Just about every list I've seen of potential solutions to the VMs includes the hypothesis that Voynichese might be a constructed language. But compared to other broad categories of hypothesis -- such as cipher, natural language, and hoax -- the constructed language category doesn't seem to be getting much attention these days. I'm curious why that is -- whether it's because people feel this explanation is unlikely, or because nobody is quite sure how to go about evaluating it.
Friedman and Tiltman apparently took the idea seriously -- see e.g. You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. -- but I don't have a good sense for how far they actually pursued it. Bowern and Lindemann (2020) bring it up too, but mainly to suggest that a conlang would "pattern morphosyntactically with other natural languages, but be anomalous at the root level," referencing Lingua Ignota, Balaibalan, and Enochian as points of comparison. Still, for a constructed language that diverges from expected patterns, the work of Wilkins, Dalgarno, Cave Beck, and so on might be more relevant: even though they're all a couple hundred years later than the VMs, they might help give us some idea of how "weird" an early constructed language might be, and in what general ways.
So how could we imagine a conlang differing from a natural language in the fifteenth century? And how would efforts to figure it out need to differ from efforts to identify a "precursor" natural language for Voynichese?
For what it's worth, I see that our friend Athanasius Kircher You are not allowed to view links.
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Polygraphia Nova et Universalis that looks structurally a bit like Voynichese:
Quote: xxxvii36 xxx21 ii5 xxiii8 xxviii10 xxx20 xxx22 xvii29 xxx28 xiii16 xxix12 xxx22 xii3 xxx28 ii13 xxix5 viii25 xxix20 xxx28 xxiii40
For another fun example of a text in a seventeenth-century philosophical language, see You are not allowed to view links.
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I get the feeling from his paper that Tiltman was not that hot on the Conlang idea.
Quote:Mr. Friedman disclosed to me his belief that the basis of the script
was a very primitive form of synthetic universal language such as was developed
in the form of a philosophical classification of ideas by Bishop Wilkins in 1667 and Dalgarno a little later.
It was clear that the productions of these two men were much too systematic,
and anything of the kind would have been almost instantly recognisable.
My analysis seemed to me to reveal a cumbersome mixture of different kinds of substitution.
...I tried in 1957 to trace back the idea of universal character, but I had little time to devote to this research.[1]
[1]THE VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT "The Most Mysterious Manuscript in the World" BY BRIGADIER JOHN H. TILTMAN
The problem raised by Tiltman is that known examples of such languages are late, and we now know that they are much later than the creation date of the Voynich MS.
Whether that was also the reason why both Friedman and Tiltman did not seem to have gone anywhere with that idea, I do not know.
To be clear, this objection isn't exactly proof that it could not be a constructed language, but it makes it a more challenging proposal.
For me, it is something that seems prohibitively difficult to approach.
On the other hand, my favourite 'key question' about the Voynich MS may provide some insight.
That is: in case we could answer this key question.
This is:
Is it possible to do a word-by-word substitution of the Voynich MS and come up with a meaningful text?
I see more reasons why the answer should be "no" rather than "yes".
If it is "no", then we cannot create a dictionary of Voynichese to some known language.
A constructed language is most easily conceived in the form of a dictionary.
If it is "no", then also all types of ciphers are excluded, even the more complicated diplomatic ones.
Essentially all past proposed meaningful solutions assume that some form of dictionary should exist.
All this naturally with the prior hypothesis that we are dealing with a language, whether natural or encrypted, which is not proven in any way.
Proving a language is difficult. But condensing clues so that there is not much else left is easier.
(02-04-2024, 07:35 AM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.All this naturally with the prior hypothesis that we are dealing with a language, whether natural or encrypted, which is not proven in any way.
I don't think so. I presented a question.
If the answer is no (which I tend to think), then the option of "meaningless" is certainly one of the possibilities.
(02-04-2024, 12:56 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This is:
Is it possible to do a word-by-word substitution of the Voynich MS and come up with a meaningful text?
I see more reasons why the answer should be "no" rather than "yes".
Good question.
If I want to define words, then I need the context. But I need words for the context.
Where and how do I break the vicious circle?
(02-04-2024, 12:56 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Is it possible to do a word-by-word substitution of the Voynich MS and come up with a meaningful text?
I see more reasons why the answer should be "no" rather than "yes".
If it is "no", then we cannot create a dictionary of Voynichese to some known language.
A constructed language is most easily conceived in the form of a dictionary.
If it is "no", then also all types of ciphers are excluded, even the more complicated diplomatic ones.
Essentially all past proposed meaningful solutions assume that some form of dictionary should exist.
Do you count the presence of null text within your idea of a meaningful solution?
I tried my hand at a conlang years ago. It is remarkably difficult to escape from the habits of your natural language. I expect any early Ren. conlang would still reflect the natural language(s) of the author. An entirely a priori conlang is much less likely.
Motives? Perhaps, in context, an attempted synthetic language to bridge the Latin and Greek Churches? More generally, a device to deal with a body of exotic (scientific) information? Experimentalism? A personal folly? Written, spoken or both?
The usual place to start with a conlang is phonology (and so consonant/vowel schemes) - do you want it to sound like Hawaiian or Klingon? (Voynichese looks like it should be pronounceable?) Then you build a core vobaculary. Then you build a grammar. Poor conlangs fail at the grammar and are just an assembly of words.
Conlangs come in many types depending upon the proposed purpose. Without some clue to its purpose, it is hard to know where to start.
(02-04-2024, 10:47 AM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (02-04-2024, 12:56 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This is:
Is it possible to do a word-by-word substitution of the Voynich MS and come up with a meaningful text?
I see more reasons why the answer should be "no" rather than "yes".
Good question.
If I want to define words, then I need the context. But I need words for the context.
Where and how do I break the vicious circle?
From everything that I have seen, just deleting or adding word spaces, without any other changes,
does not really change things in any significant way.
I would be very interested to hear from people (confirming or contradicting) who have any insight in
this.
For example, the old problem that the Voynich MS text does not really have any repeating sequences
of text, is not caused by incorrect word spaces, and cannot be fixed by adding or deleting word spaces.