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+--- Thread: The gibberish thread (/thread-2277.html)
RE: The gibberish thread - Koen G - 05-02-2018
(05-02-2018, 09:12 PM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.At least you can say something about the linguistic typology of this language and about some basic grammar rules. With this features it should be very easy to identify the language used.
Well, not entirely. Natural language (i.e. people talking to each other) and spelling are two separate things. Spelling is a human construct, and in the Middle Ages it wasn't standardized yet. If Voynichese is the result of a spelling experiment, or as some linguists see it a budding writing culture, it may deviate from its underlying natural language in all kinds of ways due to artificial human intervention.
RE: The gibberish thread - Torsten - 05-02-2018
(05-02-2018, 09:22 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(05-02-2018, 09:12 PM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.At least you can say something about the linguistic typology of this language and about some basic grammar rules. With this features it should be very easy to identify the language used.
Well, not entirely. Natural language (i.e. people talking to each other) and spelling are two separate things. Spelling is a human construct, and in the Middle Ages it wasn't standardized yet. If Voynichese is the result of a spelling experiment, or as some linguists see it a budding writing culture, it may deviate from its underlying natural language in all kinds of ways due to artificial human intervention.
Did I understand you correctly. You are arguing that the writing is independent from the language since there are too many spelling variations? Wouldn't such a text fulfill the definition of gibberish? Anyway, the text of the VMS is too structured for such an explanation. There are far too many spelling rules.
RE: The gibberish thread - -JKP- - 05-02-2018
Quote:Let me think of an analogy. For example, you present me with a string of numbers, 22 15 25 14 9 3 8 0 14 9 14 10 1.
LOL! That took 4 seconds to crack.
Occam's razor. The repetition of the 14 gave it away and the 10 and 1 confirmed it. That's all it took to see the pattern.
RE: The gibberish thread - Koen G - 05-02-2018
Torsten: no, I'm saying that many properties of a spelling system, whether governed by rigid rules or not, are independent from human natural language. There is no intrinsic reason to ancient Egyptian why it should be written in hieroglyphs. This happened because of historical reasons.
Korean is spelled by forming a square out of each syllable. Arabic is spelled with omission of vowels and right to left. And those are just modern, well known examples.
What I'm getting at is that we are looking at a spelling system (with or without intentional obscurity), not an actual natural language. You can't write down a language, there is always human mediation, and that's where strange things can happen, which are not necessarily reflected in the spoken form of the language.
RE: The gibberish thread - Torsten - 05-02-2018
(05-02-2018, 10:49 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Torsten: no, I'm saying that many properties of a spelling system, whether governed by rigid rules or not, are independent from human natural language. There is no intrinsic reason to ancient Egyptian why it should be written in hieroglyphs. This happened because of historical reasons.
Korean is spelled by forming a square out of each syllable. Arabic is spelled with omission of vowels and right to left. And those are just modern, well known examples.
What I'm getting at is that we are looking at a spelling system (with or without intentional obscurity), not an actual natural language. You can't write down a language, there is always human mediation, and that's where strange things can happen, which are not necessarily reflected in the spoken form of the language.
Indeed, you have to identify the writing system first. A writing systems is designed to represent language. Therefore a writing system is not independent from language.
See for instance the Phaistos Disc (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). The disc contains only 241 imprinted signs. The writing system and the language are unknown. But even with only 241 signs it is possible to identify sentence structures and to identify subject, verb and object in it. It is also possible to say that the verb corresponds with the subject and that the language of the Phaistos Disc is therefore either of an agglutinate or inflection type: an isolated language can be ruled out (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. or You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).
The VMS contains much more then just 241 glyphs. It should be much easier then for the Phaistos disc to identify the writing system and the language.
RE: The gibberish thread - Koen G - 06-02-2018
True, the VM's relatively huge corpus should allow for easier identification of what's going on, and the fact that we still haven't been able to do that is an argument (not proof) in favor of meaninglessness.
But as you say, we can actually identify structure and spelling rules. This suggests that a real writing system is in place, but it obscures any underlying language. This could be because of our ignorance, or because of intentional obscurity, or because the writing system was flawed.
RE: The gibberish thread - Torsten - 06-02-2018
(06-02-2018, 09:35 AM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.True, the VM's relatively huge corpus should allow for easier identification of what's going on, and the fact that we still haven't been able to do that is an argument (not proof) in favor of meaninglessness.
But as you say, we can actually identify structure and spelling rules. This suggests that a real writing system is in place, but it obscures any underlying language. This could be because of our ignorance, or because of intentional obscurity, or because the writing system was flawed.
That we can identify structure and spelling rules only means that there is a system behind the VMS. We have to identify the spelling rules to reconstruct the system. Only then we will know if the script was designed to represent language or something else.
I have tried to identify the spelling rules and the relations between words in my paper from 2014 (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). If you know the rules the system is very simple.
RE: The gibberish thread - MarcoP - 06-02-2018
(06-02-2018, 10:12 AM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(06-02-2018, 09:35 AM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.True, the VM's relatively huge corpus should allow for easier identification of what's going on, and the fact that we still haven't been able to do that is an argument (not proof) in favor of meaninglessness.
But as you say, we can actually identify structure and spelling rules. This suggests that a real writing system is in place, but it obscures any underlying language. This could be because of our ignorance, or because of intentional obscurity, or because the writing system was flawed.
That we can identify structure and spelling rules only means that there is a system behind the VMS. We have to identify the spelling rules to reconstruct the system. Only then we will know if the script was designed to represent language or something else.
I have tried to identify the spelling rules and the relations between words in my paper from 2014 (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). If you know the rules the system is very simple.
Hi Torsten,
have you ever used your simple system to generate a long text on the basis of a fragment of the VMS? If so, is the output of that process available?
RE: The gibberish thread - Torsten - 06-02-2018
(06-02-2018, 06:05 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hi Torsten,
have you ever used your simple system to generate a long text on the basis of a fragment of the VMS? If so, is the output of that process available?
I have written an Voynich text generator app [see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.]. The sourcecode for this app is available via Github [see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.].
There is already a thread about the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. There is also a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. about similar words in the VMS.
In this thread a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. for the text generation algorithm and a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is given. The sample text is using line f103r.P.18 as seed value.
RE: The gibberish thread - bi3mw - 08-02-2018
(04-02-2018, 09:27 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Just thinking about it philosophically (i.e. without much knowledge of the statistics involved) I'd say that it's impossible to prove. The reason is that in this particular case the statements "it has no meaning" and "the meaning is unknown to us" have the same effect.
Let me think of an analogy. For example, you present me with a string of numbers, 22 15 25 14 9 3 8 0 14 9 14 10 1.
I could say "it's a random string of numbers". But I don't know whether this is true. Until I find a way to read the numbers in a way which makes sense, I have no way of proving whether the numbers are randomly chosen or not. I could only disprove it by pointing out what you encoded and how you did it.
That's right, without knowing the underlying system you can only make descriptive statements. All methods of decryption are based on the assumption that they are applicable to the problem or, more specifically, are transferable. The substitution of numbers and letters is obviously the right method in your example. Unfortunately, simple extensions can make this task very difficult or unsolvable. Then the fact that the basic assumption is correct can no longer be proved.
Would someone be right who claims that your method is wrong from the beginning ?
The example (solvable in one minute): 22 15 25 14 9 3 8 14 9 14 10 1
Extension by simple addition / multiplication (Ancient Egyptian multiplication) plus flagging the runs:
240 330 4 224 350 4 24 27 3 112 112 3 112 126 3 8 10 3
If you know the system, then the task can be solved in a few minutes (pen and paper). If you do not know the system, well .....