(09-09-2016, 11:04 PM)ThomasCoon Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(09-09-2016, 03:46 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(09-09-2016, 02:43 PM)ThomasCoon Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.1) If you are searching for a natural language for Voynichese and believe the VMS spaces are true, you are almost certainly limited to agglutinative and polysynthetic languages because of the "morphology" of Voynich words (see the <qot> forms). This eliminates most of the languages in Europe.

I see your point. This seems to be consistent with where some linguistic research about the ms is going.

Interesting, Marco; could you tell me which researchers think this?

(15-09-2016, 02:28 AM)ThomasCoon Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hey all, I've been trying to see if I could prove that spaces (as written) in the VMS are fake. I found some things which may indicate patterns across words, but I submit the images for your review:

<otchordy> split two different ways on the same page?


<otchordy> and <opchordy> in the text as 1, 2, or 3 words:

And then there is this beauty, where <kydaiin> repeats, but the combinations of <ch-ky> and <sh-ky> are also interesting:



Hope this might catch your interest!

• if spaces have been added (or removed), does that mean "unique" words are not necessarily unique?
  
• if spaces have been removed, does that mean the gallows characters might be pilcrows/capitula?
  
• if spaces have been added, does that mean the labels map more widely to the main text than currently appears?
  
• if spaces have been added/removed, do the changes in units that appear to behave like prefixes/suffixes have a different function?
  

• I created a color-coded concordance of every vord in the manuscript (this took months of dedicated effort and was only the beginning).
  
• I located the unique words, broke them into units and followed those units to see whether the components were found elsewhere with spaces. I also organized them so I could see if unique-word units were manipulated in some consistent way and whether their position relative to illustrations and other words changed significantly when they were deconstructed. In part, I was trying to determine whether spaces could be believed and, if not, whether they were arbitrary or contrived.
  
•  I then started working on word pairs and word triples to see if they behaved in the same way or yielded different patterns. This is a massive task but is necessary if the spaces are not always real.
  

• oPnccol appears as unique to the star section, but appears as nccol in a number of specific places. Similarly, Hñcoßal is unique to a plant page but ñcoßal and also ñco ßal are found elsewhere (sorry, I don't use EVA, I have my own system). Note that both are preceded by gallows characters. HñoIcoßg and Pncoßng also behave this way. They are at the beginning of paragraphs, and are unique words until you remove the gallows character. This adds data to the question of whether gallows might be pilcrows/capitula.
  
• Most unique words break down into two components that can function independently, but some break into three. Breaking them into two components does not mean those components are frequent (as one might expect if they were linguistic syllables).
  
• When a unique word does not break into atomic units that function independently, most of the time it's because a single character has been added at the end. Remove this and they usually map to another section. One has to ask if it's a null (or a modifier such as we might add "-s" to create plurals).
  
• When a unique vord is short, adding a prefix or suffix will usually relate it to vords elsewhere.
  
• Vords like PoxaRaR, which is always at the beginnings of paragraphs, break down into 1) a unit that is usually at the beginning of paragraphs and 2) one that has a limited distribution in related sections.
  
• Vords beginning with 4o tend to cluster in two specific kinds of pages.
  
• Vords that behave as suffixes will frequently appear after many of the same units with a space in between. In other words, if you have something like abcdefg and "fg" is a frequent suffix, then it's also common to find abcde fg with a space in between. This suggests that some spaces may be contrived but even if they are, it doesn't mean all units necessarily behave this way.
  
• Just as there's a high level of clustering of 4o words in certain sections, there is a strong clustering of oH words in the zodiac pages and where they lead depends on what follows the prefix. This, combined with similar examples, demonstrates that the text is not random and is not created with a grille to make it look less random. It is systematic and when you get to know the system well enough, you can predict where to find certain vords.
  
• The length of a vord does not always predict its frequency. You might think longer words would be less frequent, short words might be moreso (as in natural-language patterns of "a" "in" "of" "the" "is", etc.) but some short words are quite infrequent and there's a certain group of long words that are fairly frequent.
  
• The distribution of some of the vords suggests that some of the drawings might not be what they seem at first glance. They also suggest that there are connections between separate sections that make the entire manuscript a somewhat cohesive effort (rather than a bunch of separate pamphlets on different topics strung together). I haven't had time to check if all the sections behave this way, but I've checked many of them.
  
• Even though there is strong evidence of digraphs, many of the prefixes and suffixes are single characters.
  

• those that can only be found in one place (and which can usually be broken into independent units as noted above, which means they may not be unique), and
  
• those that map a page to the starred text (to one or multiple starred pages) and nowhere else. One way to interpret this is that the starred text may be summary information that ties together the preceding pages. I mean "summary" in the broad sense. If the plants were medicinal (for example) and the starred text were prescriptions, one would expect this kind of dynamic but there are other possibilities, as well.
  

Quote:Vords that behave as suffixes will frequently appear after many of the same units with a space in between. In other words, if you have something like abcdefg and "fg" is a frequent suffix, then it's also common to find abcde fg with a space in between. This suggests that some spaces may be contrived but even if they are, it doesn't mean all units necessarily behave this way.

Quote:Thomas, this is a significantly condensed version because there's no way to explain any of this with so few words and I had hoped to write up the long version , with charts, arrows, balloons, and everything else that's required to explain it properly (along with some of my ideas of what some of the vords mean), but there's a lot of interest in this now so there you go. I can't sit on it forever.

• Some words are combinations of syllables. A word like effervescent uses the same suffix as luminescent or incandescent. In this case, the suffix "-ent" turns a verb into another grammatical unit. The fact that "cent" is at the end of all of them, and can be a word on its own (denoting a penny), is a coincidence. Note also that the word "incandescent" includes "can", which is also a word on its own, but is not related to the "can" in "incandescent". Thus, patterns that appear to be atomic units might not be related.
  
• In contrast, some words are combinations of other words like "railroad" or "grandmother". These break down into two words that not only function on their own, but retain the same general meaning when they are on their own and breaking them down further wouldn't make it any clearer.
  

(15-09-2016, 06:38 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Thomas wrote: I find it highly interesting that you can predict where certain vords will be.

I didn't break out the wine bottle until I was able to predict twelve in a row. It got to the point where I could say, "This will go to the starred-text pages and nowhere else," or "This is a zodiac word," or "This page should have a word starting with __ somewhere in the middle of the second line," or "This will show up on the small-plant pages, probably the leaf section," etc.

It wasn't possible to do this until about 40% of the words had been mapped and, even then, only in a very limited way. After about 60% had been mapped, it was easier to see the patterns, and to appreciate how much work went into laying down the text. But, I still haven't broken out the champagne because I only have an inkling of what some of them mean. Finding them and predicting them is a big step, but it's not a translation.

Quote:In terms of philosophy... I did the same thing most people do when I first encountered the VMS. I tried applying different languages. I'm familiar enough with western languages and some of the Asian languages (Korean, Chinese, Japanese) to approach it this way and noticed that ancient Mediterranean languages, especially the Semitic ones, a few old eastern European languages, and Asian languages like Boa, fit the structure of the VMS better than most western European languages. But somewhere along the way I realized this might be an unproductive way to approach it. Not only have many tried, but there are thousands of languages (including extinct ones) and it could take forever to figure out which one it is, especially if the spaces (or some of them) are fake.

So I took a different road. I decided, why not just learn Voynichese? If it does turn out to be a natural language, it will become evident. If it's a constructed language, this will be evident also. The advantage of learning Voynichese, rather than cherry-picking languages and trying to impose them on the text, is that it encompasses both possibilities (and a few others) within the same methodology.