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| Arabic as precursor language |
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Posted by: dfs346 - 16-03-2024, 10:38 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (3)
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Further to my recent post in another thread, on Arabic as a possible precursor language of the Voynich manuscript, I tested a range of alternative transliterations of the Voynich text, all based on Glen Claston's v101 but differing from v101 in one or more respects. I numbered these transliterations v101④ through v202. (The ④ signifies that in all the transliterations, I treated the v101 glyph pair {4o} as a single glyph, to which I assigned the Unicode symbol ④.)
For comparison of the Voynich text with the Arabic language, I used Arabic letter frequencies derived from the works of Ibn Kathir (1300-1373)
In order to test my Voynich transliterations, I started by calculating the statistical correlations between the glyph frequencies and the Arabic letter frequencies. However, with two short descending sequences such as ibn Kathir's Arabic alphabet (which has 43 letters), and the 43 most frequent glyphs in the v101 transliteration (which account for 98.6 percent of the text), it is relatively easy to obtain correlations well in excess of 90 percent. Substantial differences between transliterations (for example combining the {2} group of glyphs) result in quite small changes in the frequency correlations.
I therefore adopted an alternative metric, namely the average frequency difference. Mathematically, this is the average of the absolute differences between the frequency of a precursor letter and the frequency of the equally ranked Voynich glyph. My idea was that the lowest average frequency difference should represent the best fit between a transliteration and a presumed precursor language
On this metric, I found that the transliteration which I had numbered v171 was the best fit for ibn Kathir's Arabic alphabet. Apart from the treatment of {4o}, the v171 transliteration has the following differences from v101:
Below is a juxtaposition of the frequencies of the top 43 glyphs in the v171 transliteration, and the 43 Arabic letter frequencies. The average frequency difference between v171 and Ibn Kathir's Arabic is 0.64 percent.
The next step is to explore the potential of these juxtapositions as correspondences or mappings. For example, the Voynich {o} could map to and from the Arabic ا (alef). Thereby, we could map some of the most common Voynich "words", such as {8am}, {oe} and {1oe}, to text strings in Arabic. We could then search appropriate corpora of the Arabic language, for example ibn Kathir's The Beginning and the End, to determine whether these strings are real words.
Since Arabic uses an abjad script, in which the short vowels are not written, chances are that most of the Voynich "words" up to three glyphs will map to real words in Arabic. However, as with Persian, the mapping may well break down with "words" of four glyphs or longer. Even if we are able construct real words of four letters or more, when arranged in sequence they may or may not make sense. I will do some tests. More later.
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| Syllabic Hypothesis |
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Posted by: pfeaster - 16-03-2024, 04:28 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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I've been continuing to play around with the idea that some of the strange properties of Voynichese could be explained in terms of the workings of a syllabic encoding scheme. I decided to try writing up my latest version of this "syllabic hypothesis," not proposing any specific solution (I don't have one), but just outlining the general kind of mechanism I can imagine having been in play. So here goes, with no claim that it's anything more than the usual stab in the dark:
A “vord” ordinarily corresponds to a syllable, and breaks between “vords” correspond to boundaries between syllables. These breaks can help the reader parse the text into pronounceable chunks, but otherwise they’re redundant and expendable. We can draw an analogy with numbers represented with Arabic numerals, insofar as “21734” and “21,734” (or “21.734”) mean the same thing.
Breaks are most practically useful in running “paragraphic” text, where many syllables appear consecutively, for the same reason that punctuation is more useful in longer Arabic numerals: “1934” or “21734” are easy to read without punctuation, but “3478923478923” isn’t. On the other hand, it’s less crucial to introduce breaks into shorter “labels,” which tend therefore to have their syllables less carefully separated and to yield longer “vords” on average.
A “vord” can represent a syllable as V, CV, VC, or CVC, where C can be a consonant cluster and V can be a diphthong. Most multisyllabic plaintext words can accordingly be divided into syllables in multiple ways. Moreover, a single syllabic “vord” can span two plaintext words, or even three (for example, if just a plan were encoded as [jus] [tap] [lan]). To avoid confusion, breaks between plaintext words can be marked explicitly within a syllabic “vord,” for example as [t·a·p], but this practice is optional and inconsistent, just as it was in other writings of the fifteenth century. The mechanism for encoding [·] could also overlap with a mechanism for showing emphasis, comparable to the use of majuscules.
A single plaintext word is never allowed to extend across a line break, which has implications for the forms of syllabic "vords" we'll find at the beginnings and ends of lines.
Some plaintext words end in such a way that their final syllables will almost always end up shared in a single "vord" with the beginning of the following word in running text. It’s only when one of these words appears at the end of a line that we’ll encounter a "vord" that represents this type of word-ending syllable in isolation.
Similarly, some plaintext words begin in such a way that their opening syllables will almost always end up shared in a single "vord" with the end of the preceding word in running text. It’s only when one of these words appears at the beginning of a line that we’ll encounter a "vord" that represents this type of word-opening syllable in isolation.
Consonant clusters that occur only at the intersections between words in running text will never be found at the beginnings of lines. Take for example a mechanism for encoding double letters, as in est tua = [es] [t·tu] [a]. Syllables of the form [t·tu] can appear within lines but never line-initially.
A “vord” can represent a syllable of the form V, CV, VC, or CVC, but the mapping of characters to phonemes within it isn’t necessarily straightforward. An empty slot might be marked, e.g., [0V0], [CV0], [0VC], to help with parsing. Different glyphs might be used to encode the same consonant initially as CV and terminally as VC. There might be some consonants or consonant clusters that can only be encoded as CV or VC – for instance, maybe [x] can only be encoded as such at the end of a syllable. And encoding might be verbose in any number of unintuitive ways, leading a "vord" that represents a single syllable to look superficially multisyllabic.
When a plaintext word is broken into syllables for encoding, there may be a loose tendency for successive syllables to display the same structure, e.g., e civitatis = [e] [ci] [vi] [ta] [tis], consistently favoring CV, or [e·c] [iv] [it] [at] [is], consistently favoring VC. Combined with the marking of empty slots, this would result in a strong tendency towards repetition of similar-looking forms, e.g., [0e0] [ci0] [vi0] [ta0] [tis] or [0e·c] [0iv] [0it] [0at] [0is].
But in some cases, it's legitimately ambiguous what "counts" as a syllable. For example, is ia one syllable or two? This type of situation may have been handled inconsistently or in a deliberately ambiguous way, and could partially scramble some of the foregoing pattern.
Even if a given plaintext word is unlikely to be written twice in exactly the same way, plaintext words are made up of consistent syllables, such that if the same plaintext word recurs repeatedly in a passage, a “vord” that can be used to represent one of its syllables is likely to recur there as well—as are similar-looking “vords” that represent its combination with adjacent parts of the same word or with other adjacent plaintext words.
A writer might have favored some particular syllable structure, such as CV, when starting a line, and only switched to a different syllable structure, such as VC, when forced by an uncooperative word to do so, but then stuck with it, leading the dispreferred form to favor the latter part of lines, only slightly but consistently.
A syllabic “vord” will tend to be followed preferentially by syllabic “vords” that start in phonetically compatible ways. Thus, a syllabic “vord” ending in [m] is more likely to be followed by another syllabic “vord” beginning with [b] than by one beginning with [d] or [g] if mb occurs more often within plaintext words than md or mg. (To be clear, I'm using plaintext Latin characters to represent themselves here, and not EVA!)
Over time, a system like this would probably have been called upon to handle unanticipated situations. For example, it may at first have made no provision for encoding consonants without vowels, since that violates its basic syllabic logic. But then maybe a need arose to encode Roman numerals or unusually complex consonant clusters—or maybe the original approach to encoding consonant clusters just turned out to be too clunky. The problem could have been solved by permitting the vowel slot to be marked as empty [0] – which would have required introducing some new and distinctive glyph or glyph combination to serve this purpose, and would incidentally also have offered a lot of new options for encoding consonant clusters. The result might have ended up looking like a different “language” entirely. In the absence of any content, encoding could then also have defaulted to [000] [000] [000] if needed purely to fill space.
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| Broken Sword 3 |
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Posted by: Lissu - 16-03-2024, 12:14 AM - Forum: Fiction, Comics, Films & Videos, Games & other Media
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Voynich Manuscript is also mentioned in the 2003 adventure video game Broken Sword 3!
I have played this game through a couple of times. In this story the manuscript is about ley lines.
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The manuscript is mentioned slightly after 11 minutes in the video I linked!
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| Ambiguous Spaces |
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Posted by: Emma May Smith - 12-03-2024, 11:18 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (28)
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I'm currently putting together some new research and wonder what the general consensus was around ambiguous spaces in the transcription.
Ambiguous spaces are honestly highlighted in the transcription but I'm unsure exactly how they should be processed. Short of examining each one individual and making my own judgement, I'm faced with one of three solutions:
- Treat all as real spaces.
- Treat none as real spaces.
- Treat them according to the glyphs/words either side.
Option 1 and 2 are easy and quick. Three is a little more time-consuming but still possible, but I don't know whether it will bring me any real benefits.
A fourth option might be to run all the analysis twice with options 1 and 2, but that would still leave me with the question which set of results is correct. I would then face the risk of choosing the results which looked best even though the choice regarding spaces was not optimal.
Any thoughts would be welcome.
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Image processing, highlighting hidden details |
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Posted by: ReneZ - 11-03-2024, 11:45 AM - Forum: Imagery
- Replies (34)
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Following are some processed images of the Voynich MS that did not involve photoshop.
They also do not try to simulate the effect of wetting and rubbing the pages. In fact, I am unsure in several cases what it is that they are showing.
They are intended to be false-colour images of the parchment.
They were made using the following procedure.
Largely speaking, in colour scale terms, the parchment has a certain hue, with a varying lightness.
One can establish the R-G-B coordinates of the lightest parchment, and set up a new colour coordinates system with one axis pointing from (0,0,0) to this point and the other two axes perpendicular to this axis.
One can then compute the distance of each pixel from the 'parchment axis' as the root-sum-square of these two perpendicular components.
That distance is then colour-coded. If it is zero, we render it black, and increasing values become increasingly colourful. If it is above a certain limit, we assume that we are no longer looking at parchment, and we use grey for the colour code.
I will show links to the images of the biological section in the next post.
In some cases we can see parts of the other side of the page (just like we can see in the normal scans).
In some cases, we can see things that are on the opposing page.
Also, we can see shading from the illumination and blemishes and folds in the parchment.
Then, in some cases there seem to be things that cannot be easily explained by any of the above.
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| The Light of God Powers the Universe |
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Posted by: pjburkshire - 10-03-2024, 04:08 AM - Forum: Imagery
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I reviewed the herculeaf posts about the Rosettes page. I do not agree that all nine circles represent one city. I think the center circle is the Empyrean where God resides. In Christian religious cosmologies, the Empyrean is "the source of light" so I think that nozzle-looking thing at the bottom with the chevrons coming out is God's light pouring out. There is also a place at the top with small circles pouring out and a nozzle to the left with line segments pouring out. There is also a place on the right with something pouring out but it is lost in the fold damage.
I think all of this imagery of something pouring out from the center circle is God's power pouring out and powering the universe. I think the circles that God's power is pouring into are the classical elements; earth, water, air, fire. I think air is the top, earth the bottom, fire the left, and water the right. The elements are the building blocks of the universe.
I don't see the city as intended to descended from Heaven to Earth. I see it as something that is expected to exist beyond the clouds/ether/aether when people get to Heaven after death. It probably doesn't matter if you call this Heavenly city the Empyrean or New Jerusalem or any other name, I think we are talking about the same basic idea of the residence of God in the Heavens.
I agree with this comment about the upper-right circle: "a sign of the ruling class and its wealth." I would continue with this idea that the opposite circle in the lower-left represents the clergy and the circle in the lower-right represents the common people; merchants and farmers. Maybe it's just me but I think that green rectangle with the squiggly lines looks like a garden or a field. I don't know about the blue X. Maybe that is a crossroad to represent traveling merchants.
I haven't given up on the idea of the small T-O Map in the upper-right as representing the world of the nobles of the larger circle. In life, the nobles rule the physical world on Earth.
I haven't given up on the idea of the clock/compass-looking thing in the lower-left as representing the Holy Trinity and relating to the larger circle representing the clergy who are the Earthly spiritual guides in life. I think maybe that cloud-looking thing with the trumpet-looking thing that is between the lower-left circle and the center circle may be an illustration that the clergy are the ones who hear the voice of God the loudest.
Maybe all those pipes are both for the voice of God from Heaven to Earth and as representing the prayers from people on Earth to God in Heaven.
I took the two suns in opposite corners to mean that the page was to be rotated and viewed from different positions.
This is just a wild guess but maybe the upper-left circle is the gateway between Earth and Heaven. Maybe it is the Aether, the fifth classical element. Maybe those pipes coming from that upper-left circle towards the center circle represent the prayers from people on Earth to God in Heaven. If someone asked me to draw a picture representing God in Heaven hearing the prayers of people on Earth, I'm not sure what I would draw.
I don't see the story as an end-of-the-world story. I see the story as the personal journey of each soul (I still think all those stars on the Zodiac pages are souls, not stars up in the sky) from pre-birth, to Ensoulment ( You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ) following conception and pregnancy, to life (f85r2), to death (f86v4) and Judgment (f86v3), and then to Heaven (Ros).
I think the story of how each pre-birth soul is selected to be born on Earth is told in the Zodiac pages of Quire 9, Quire 10, Quire 11, and Quire 12.
I don't have a clue what that thing is coming out of the upper-right circle towards the center or what that thing is coming out of the lower-right circle towards the center.
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