A family of grammars for Voynichese

A family of grammars for Voynichese - Printable Version

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RE: A family of grammars for Voynichese - Wladimir D - 27-02-2026

This is example 23

RE: A family of grammars for Voynichese - nablator - 27-02-2026

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RE: A family of grammars for Voynichese - Mauro - 27-02-2026

(27-02-2026, 06:53 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I won't go that far. For now, I only became convinced that many final ir (note, not just any final r) are scribal errors for iin (note that here r = in, not r = n). I believe that those errors are so common that replacing all final ir by iin will fix more errors than create new ones.

All the best, --stolfi

If this is true, I would expect the ratio of occurrences of a word written with final -iin vs. the occurrences of the same word but written with -ir to be more or less constant (this assumes a simple model in which the scribe randomly miswrites an -iin as -ir with some probability). Did you check that?

RE: A family of grammars for Voynichese - Jorge_Stolfi - 28-02-2026

(27-02-2026, 12:31 PM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.From my collection

Thanks! But are there any other occurrences of that weirdo?

All the best, --stolfi

RE: A family of grammars for Voynichese - Jorge_Stolfi - 28-02-2026

(27-02-2026, 11:11 PM)Mauro Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(27-02-2026, 06:53 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I only became convinced that many final ir (note, not just any final r) are scribal errors for iin
If this is true, I would expect the ratio of occurrences of a word written with final -iin vs. the occurrences of the same word but written with -ir to be more or less constant (this assumes a simple model in which the scribe randomly miswrites an -iin as -ir with some probability). Did you check that?

Here are the frequencies of the "coda" elements of my model, as of last week:

113.500000 0.00091 {n} 868.250000 0.00697 {m}
1665.500000 0.01336 {in} 40.000000 0.00032 {im}
3779.000000 0.03032 {iin} 15.000000 0.00012 {iim}
159.000000 0.00128 {iiin} 1.0 0.00001 {iiim}

487.750000 0.00391 {ir}
130.500000 0.00105 {iir}
1.0 0.00001 {iiir}

In the n series the most frequent is {iin}, whereas in the r series the most frequent is {ir}. The ratio {ir}:{iir} = ~3.7 matches neither {iin}:{iiin} = 23.6 nor {in}:{iin} = 0.44, but at least is greater than 1, like the former.

All the best, --stolfi

RE: A family of grammars for Voynichese - Mauro - 28-02-2026

(28-02-2026, 07:40 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(27-02-2026, 11:11 PM)Mauro Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(27-02-2026, 06:53 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I only became convinced that many final ir (note, not just any final r) are scribal errors for iin
If this is true, I would expect the ratio of occurrences of a word written with final -iin vs. the occurrences of the same word but written with -ir to be more or less constant (this assumes a simple model in which the scribe randomly miswrites an -iin as -ir with some probability). Did you check that?

Here are the frequencies of the "coda" elements of my model, as of last week:

113.500000 0.00091 {n} 868.250000 0.00697 {m}
1665.500000 0.01336 {in} 40.000000 0.00032 {im}
3779.000000 0.03032 {iin} 15.000000 0.00012 {iim}
159.000000 0.00128 {iiin} 1.0 0.00001 {iiim}

487.750000 0.00391 {ir}
130.500000 0.00105 {iir}
1.0 0.00001 {iiir}

In the n series the most frequent is {iin}, whereas in the r series the most frequent is {ir}. The ratio {ir}:{iir} = ~3.7 matches neither {iin}:{iiin} = 23.6 nor {in}:{iin} = 0.44, but at least is greater than 1, like the former.

All the best, --stolfi

Not exactly the kind of test I had in mind. I made a quick check (very quick, so excuse me if I made mistakes, and with the limit that it refers to the whole text of the VMS), with the occurrences of the 8 most frequent words which end in 'aiin' vs. the corresponding 'air' word.

daiin vs. dair = 834/109 = 7.65
aiin vs. air = 529/78 = 6.78
qokaiin vs. qokair = 259/21 = 12.33
okaiin vs. okair = 152/25 = 6.08
saiin vs. sair = 129/26 = 4.96
qotaiin vs. qotair = 83/5 = 16.6
kaiin vs. kair = 63/16 = 3.93

They look to me a bit too much spreaded out to support the hypothesis that 'iin' is randomly replaced by 'ir' with some probability (but I ran no statistical tests)

RE: A family of grammars for Voynichese - Jorge_Stolfi - 28-02-2026

(28-02-2026, 01:44 PM)Mauro Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I made a quick check (very quick, so excuse me if I made mistakes, and with the limit that it refers to the whole text of the VMS), with the occurrences of the 8 most frequent words which end in 'aiin' vs. the corresponding 'air' word.

daiin vs. dair = 834/109 = 7.65
aiin vs. air = 529/78 = 6.78
qokaiin vs. qokair = 259/21 = 12.33
okaiin vs. okair = 152/25 = 6.08
saiin vs. sair = 129/26 = 4.96
qotaiin vs. qotair = 83/5 = 16.6
kaiin vs. kair = 63/16 = 3.93

They look to me a bit too much spread out to support the hypothesis that 'iin' is randomly replaced by 'ir' with some probability (but I ran no statistical tests)

Thanks for running the test!

I notice that the two longer qo words have high values of the ratio R = "iin/ir", namely 12.3 and 16.6; whereas for the other shorter non-qo words the values of R range between 3.9 and 7.7.

The "ir = iin" theory could still be saved if those qo words happen to occur mostly at the start of lines or paragraphs, or after (invisible) sentence breaks. Then it may be that the Author's handwriting was neater right after those break points, but got sloppier after that.

Or perhaps both the "iin" and the "ir" versions of the "short" words above were valid, with the original ratio R0 = "iin/ir" being around 7; whereas only the "iin" versions of the qo words were valid. Then, if only ~8% of the words ending in "iin" got changed into "ir", indiscriminately, the resulting frequencies would be roughly as listed.

All the best, --stolfi

RE: A family of grammars for Voynichese - Grove - 01-03-2026

(31-12-2025, 05:55 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Including ii as a bench ("X") would allow words like iiky or iiody, which do not seem to occur. Thus I accept i, ii, and iii only as parts of the coda ("N") elements, which in the CMC model can occur only at the end of the word (apart from following "O", maybe).

Since ee as a bench can’t create words like eeky or eeody ,
I don’t see how treating ii like ee would result in words like iiky or iiody

RE: A family of grammars for Voynichese - Jorge_Stolfi - 02-03-2026

(01-03-2026, 06:15 PM)Grove Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(31-12-2025, 05:55 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Including ii as a bench ("X") would allow words like iiky or iiody, which do not seem to occur. Thus I accept i, ii, and iii only as parts of the coda ("N") elements, which in the CMC model can occur only at the end of the word (apart from following "O", maybe).
Since ee as a bench can’t create words like eeky or eeody ,
I don’t see how treating ii like ee would result in words like iiky or iiody

That is a flaw of my model: it allows any bench at the start of a word, including ee. So it does allow eeky and eeody; even though no words start with ee. On that point, indeed, ii is like ee.

I think it is possible that ee is just a sloppy variant of Ch, with omitted ligature. And the Scribe or Author generally avoided being sloppy at the start of a word.

But I felt it was necessary to include ee as a bench to account for words like deedy and keeeody which do occur more than 1000 times.

On the other hand, there seem to be less than 70 tokens with ii in those places (not followed by [imnr]). So I prefer to think that those cases of "internal ii" are errors by the Scribe or Author, and should have been ee.

All the best, --stolfi