any discernable "rules" of gallows insertion would emerge out of these statistics.  Maybe [cheey] is unusually flexible.  But [chedy], for example, is less so -- we can find [kchedy], [cKhedy], and [chkedy] (and [t] equivalents), but inserting a gallows to either side of the [d] seems dispreferred, except for a single token of [chedty].  The words [chey] and [chdy] follow a similar pattern: for [chey] we have [kchey], [cKhey], [chkey], [cheky] (and [t] equivalents); but for [chdy] we have only [kchdy] and [cKhdy] (and [t] equivalents).  When the combination [oe] appears in a word, it looks as though a gallows might be drawn preferentially to the spot between them, and also to be especially likely to appear: hence, possibly, the preference for [cheokey] and [chotey], and also for [qokeedy] (291 tokens) as opposed to [qoekedy] (2 tokens) or [qoeedy] (18 tokens).  Whether this kind of analysis will turn out to have any advantage over other ones, I don't think I'm yet in any position to say, but I thought it could be worth a try.

There are places where the gallows literally float above the baseline of the text (usually F or P on the top line of paragraphs.) 

(16-11-2022, 07:48 PM)pfeaster Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What I was hoping to dig into was the question of whether any discernable "rules" of gallows insertion would emerge out of these statistics.  Maybe [cheey] is unusually flexible.  But [chedy], for example, is less so -- we can find [kchedy], [cKhedy], and [chkedy] (and [t] equivalents), but inserting a gallows to either side of the [d] seems dispreferred, except for a single token of [chedty].  The words [chey] and [chdy] follow a similar pattern: for [chey] we have [kchey], [cKhey], [chkey], [cheky] (and [t] equivalents); but for [chdy] we have only [kchdy] and [cKhdy] (and [t] equivalents).  When the combination [oe] appears in a word, it looks as though a gallows might be drawn preferentially to the spot between them, and also to be especially likely to appear: hence, possibly, the preference for [cheokey] and [chotey], and also for [qokeedy] (291 tokens) as opposed to [qoekedy] (2 tokens) or [qoeedy] (18 tokens).  Whether this kind of analysis will turn out to have any advantage over other ones, I don't think I'm yet in any position to say, but I thought it could be worth a try.

I quite understand. I suppose we have two possibilities for discerning rules:
1. That the forms themselves show a clear preference/dispreference for place of gallows insertion.
2. We analogise from non-ambiguous situations.

My guess is that we normally do 2), assuming that analogies hold and we can create rules from strong prohibitions in some circumstances and transfer them to other environments. So we see that [lchey] exists (and is very common) but [clhey], [chley], and [chely] don't exist and [cheyl] has one token, so assume that the form [Xchey] is not the same as [cXhey] (or other). Now, [l] isn't a gallows, I know, but it forms part of the information we use to understand word structure. We would otherwise be stating that the [chey] in [lchey] is not the same as the [chey] in [kchey]. But is that any better (or worse) than saying that the [chey] in [Xchey] is not the same as [cXhey]?

The question is whether these assumptions about analogising word structure are correct and whether they've been adequately tested. I think your hypothesis is a good challenge and, while I believe we have the word structure broadly correct, I'm not sure we can prove it in every instance. Can we break down the question about word structure and gallows insertion into smaller parts?