The Voynich Ninja

(07-09-2016, 10:13 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Quote:Do I have that wrong?

Seems so. There definitely are herbal B folios there. A quick look at Rene's site shows that e.g. 26r and 26v are in B. Rene provides a note for each folio whether it is A or B.

Quite correct, apologies ... I was mis-remembering. I took my categories from Rene's site, back in the day. For Language/Hands I have:

So I could use Herbal A1 and Herbal B2 to compare, which would be better. I'll re-run the code and see what comes up.

And btw it will be interesting to see whether the results will be the same as for the "Herbal A" vs "Recipe B" comparison or not.

(It occurs to me that when performing the "Herbal A" vs "Recipe B" comparison you might have included B folios into the Herbal A set - so please check that).

Reference this table:

"Here's what you get if you compare the Herbal folios in Language A (1 through 56) with the Recipe folios in Language B (103 through 116):


(The table shows the top ten words in the combined folios, then broken out into the Language A and Language B folios.)"


I have problems with the above table. I do not understand where the frequency numbers for 4ohii9 come from in the first or third columns. I cannot find any occurrence of the word listed in Professor Stolfi's Concordance. I do not ever remember seeing it in the Voynich Manuscript, but have only transcribed up to about folio 99r so far, so I may not have come to it in the last section yet.

I thought the cause might be misprints (for 4ohcc9), but then noticed the glyph words - which shot that idea down.

Is this a made-up word with made-up numbers? Is someone trying to see if we're on our toes?

How good are the other statistics?

Has anyone actually counted the numbers of times each word occurs? Or even looked to see what the words are?

It would seem hard to get reliable information from the table, in my opinion.

What's going on?

Just wondering.

Thank you.

Don of Tallahassee

In my proposed solution the difference between A and B languages might be explained as the use of EVA=d near the right end of a VMS word to signify the quantity one (1). At some point it was gradually dropped as being 'understood' when a Group VI measurement type code was present (minim, grain, scruple, dram, ounce, wineglassful) which led to the shorter spellings of the VMS words. (Conversely, it may have been added if its absence in the beginning created problems - I don't know which came first.)

The author of the VMS seems to always have used the shortest possible spelling of any VMS word that got the info across to the reader. That may have been why the use of EVA=d was dropped (or possibly added).

That's all I think the difference between the two consists of, just a written/understood quantity of one (1).

It is a pretty easy to understand answer to a perceived semi-major problem, though.

Thank you.

Don of Tallahassee

(08-09-2016, 03:56 AM)don of tallahassee Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Reference this table:

"Here's what you get if you compare the Herbal folios in Language A (1 through 56) with the Recipe folios in Language B (103 through 116):


(The table shows the top ten words in the combined folios, then broken out into the Language A and Language B folios.)"


I have problems with the above table. I do not understand where the frequency numbers for 4ohii9 come from in the first or third columns. I cannot find any occurrence of the word listed in Professor Stolfi's Concordance. I do not ever remember seeing it in the Voynich Manuscript, but have only transcribed up to about folio 99r so far, so I may not have come to it in the last section yet.

I thought the cause might be misprints (for 4ohcc9), but then noticed the glyph words - which shot that idea down.

Is this a made-up word with made-up numbers? Is someone trying to see if we're on our toes?

How good are the other statistics?

Has anyone actually counted the numbers of times each word occurs? Or even looked to see what the words are?

It would seem hard to get reliable information from the table, in my opinion.

What's going on?

Just wondering.

Thank you.

Don of Tallahassee

Hi Don,

The confusion probably arises from my use of Glen Caston's Voyn_101 transcription, with some minor tweaks. In particular, for example, I change his "C" to "ii" (as I don't believe his C is anything other than ii). So my 4ohii9 is 4ohC9 in GC's original transcription. (What 4ohC9 is in EVA, I don't know.)

Added later: this is doubly confusing, because in the table, taken from my original post, I incorrectly had C replaced by ii whereas (as Tony Gaffney pointed out there) it should be replaced by cc! Summary: my 4ohii9 should be 4ohcc9 in the table, and is equivalent to 4ohC9 in GC's transcription.

Despite that detail, the point of the table is to show the general stroke forms of the glyphs in the top most frequent words in the Herbal A and Recipe B sections.

Thanks for your interest and questions.

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(08-09-2016, 05:02 AM)don of tallahassee Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In my proposed solution the difference between A and B languages might be explained as the use of EVA=d near the right end of a VMS word to signify the quantity one (1). At some point it was gradually dropped as being 'understood' when a Group VI measurement type code was present (minim, grain, scruple, dram, ounce, wineglassful) which led to the shorter spellings of the VMS words. (Conversely, it may have been added if its absence in the beginning created problems - I don't know which came first.)

The author of the VMS seems to always have used the shortest possible spelling of any VMS word that got the info across to the reader. That may have been why the use of EVA=d was dropped (or possibly added).

That's all I think the difference between the two consists of, just a written/understood quantity of one (1).

It is a pretty easy to understand answer to a perceived semi-major problem, though.

Thank you.

Don of Tallahassee

My impression is that the Language B words seem to be longer (more glyphs) than the Language A words, which is the other way around from your conjecture, isn't it, if one assumes the Language A was developed prior to Language B?

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(07-09-2016, 10:53 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.And btw it will be interesting to see whether the results will be the same as for the "Herbal A" vs "Recipe B" comparison or not.

(It occurs to me that when performing the "Herbal A" vs "Recipe B" comparison you might have included B folios into the Herbal A set - so please check that).

The results are similar, with an interesting feature: I'll try to format them nicely and post them soon.

(I checked the folios compared in the first exercise were indeed folios 1 through 25 for Herbal A, and 107 through 116 for Recipes B.)

Here is a file about A/B words and pages. I don't know if anyone will find it handy.

I think I have a few others - will send when I find them.

Thank you.

Don of Tallahassee

To anyone interested in this topic, note that the indication of A vs. B pages, as reported on my web site, is according to Currier's paper (bar any mistakes). One could argue with his classification and come up with a different split, and people have done this in the past.

Julian,
(Please be gentle: I'm not a codicologist or linguist) but.. do you think it possible that the initial "8" might represent something which was a non-sound to non-natives.

Like the initial glottal stop in Arabic and Hebrew, or the BM+vowel in some African languages. Might a different attitude to how vocalisation should be represented in script explain some of these differences?.

Here are some more.

Thank you.

Don of Tallahassee

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And these.

Thank you

Don of Tallahassee

The files were all sent me by a mysterious person known by an alias and as G.C., who is now deceased. Rene can probably fill in the history of his involvement with the VMS. I think all of the files are of his authorship.

I hope someone can get some use out of them. They represent a lot of work by him (or whomever).

Thank you.

Don of Tallahassee