The Voynich Ninja

Dear Zhe,

on a side note, in this phrase:

wǒ yī bǎ bǎ bǎ bǎ zhù le

我一把把把把住了。

which of the low tones would be modified to rising tones?
In fact, is there a general rule when there are three consecutive low tones?

(04-10-2018, 09:56 AM)ChenZheChina Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(04-10-2018, 09:25 AM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If I understood correctly Zhe's discussion of Chinese reduplication and pseudo-reduplication, my impression is that Chinese is not compatible with what we can observe in Voynichese. For instance:

• q- does not behave as a syllable, but as a modifier of 'o': it almost exclusively occurs as 'qo-'. But quasi reduplication in Chinese involves the addition of a whole syllable.
  
• q- almost appears to be a "reduplication marker". Whatever the reason for the correlation of q- with exact reduplication and quasi-reduplication, nothing similar happens in Chinese.
  

Yes, I think you got it. Unless we can say EVA-q is a syllable, there will be a huge gap between Chinese reduplication and Voynichese reduplication.  

Hi Zhe,
I think that, even if q- was a syllable, its behaviour is still quite different from Chinese. No Chinese syllable has such a strong correlation with both exact and pseudo reduplication.

(04-10-2018, 09:56 AM)ChenZheChina Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(04-10-2018, 09:25 AM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.One more question about Chinese. Voynichese also presents three or more exact or slightly altered repetitions of the same word. For instance:
<f89r2.P1.3;H>     toy.daiin.daiin.daiin.ody.qokeey.cheoldy.qody.cheor.s.ain.daiin.oky.cheody.cheoky=
<f95r1.P.8;H>      olkor.chdaiin.chol.kaiin.qokeedy.qoky.chedy.lchedy.chedy.alod-

I count 9 occurrences of a single word being exactly repeated three times and 1 occurrence of the same word repeated four times (the famous You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).
If one allows for slight alterations (as in the f.95r1 examples above), the numbers increase according to how one defines "quasi-repetition". I think that significant quasi-repetitions with three consecutive occurrences averagely appear once in 1000 words and possibly more.

Are word repetitions with 3 or more occurrences something that is observed in Chinese too?

Yes, but it requires some intentional construction like the English sentence “I saw a saw saw a saw”, and probably won’t be common in daily usage.
...

Thank you! From this remark and your examples, I would say that Chinese multiple repetition is not a feature of the language, but more something weird that can be constructed as something like a pun. Your English example is illuminating. 
In Voynichese, multiple repetition is rather frequent, in particular if one considers pseudo-repetition. It looks like a feature of the language. I will try to think of a simple way to see which languages behave similarly in this respect. 

In my opinion, this analysis suggests that Mandarin Chinese is not likely to be the underlying language of the Voynich ms. The criteria we discussed here can prove quite useful in the search for better candidates.

(04-10-2018, 11:22 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Dear Zhe,

on a side note, in this phrase:

wǒ yī bǎ bǎ bǎ bǎ zhù le

我一把把把把住了。

which of the low tones would be modified to rising tones?
In fact, is there a general rule when there are three consecutive low tones?

Let’s introduce the general rules first.

For some multiple (more than 2) consecutive low tones (214), a semi-low (21) tone will be introduced along with the more general semi-rising tone (13) *. The semi-low (21) tone is usually used where semi-rising tone (13) might be ambiguous.

* the “rising tone” morphed from low tone is not so high as the real rising tone, so 13 is used instead of the real 35, and is called “semi-rising tone” here

1. Two-syllable words

The first syllable must be morphed to semi-rising tone.

展览 (zhǎnlǎn) “exhibition, to exhibit” is actually read:

zhan13↗ lan214↘↗

2. Phrases made up of two-syllable word + one-syllable word

展览馆 (zhǎnlǎnguǎn) “exhibition center”, made up of 展览 “exhibition” and 馆 “museum, mansion”

In such cases, 展 is read as in 展览, while 览 is again morphed by 馆. The actual reading is:

zhan13↗ lan13↗ guan214↘↗

体检表 (tǐjiǎnbiǎo) “physical examination form”, made up of 体检 “physical examination” and 表 “form”, is actually read:

ti13↗ jian13↗ biao214↘↗

胆小鬼 (dǎnxiǎoguǐ) “coward”, made up of 胆小 “cowardly” and 鬼 “imp, ghost, devilkin”, is actually read:

dan13↗ xiao13↗ gui214↘↗

3. Phrases made up of one-syllable word and two-syllable word

It is usually a result of one-syllable prefix, adjacent, adverb or two-syllable suffix. The first syllable is no longer morphed to semi-rising tone (13), because the first syllable of the next word is not a real low tone (214). In such cases, to make the word boundary more clear, semi-low tone (21) must be used.

总导演 (zǒng-dǎoyǎn) “chief-director”, made up of prefix 总 “chief-” and 导演 “director”, is actually read:

zong21↘ dao13↗ yan214↘↗

小水桶 (xiǎo shuǐtǒng) “small bucket”, made up of adjacent 小 “small” and 水桶 “bucket”, is actually read:

xiao21↘ shui13↗ tong214↘↗

很美好 (hěn měihǎo) “very nice”, made up of adverb 很 “very” and 美好 “nice”, is actually read:

hen21↘ mei13↗ hao214↘↗

李小姐 (Lǐ Xiǎojiě) “Miss Li”, made up of proper name 李 “Li” and suffix 小姐 “Miss”, is actually read:

li21↘ xiao13↗ jie214↘↗

4. Three-syllable words

These words are mostly loanwords. For example, Somalia is 索马里 (Suǒmǎlǐ) in Chinese. The actual reading is:

suo13↗ ma13↗ li214↘↗

However, some people might read it as:

suo21↘ ma13↗ li214↘↗

No ambiguity here, so the semi-low tone (21) in the second reading is actually not necessary. But, both readings are fine. Speaking an uncommon word in an uncommon way does not matter. Anyway, you may have to explain later what Somalia is.

5. Phrases made of triple one-syllable words

A typical example is when reading telephone numbers. 959 might be read either:

jiu13↗ wu13↗ jiu214↘↗

or

jiu21↘ wu13↗ jiu214↘↗

depending on personal preferences.

---

Now let’s come back to the sentence in question.

wǒ yī bǎ bǎ bǎ bǎ zhù le
我一把把把把住了。

The sentence could be split into grammar parts below:

wǒ / yī bǎ / bǎ / bǎ / bǎ zhù le
我 / 一把 / 把 / 把 / 把住了。
measure word / object marker / noun / verb

So if we morph low tones right-to-left, we could easily find that the first and the third low tones should be morphed, resulting in:

把把 → ba13↗ ba214↘↗
把把把 → ba21↘ ba13↗ ba214↘↗
把把把把 → ba13↗ ba21↘ ba13↗ ba214↘↗
wo214↘↗ yi51↘ ba13↗ ba21↘ ba13↗ ba214↘↗ zhu51↘ le11

However, some people consider object modifier a part of the object as prefix, so the sentence could also be split into grammar parts below:

wǒ / yī bǎ / bǎ bǎ / bǎ zhù le
我 / 一把 / 把把 / 把住了。
measure word / object modifier + noun / verb

In such case, we could conclude that the result should be:

把把 → ba13↗ ba214↘↗
把把把→ ba13↗ ba13↗ ba214↘↗
把把把把 → ba21↘ ba13↗ ba13↗ ba214↘↗
wo214↘↗ yi51↘ ba21↘ ba13↗ ba13↗ ba214↘↗ zhu51↘ le11

When the speaker want to emphasize the object, they might keep the low tone of the object unchanged, and insert a short stop instead. This does not break the general rules, due to the existence of an extra stop.

把把 → ba13↗ ba214↘↗
把把把 → ba21↘ ba13↗ ba214↘↗
把把把把 → ba21↘ ba13↗ ba214↘↗ (short stop) ba214↘↗
wo214↘↗ yi51↘ ba21↘ ba13↗ ba214↘↗ (short stop) ba214↘↗ zhu51↘ le11

All three readings above are valid. My personal preference is the second one, because it’s really hard to calculate following rules right-to-left a priori when speaking. So, it is natural to say “wo214↘↗ yi51↘ ba21↘ ba13↗” first, and transfer to “ba13↗ ba214↘↗ zhu51↘ le11” after realizing that the third 把 is followed by even a fourth 把. Anyway, this is an intentionally constructed sentence, so you won’t see this much in real conversations.

Chen Zhe, I really appreciate you taking time to write all this. It's very interesting.

I can't read this one right now, it will have to wait until the weekend, but I am sure I will enjoy it as much as the previous posts. Very informative.

(04-10-2018, 08:09 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(04-10-2018, 09:56 AM)ChenZheChina Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Yes, but it requires some intentional construction like the English sentence “I saw a saw saw a saw”, and probably won’t be common in daily usage.
...

Thank you! From this remark and your examples, I would say that Chinese multiple repetition is not a feature of the language, but more something weird that can be constructed as something like a pun. Your English example is illuminating. 
In Voynichese, multiple repetition is rather frequent, in particular if one considers pseudo-repetition. It looks like a feature of the language. I will try to think of a simple way to see which languages behave similarly in this respect.

Exactly. Multiple (more than 2) repetition is probably not a feature of Mandarin Chinese.

After reading your post, I really wonder what qo- prefix and o-prefix might be. If o is a vowel, Arabic definite article al- and Spanish el seems to be a possible candidate, for it appear at beginning of words frequently. But simply being definite article cannot explain their high correlation with reduplication as in your post. However, I really know nothing about those Arabic or Spanish, so I cannot say anything more.

Dear Zhe,

many thanks, this is highly interesting, and none of this is to be found in the entry sources that I have seen so far. It is also completely clear. The fact that the semi-rising tone exists as a different (lower) form of the normal rising tone is also new to me.

The cases I have been wondering about, in my limited knowledge, were more of the fifth type (and third) which can arise easily with 很 (very) as a prefix.

These minor tone differences are not a big surprise. Even though Thai uses the same tones as Mandarin (in principle), only the falling tone is really identical. All others are slightly different, e.g. the high tone is really high and rising (45), and the rising tone starts low (15 or perhaps 215). Thai sounds completely different from Mandarin due to the fact that the neutral tone is used very frequently, and also vowel length is a distinguishing factor.

All this is very likely off-topic for the Voynich MS, even though there are no limitations to what one might imagine. Having a far-eastern language in the MS is already quite unlikely. In my personal opinion, the likelihood that the writing represents tones is negligible. But it is interesting to contemplate.

(05-10-2018, 06:31 AM)ChenZheChina Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....

After reading your post, I really wonder what qo- prefix and o-prefix might be. If o is a vowel, Arabic definite article al- and Spanish el seems to be a possible candidate, for it appear at beginning of words frequently. But simply being definite article cannot explain their high correlation with reduplication as in your post. However, I really know nothing about those Arabic or Spanish, so I cannot say anything more.
...

You will find that the ot prefix is especially prevalent in the zodiac and cosmology sections of the VMS, which is interesting because a high proportion of star names were adapted from Arabic into western languages (and begin with al). It has not been easy, however, to try to match them up with Arabic star names because of the extreme repetition of short syllables in these sections. Arabic star names can be quite similar to each other, but not as similar as VMS tokens, so IF the VMS "labels" in these sections are star names, there is something else is going on, because these portions are also very repetitious in a number of ways.


It's also noteworthy that "o" is an article in Greek. It's a masculine article, but if someone were creating a language or cipher, or were simplifying the grammar, "o" could easily be used as a generic article.