Hi Julian, I haven't been doing any research lately but your post made me want to comment and speak up for my own hypothesis regarding [daiin] and [aiin].
I believe that your key observation is right: these are the same word. However, I think the reasoning is more complex than a simple difference between A and B languages. Both [aiin] and [daiin] occur in both languages and the split between them is not so clear based on this difference.
However, when we look at the beginning of sentences I feel that we find our best clue: [aiin] doesn't occur at the beginning of sentences, even in Currier B, but [daiin] does. The same pattern can be seen for words beginning with [d] and [a] as a whole: [d] is common at the beginning of lines, whereas [a] is almost absent. I believe that the environment at the beginning of a sentence can condition a change in the beginning of a word, and this is true for more characters than simply [d] and [a].
The cause is more difficult to pin down. I think it is phonetic, specifically to do with the interaction between preceding words (think of 'a box' and 'an apple' where the vowel at the beginning of the second word causes a change). I tried to work out a set of interlocking changes but could never square the circle, and now I've little time for research.
I would be happy to clarify any of my thoughts if you're interested, though I've put down some partial explanations on my blog.
(08-09-2016, 09:15 AM)don of tallahassee Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.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
That would presumably be Glen Caston. Quite a guy, by all accounts.
(08-09-2016, 05:47 PM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hi Julian, I haven't been doing any research lately but your post made me want to comment and speak up for my own hypothesis regarding [daiin] and [aiin].
I believe that your key observation is right: these are the same word. However, I think the reasoning is more complex than a simple difference between A and B languages. Both [aiin] and [daiin] occur in both languages and the split between them is not so clear based on this difference.
However, when we look at the beginning of sentences I feel that we find our best clue: [aiin] doesn't occur at the beginning of sentences, even in Currier B, but [daiin] does. The same pattern can be seen for words beginning with [d] and [a] as a whole: [d] is common at the beginning of lines, whereas [a] is almost absent. I believe that the environment at the beginning of a sentence can condition a change in the beginning of a word, and this is true for more characters than simply [d] and [a].
The cause is more difficult to pin down. I think it is phonetic, specifically to do with the interaction between preceding words (think of 'a box' and 'an apple' where the vowel at the beginning of the second word causes a change). I tried to work out a set of interlocking changes but could never square the circle, and now I've little time for research.
I would be happy to clarify any of my thoughts if you're interested, though I've put down some partial explanations on my blog.
Hi Emma,
Thanks for this comment pointing out the complexity evidenced by the word spelling differences due to their line position. It's one of the features that must be a big clue as to how the system works. (That, and the repeated glyph sequences.) However, in the case of "am" and "8am" the influence of line position may be minimal, as these words do not tend to appear at the beginnings or ends of lines, right?
I think I need to start using the EVA transcription, as the Voyn_101 by GC is clearly not normal currency
I started with Voyn_101 back in the day, and have used it ever since, but few are familiar with it.
(08-09-2016, 07:06 AM)Diane Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.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?.
Sounds very plausible to me, but I'm not a linguist or a codicologist (what is that?!) either, so YMMV.
(08-09-2016, 05:48 PM)julian Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hi Emma,
Thanks for this comment pointing out the complexity evidenced by the word spelling differences due to their line position. It's one of the features that must be a big clue as to how the system works. (That, and the repeated glyph sequences.) However, in the case of "am" and "8am" the influence of line position may be minimal, as these words do not tend to appear at the beginnings or ends of lines, right?
[aiin] doesn't appear
at all at the beginning of lines, and absence is as good as presence!
Run some counts for word pairs with similar beginning characters. The version beginning [a] should be more heavily occurring in B language pages, and seldom or never at the beginning of lines. The version beginning [da] should be more evenly spread across A and B languages, and have a stronger occurrence at the beginning of lines. I believe that some process is adding [d] to the beginning of words beginning [a] when they occur at the start of lines.
Of course, that doesn't immediately explain when words beginning [da] do occur elsewhere in the text, but: 1) words beginning [da] at the start of B language lines are a noticeable phenomenon, and 2) a similar change may be conditioned by other factors in the text. Marco Ponzi once worked me up some statistics which show a weak, but plausible, connection between certain characters at the end of words and other characters at the beginning.
Hi Emma, I hope you'll find some time again for Voynich related activities - I enjoyed your posts, even though you became inactive around the time I started. That better be a coincidence!
Your observation about the absence of [daiin] at the start of lines seems very interesting. Just one of the many signs that there is structure and meaning in these glyphs.
But why the start of lines, though? Could the [d] double as a capital for another glyph?
[aiin] is absent at the start of lines, as are almost all words beginning with [a]. My hypothesis is that initial [a] in this position becomes either [da] or another combination.
My best guess as to why--and the overarching theory--is that words are phonetically altered depending on their environment. The start of a line is one such environment, and it makes words beginning with [a] untenable in that position.
There are good reasons to suspect that the truth isn't quite so simple, but I hope that others see it as a valid line of enquiry.
Yes, I find it extremely interesting and almost certainly relevant to understanding Voynichese.
Is a possibility that [a] is a vowel marker which itself depends in the value of the preceding sound, and hence is not used in the beginning of a piece of text?
(08-09-2016, 08:06 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Yes, I find it extremely interesting and almost certainly relevant to understanding Voynichese.
Is a possibility that [a] is a vowel marker which itself depends in the value of the preceding sound, and hence is not used in the beginning of a piece of text?
I believe it is highly likely that [a] is a vowel, yes*. Though I would lean more toward there being an issue with articulation which causes the introduction of the additional [d]. So, maybe, if the word before ends in a vowel too, then [d] is inserted to ease pronunciation (this happens in English!). The same may go when a word beginning with [a] occurs immediately after a pause, which is plausibly the phonetic environment at the start of a line.
However, I also believe that [o] is a vowel and [d] is not added in a similar way. I cannot pretend that my hypothesis is flawless.
*I've written more about this on my blog, and there's too much to say here.
Ohh right, you mean like British people would say "my idea-r is that...".
And word-initially it would be something like Spanish speakers put an "e" when a word starts with "sp" or sn" or... They will even say "Espiderman" or "Esnoopy".
I cannot think of a language where this happens with an initial vowel though, but I guess it must exist.
(08-09-2016, 08:44 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Ohh right, you mean like British people would say "my idea-r is that...".
And word-initially it would be something like Spanish speakers put an "e" when a word starts with "sp" or sn" or... They will even say "Espiderman" or "Esnoopy".
I cannot think of a language where this happens with an initial vowel though, but I guess it must exist.
The first example is exactly the kind of thing I am proposing, simply on a bigger scale. It does, in fact, happen in many (most? all?) languages to some extent but is often not expressed in writing. Some languages, however, do include it as part of their orthography.
The Voynich text may be a case where a very newly (and sparsely) written language has no set boundaries about what phonetic features are encoded. It could well be that some of the differences between A and B languages are simply the result of different orthographies, or a process of refinement in an emerging orthography over the period of production.
For example, if you were an English speaker from England you would say both, "my idea that" and "my idear is that". Phonetically you might see them as two forms of the same word depending on a following vowel (so idea/idear is equivalent to a/an) and write them out clearly. But you could also consider them as obvious variants depending on the phonetic context and simply write "idea" in all cases. For a native English speaker, "a apple" is perfectly easy to read because we know instinctively to pronounce the word "a" as "an" in this context.
On the topic of cribs, René pointed out ( on cipher mysteries if I remember correctly) one page where voynich A and B meet. I can't seem to find the post nor can I recall which folio. Maybe René can elaborate on this. Furthermore, as I recall, Pelling, among others, argues that there isn't a digital step between Voynich A and B but more of a gradual change from one to the other. This might be worth taking into consideration when working on this topic.