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| qo- vord formation |
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Posted by: ThomasCoon - 19-04-2020, 12:07 AM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (27)
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Hello all, long time no see! I've been looking at qo- vords and would like to hypothesize a paradigm to form them:
[q] + [o/a/y] + [k/t/p/f] + [ch/che/chee/Sh/ee/etc.] + [o/a/y] + [r/l] + [d/s] + [o/a/y] + [n/in/iin/iiin/m/im/etc.]
In this paradigm, a group may be present or not (e.g. qotchol vs. qotcho). My theory is that presence or absence of certain characters may be input for a corresponding decoding table.
I am assuming that all the gallows characters are functionally equivalent, following Mary D'imperio (1978 pgs. 24-25) and also Marco Ponzi who put them into the same Character class You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., but I also assume this about the (usually) interchangeable ch/Sh/ee group.
Here are some examples:
qotchoiin
qotcham
qopchor
qokShol
qotchol
qoteeol
qokcheo
qokShy
qokchy
qotchy
qoteeey
qokeey
qokey
qoky
qoty
qokeeo
qotcho
qodaiin
qosaiin
qotaiin
qokaiin
What are your thoughts?
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| Top 10 - Manuscripts, Archives or Documents to Digitize |
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Posted by: Mark Knowles - 17-04-2020, 07:42 PM - Forum: Voynich Talk
- Replies (12)
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Given the recent post about the Archive of the Dukes of Burgundy being digitised I am curious as to people's opinions as to which digitisation projects are most likely to advance Voynich research. I leave this a fairly open question as to whether there are specific manuscripts or specific archives(the Vatican Archive would obviously be a very big ask) that people think would make a real difference. I also am curious if we can speculate about time scales for these documents to be digitised 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, 100+ years. Also do we think that finding the right document(s) will be the key to understanding the Voynich.(If Nick Pelling's block-paradigm really exists then that could constitute such a document)
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| Thinking about anomalous gallows... |
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Posted by: LisaFaginDavis - 13-04-2020, 10:04 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (43)
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Hi, everyone,
I'm currently working on an essay about the writing system in general, and it's got me thinking some of those fancy anomalous gallows. Has anyone considered that some of these may actually be ligatures of two different gallows? I know it's exceedingly rare to see two gallows in a row, but it's not impossible. The examples below are all top-line of a paragraph, so it makes sense that they would get the fancy top-line treatment, whereas the few other examples of two-gallows-in-a-row are not top line.
For example, this one on 87v:
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Perhaps actually [pf]?
And this one on 101r1:
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Perhaps actually [fp]?
And this one on 86v6:
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Perhaps actually [ctfh]?
I'm also finding myself quite enchanted by the way the crossbar of a top-line [t] ([k] as well, I assume) can form a bridge from one occurrence to another nearby. Scribe 1 in particular seems quite fond of this (here's a nice example on 8r):
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And my absolute favorite on 100r. So creative and efficient!
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I also love this one on 90r which seems to be both a ligature AND a bridge:
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Maybe something like [ctphdacthy]? Could be a [k] instead of a [t] each time, I suppose, depending on how you interpret that lower left loop.
I thought there might be a thread on this already, but I couldn't find one...
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| Human generated nonsense text |
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Posted by: Mark Knowles - 11-04-2020, 11:23 PM - Forum: Voynich Talk
- Replies (9)
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I am sure if I have mentioned this before, but I wonder what kind of nonsense or meaningless text a human would be inclined to produce if that was their intention. I think that producing "random" or "randomish" text quickly is too computationally intensive for the human brain, our mind just don't seem to be designed to do such things easily, though of course for a computer this is trivial.(Just in the way that multiplying 2 large numbers together is hard for most people and trivial for a computer.)
It seems to me that a human trying to produce "random" or "randomish" will in fact produce text with a clear structure of pattern to it. Now this is, I suppose, an empirical statement. I suppose in principle one could asks 20 volunteers to produce 2 pages of random text using a sample of invented symbols that they were given to use and then see what the results look like. It would be interesting to see what commonality there are between the different nonsense texts that the different volunteers produced. I suppose for it to be a proper test the volunteers would have to be given some kind of time constraint to produce the 2 pages. They would also have to be forbidden from using any tools such as dice or coins in order to generate the random text. Maybe also all working would have to be done in their head i.e. with a pad to do working on.
I ask this as I hypothese that the volunteer might produce text broadly speaking structured in the kind of way the more repetitive examples of Voynich text is. Phenomena like "copying" or repeating "randomish" sections might be done in order to increase speed of text product. I wonder also if having words structured in essentially to same way, but with 1 or 2 letter differences might be a natural thing to produce.
This question interests me as I have mentioned that I think the Voynich contains a mixture of real text and nonsense. I doubt the nonsense text was generated by any mechanical means such as a cardan grille or anything else, but was just human generated.
Now I don't have 20 volunteers, so this is more of a thought experiment than a proper experiment.
I know discussion has been made of algorithms to generate Voynichese like text. I am not sure of the scope in this context for algorithms to simulate human generated text, just because simulating human behaviour is difficult and complex.(though some human behaviour is easy to model.)
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| 1665/66 Marci Discussion: Locked? |
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Posted by: proto57 - 09-04-2020, 02:31 PM - Forum: Provenance & history
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Hi David Jackson: If you remember, back when you started this forum, my worry was that the purpose would be to limit discussion, by censorship, to only those topics that you chose... as opposed to the open and free discussions found elsewhere, such as on my voynich.net mailing list.
You strongly objected, and told me that there would be no censorship, and that your readers would be allowed to express all opinions and viewpoints, as long as no one was being rude, or threatening, or whatever.
But now you cut off the discussion on the thread I started? You wrote,
"OK, without being rude, ReneZ here develops theories based upon the physical evidence he has seen and handled.
Everything else in this thread is a hypothesis that is based the posters opinion of third party evidence.
Let's stick to concrete evidence people, instead of building castles in the air.
Thread locked before it become contentious."
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If by "contentious" you mean negative or nasty in any way, it is clear this didn't happen, and was not happening. But if by "contentious" you mean further disagreement, then of course... that is what free discussion is about. I came back to the thread to continue that discussion, and was very surprised to see it locked. I hope you will reconsider, and unlock that thread, and place the below responses from me an others over there, if you choose... or let the discussion continue, here.
Ironically, I only the other day suggested to the writers of a new book on the Voynich, that your ninja forum link be added to that book, so that people could come here and see the free discussion that you promised, and convinced me was the case. Was that a mistake?
Rich.
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| Codicology |
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Posted by: -JKP- - 08-04-2020, 07:42 AM - Forum: Physical material
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I usually avoid Pinterest (I prefer to go to original sites) and generally screen it out of my Web searches, but one of my searches included a hit on the Schoyen Collection (which always catches my eye) and that led me to this Pinterest page. For those interested in codicology and the VMS provenance, it has many interesting examples of medieval binding, including some that are limp vellum (like the VMS).
I've done some bookbinding. I have an antique book press and stitching frame. I haven't done a lot of it and it's a craft that takes years to master, but being a bibliophile, I wanted to learn something about it because it gives you a better appreciation for what you are seeing (or holding, if you are handling an antique book) and for how it was constructed, so I very much enjoyed this collection of images:
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| [split] About knowing the history of Voynich research |
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Posted by: Koen G - 07-04-2020, 11:30 AM - Forum: Voynich Talk
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[EDIT: this post started a tangent in the previous thread about being able to discern where old ideas are coming from etc, I thought I'd better split it into its own thread]
Marco's image reminds me of Brian Cham's curve-line system. I'm not entirely on board with his system per se, but the underlying observations are valuable.
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