The Voynich Ninja

(28-02-2023, 04:18 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view."Two two for twenty two" - I think this positional expression is out of scope of the medieval mindset.

I was wondering about that too. Still something along these lines might be worth considering, since maybe the VM does not have dedicated single symbols for numerals. Do you think in that case their only option would be to write out "twenty two" in full instead of some verbose way of writing numerals?

Dear Marco,

I must say you are on the right track. Thank you. 

Please, when examining different languages in terms of the type and variety of word repetitions and the frequency of their occurrence in texts, please also consider the Old Turkish inscriptions & manuscripts. Here, in my article below, I am presenting the evidence on this subject again, and in doing so, I refer to some of the articles of linguists on the same subject.


Of course, today you can artificially create word repetitions in any language while writing a new article. However, please you examine any Turkish text before the date of 1912 when the VM book was unearthed (or included all times), with together with examine the texts of the European languages in a same time period you are studying. 

In Turkish texts, you will see an increase in word repetitions as you go back in time. However, the numerical diversity and structural status of these repetitions can be seen very richly in Turkish. (They can be found on almost every page in many ancient Turkish manuscripts as like as VM pages.) For example, in the past, our ancestors used to write that word twice to make the plural of a word. We have been doing this with word suffixes for a very long time.

As in the same way as VM word-repetation structure, there are double, triple, quartet and quintet word repetitions in many Old Turkish manuscript. As the number of words increases in successive repetitions, the frequency of occurrence in texts decreases. So, Turkish already has this structure. For example, double repetitions are more common than triple repetitions, etc.
Please see the table here > You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

The same situation is shown in the example given from a literary manuscript written in the 15th century.
Here are the one of the 15th century texts I mentioned >  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

So, I have had share an explanation about word repetitions before here in this voynich-ninja platform for modern Turkish and old Turkish. 
If you look there, you can see that word repetitions are used extensively in modern Turkish.

On this page > You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
I was took two poems as an example and showed the word repetitions in red-color in them. These 2 poems are in modern Turkish. 

But there are already academic articles about word repetitions in Turkish, and I already reference them in many our own articles. 
(Please see this source book: Aksan 2000 / Doğan Aksan, "En Eski Türkçenin İzlerinde")

In those articles, he already talks about the number and variety of forms, the frequency of occurrence in the texts and the repetitions from double to quintuple, and that none of them has a close analogue in any other language (except for the Korean & japan language. But Korean & Japan language also do not have the same-form as like quartet and quintuple repetitions, this point is just Old-Turkish specific.)

That is, the same word is written side by side in more than one way. No similar situation has been recorded with equal intensity in any of the Old-Indo-European languages. Likewise, similar structures, including Semitic languages and Chinese etc., are not found in any of the languages studied as candidates for VM.

But there are many recorded old-texts for it in old Turkish. 

For example, these were recorded in the IRK BİTİG manuscript in same way. 

You can see same situation in Kutadgu Bilig manuscript written by Yusuf Has Hâcib in the eleventh century too.

This all recorded as an example of structural overlaps for VM by us. 

So, you will already see the same structure in VM when you look compairing it with the Irk-BITIG manuscript, and we have already presented this as like one of the proof in our articles sent and published to some academies.

See what the linguist Doğan Aksan wrote about it (with the Turkish original as well as the English translation I made below):

“In linguistics, reduplications, which are called hendiadyoin (hendiadyoin 'one with two, one with two mediators') with the Greek term and which have only a few examples in the whole Latin literature, have been used and used with great frequency in every period and every dialect of Turkish. These elements constitute one of the most important features of our language in terms of structure, syntax and semantics. Reduplications, which we encounter in Korean and to some extent in Japanese, are generally not as large in Indo-European languages as in Turkish. ..." Doğan Aksan (Linguist)

With the Turkish original  > “Dilcilikte, Yunanca terimiyle hendiadyoin (hendiadyoin ‘iki ile, iki aracıyla bir’) adını alan ve koca Latin yazınında ancak birkaç örneği bulunan ikilemeler Türkçenin her döneminde ve her lehçesinde büyük bir sıklıkla kullanılmış ve kullanılmaktadır. Dilimizin hem yapı hem söz dizimi hem de anlam bilimi bakımından en önemli özelliklerinden birini, bu ögeler oluşturmaktadır. Türkçedekine yakın oranda Korece’de ve bir ölçüde Japoncada karşımıza çıkan ikilemeler Hint-Avrupa dillerinde genel olarak büyük bir sayıda değildir. ..." Doğan Aksan 

Thanks,

A. Ardıç


Please see some academic resources about word repetition theme in Turkish:


- Kürşat Efe ve Muhammed Ali Açıkgöz. "Reduplications in Ahmet Bican Ercilasun's The Novel of Ulu Han Ata, The Lost Book of the Turk", Dede Korkut International Journal of Turkish Language and Literature Studies, 8/18, pages 167-176. /
"Ahmet Bican Ercilasun’un Türk’ün Kayıp Kitabı Ulu Han Ata Romanında İkilemeler", Dede Korkut Uluslararası Türk Dili ve Edebiyatı Araştırmaları Dergisi, 8/18, sayfa  167-176.
<You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.>

-Aksan, Doğan. "Türkçenin Zenginlikleri İncelikleri", Ankara: Bilgi Yayınevi, 2005a

-Aktan, Bilal. "The Word Repetitions in the Vocabulary of Dîvânu Lügâti't-Türk Manuscript". Selcuk University Journal of Turkic Studies, P.28, p.1-12 / “Dîvânu Lügâti’t-Türk’ün Söz Varlığında Yer Alan İkilemeler”. Selçuk Üniversitesi Türkiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi, S.28, s.1-12. / 2010

- Aksan, Doğan. "On the Traces of the Oldest Turkish. / "En Eski Türkçenin İzlerinde." İstanbul: Simurg Yayınları, 2000.

(28-02-2023, 05:53 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(28-02-2023, 04:18 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view."Two two for twenty two" - I think this positional expression is out of scope of the medieval mindset.

I was wondering about that too. Still something along these lines might be worth considering, since maybe the VM does not have dedicated single symbols for numerals. Do you think in that case their only option would be to write out "twenty two" in full instead of some verbose way of writing numerals?

That would be fine, but this method only assumes ten words (for nine digits + zero), there are many more variants of repeated words in the text. Even if it supposes the use of words for such numbers as ten, hundred, thousand, million, etc., there are too many different doubled or tripled words.
Some of them (in descending order according to the reoccurrence as sequential repetitions in the text):
daiin daiin (25)
qokedy qokedy (11)
chedy chedy (11)
qokeey qokeey (11)
shedy shedy (8)
ol ol (8)
okedy okedy (4)
qotedy qotedy (4)
chdy chdy (4)
okaiin okaiin (4)
dar dar (4)
or or (4)
qol qol (4)
otain otain (3)
qokain qokain (3)
qokal qokal (3)
qokchdy qokchdy (2)
okal okal (2)
otar otar (2)
dain dain (2)
ain ain (2)
dal dal (1)
okain okain (1)
otedy otedy (1)
olkedy olkedy (1)
kedy kedy (1)
qokey qokey (1)
okey okey (1)
sheol sheol (1)

(28-02-2023, 07:43 PM)Searcher Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(28-02-2023, 05:53 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(28-02-2023, 04:18 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view."Two two for twenty two" - I think this positional expression is out of scope of the medieval mindset.

I was wondering about that too. Still something along these lines might be worth considering, since maybe the VM does not have dedicated single symbols for numerals. Do you think in that case their only option would be to write out "twenty two" in full instead of some verbose way of writing numerals?

That would be fine, but this method only assumes ten words (for nine digits + zero), there are many more variants of repeated words in the text...

When I rearrange the list you gave, I get the following structure, where I separate prefixes and suffixes...

Quote:=====(edy)
qotedy qotedy (4)

otedy otedy (1)

olkedy olkedy (1)

kedy kedy (1)

okedy okedy (4)
qokedy qokedy (11)
chedy chedy (11)
shedy shedy (8)

=====(chdy)
chdy chdy (4)
qokchdy qokchdy (2)

=====(ain)
ain ain (2)
dain dain (2)

otain otain (3)

okain okain (1)
qokain qokain (3)

=====(aiin)
daiin daiin (25)
okaiin okaiin (4)

=====(ey)
okey okey (1)

qokey qokey (1)
=====(eey)

qokeey qokeey (11)

=====(ar)
dar dar (4)

otar otar (2)
=====(al)
dal dal (1)
okal okal (2)

qokal qokal (3)
=====(or)
or or (4)
=====(ol)
ol ol (8)

qol qol (4)

sheol sheol (1)
/////////////Prefix
(none)
d
qot
ot
olk
k
ok
qok
q
ch
sh

This would suggest that there are words that this Pregix+Suffix arrangement might predict, and scientifically, would prove that a subset of the language uses such Prefix+Suffix pattern

(28-02-2023, 05:53 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.maybe the VM does not have dedicated single symbols for numerals. Do you think in that case their only option would be to write out "twenty two" in full instead of some verbose way of writing numerals

That's more a question for specialists in, so to speak, languages with undeveloped scripts. I don't know if there are examples of languages that lack dedicated symbols for numerals in writing. Historically letters were used for numerals for a long time. This is true for Latin or e.g for Cyrillic stuff like Russian. And I think for Greek and Hebrew as well. That was basically the language's response to the challenge of not having dedicated symbols for digits. But even supposing one does not have dedicated symbols, he would not express it in this strange positional way. He would put it in writing just as he is used to it orally. If he says "twenty two", he would write "twenty two", not "two two".

Furthermore - of course I never paid much attention to it and I may be wrong - but I fancy that, in contemporary European MSs, digits (whether Arabic or Roman) are typically used in tables and drawings, while within the flow of text they are typically expressed "verbatim". Like, when one needs to say "three drops", he usually writes "three drops", not "3 drops".

And of course there's the Searcher's argument that the amount of reduplication pairs just exceeds the amount of digits.

@Anton

Interestingly, in the message before your last one, I rearranged the values unto prefix suffix pairs and it seems 
That there are 10 prefixes and 10 suffixes. The model may predict words that aren't in the list, so it needs to be tested whether words that don't appear in the list and are predicted are actually part of the language or not.

(01-03-2023, 12:24 AM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.That's more a question for specialists in, so to speak, languages with undeveloped scripts. I don't know if there are examples of languages that lack dedicated symbols for numerals in writing. Historically letters were used for numerals for a long time. This is true for Latin or e.g for Cyrillic stuff like Russian. And I think for Greek and Hebrew as well. That was basically the language's response to the challenge of not having dedicated symbols for digits. But even supposing one does not have dedicated symbols, he would not express it in this strange positional way. He would put it in writing just as he is used to it orally. If he says "twenty two", he would write "twenty two", not "two two".

Furthermore - of course I never paid much attention to it and I may be wrong - but I fancy that, in contemporary European MSs, digits (whether Arabic or Roman) are typically used in tables and drawings, while within the flow of text they are typically expressed "verbatim". Like, when one needs to say "three drops", he usually writes "three drops", not "3 drops".

Yeah this makes sense. Any natural language that has no designated symbols for numbers (either numerals or letters) will probably write them out verbatim. I'd guess that such a language would also be rare by the Middle Ages, since any culture to adopt writing would probably also adopt the numeral system to go along with it.

Now with Voynichese, I could still imagine a scenario where for example the year "1222" is converted to "one two two two" if the system included instructions for numerals. "If you encounter the numeral 2, write 'dain' or 'daiin'", or something like that. In such a case, the encoding mechanism would automatically lead to a deconstruction of "twelve hundred twenty two" into "one two two two", even though people would normally not think of it that way.

I think there are reasons to believe that a subset of the repeating patterns may lead to finding the numbers through studying how Benford's law can be applied to the statistical occurrence of each of the words.
My guess for now is Prefix={k,ok,qok,t,ot,qot,q,oq,qoq} and suffix={dy,in,ey} may reveal numbers as well as genders

(01-03-2023, 12:24 AM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Like, when one needs to say "three drops", he usually writes "three drops", not "3 drops".

Both were common. Even on the same line:
[attachment=7217]
4 3 4
10 40 1
Hannover Ms IV, 339 f.79v

Can someone tell me what are the good reasons to believe that what was common at the time of writing gives actual clues to decode what is uncommon such as Voynichese? What are the necessary hypothesis that one needs to take into consideration to ease accepting such a point of view?