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+---- Thread: [Text] word starting [q] must have a valid counterpart word starting [o] (/thread-2360.html)
word starting [q] must have a valid counterpart word starting [o] - davidjackson - 31-03-2018
This post in entirely based upon the research of Emma Smith. However I feel that she has identified an important grammatical structure and so post her theory here for community members to discuss. I will leave this thread open for a couple of days before posting the poll so that anyone can run independent statistical analysis to prove or destroy the theory.
Emma suggests :
Quote:words beginning with [q] have two particular relationships. The first is that a word starting [q] must have a valid counterpart word starting [o], and it is not enough for the plain word without either [q] or [o] to exist. Conversely, even if the [o] form exists, that does not mean that the [q] form will.You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
RE: word starting [q] must have a valid counterpart word starting [o] - -JKP- - 31-03-2018
(31-03-2018, 07:51 PM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
Emma suggests :
Quote:words beginning with [q] have two particular relationships. The first is that a word starting [q] must have a valid counterpart word starting [o], and it is not enough for the plain word without either [q] or [o] to exist. Conversely, even if the [o] form exists, that does not mean that the [q] form will....
I'll have to vote "no" but I'll wait a couple of days to be sure I understand the question correctly.
Some examples of q- tokens with no o counterparts:
f29r:2:5:1 qokShe but no counterpart okShe.
f51r:1:9:7 qoetam but no counterpart oetam.
f76r:1:8:2 qotedShedy but no counterpart otedShedy. (In the ms. it is definitely written as one token.)
f76r:1:9:4 qeTheed but no counterpart [font=Eva]oeTheed[/font].
f80r:1:1:3 qopolkain but no counterpart opolkain. (Note: this may be a rare curve-glyph rather than an "o" but even if it is, there's no counterpart.)
f102r1:2:4:6 qokeodol but no counterpart okeodol.
There are many plain words that occur without q- or o- counterparts, so I'm not sure I correctly understand this part of the statement.
Quick examples from a single folio:
f66b:1:1:6 plain word dorShepy exists without odorShepy counterpart.
f66v:2:1:9 plain word Sheopam exists without oSheopam counterpart.
f66v:3:4:10 plain word chkchody exists without o[font=Eva]chkchody[/font] counterpart.
RE: word starting [q] must have a valid counterpart word starting [o] - Anton - 01-04-2018
Having read the title post, I was about to object with the qc- examples, but I see that JKP provides much more examples.
... You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. - for sure it's not an o.
I don't remember though if the opposite to what Emma states is true. Anyway, I'd prefer a more strict formulation, like "if a vord X starting with o exists, then a vord qX exists also". In the proposed formulation, the term "counterpart" appears too vague.
RE: word starting [q] must have a valid counterpart word starting [o] - Emma May Smith - 03-04-2018
JKP's first objection is right, but misses a caveat which I may have not made plain (in that post, though in earlier posts it is stated). I'm talking about 'valid' words which have at least a few tokens (typically five). So there may be words beginning [q] with one or two tokens that don't have [o] forms, but the commonest words do.
The fifty most common words beginning [q] all have [o] forms with at least five tokens. [qokeed] is the highest without, as it has 15 tokens but [okeed] only has 3. The highest with no [o] form is [qokl]: it has 9 tokens and [okl] doesn't exist.
If we count all [q] forms with at least five tokens, we find that 97% of them also have an [o] form with at least five tokens. Thus my idea is a generalization and not an iron law.
Second, the part "and it is not enough for the plain word without either [q] or [o] to exist", refers to the relationship between plain forms and [q] forms. There aren't many words which have both a valid [q] form and a valid plain form, but no valid [o] form. I could only find five exceptions in about 125 words.
The clearest formulation for the rules would be:
1) there must be a valid plain form for there to be a valid [o] form, but the existence of a plain form does not demand an [o] form; and
2) there must be a valid [o] form for there to be a valid [q] form, but the existence of an [o] form does not demand an [q] form.
Even simpler: you can't have [q] without [o], or [o] without plain; but you can have plain without [o], and [o] without [q].
RE: word starting [q] must have a valid counterpart word starting [o] - -JKP- - 04-04-2018
I don't know if I would use the word "valid" to describe common words, thus implying that less common words are not valid. The terms "common" and "uncommon" or "less common" carry fewer assumptions.
But, I'm glad you're here with clarification, Emma.
It's quite a different question if one is limiting the observations to common words.
I don't have time right now to read it all again and think it over (again). I will as soon as I have an opportunity, but it might be impossible before the weekend. I'm swamped right now.
RE: word starting [q] must have a valid counterpart word starting [o] - ReneZ - 04-04-2018
The problem I see is the following:
there are two ways to define 'valid' and they will lead to different conclusions.
If this were a normal book in a normal language, there would be plenty of valid words in this language that happen not to appear in the book. There are also plenty of valid words that appear exactly once, and looking at pairs of words (e.g. singular and plural versions of a noun) there will be cases where only one or the other appears, even if both are valid.
In such a case it make sense to limit the test only to words that have a reasonably high frequency in this particular book.
The Voynich language (if it is one) only exists in this one book. A very practical way of defining 'valid' words is if they occur in this book. If the text is not language, this is also the correct way, because there is nothing beside the text in this book. In that case, from the examples quoted by JKP, the thesis would be false.
If it is a meaningful language, then there could be other words that we don't know about, and one could make the statistical analysis that was implied above.
RE: word starting [q] must have a valid counterpart word starting [o] - Emma May Smith - 04-04-2018
I use 'valid' for two reasons:
1) I can't be sure that a rare word is correct/true/real; and
2) I can't be sure that a rare word is representative of the text.
For point 1), we know that there are transcription errors. That situation may improve over time, but there's a real possibility that words with one token have been misread. Likewise, there is an unknowable number of writing errors. We can never identify them until we can read the text.
The answer is to build a wall around the problem. We can guess that the same reading and writing errors haven't been made many times, thus the more common a word is the less likely that it is incorrect. By putting in place an (admittedly) arbitrary cut-off we avoid basing our results on false words.
Of course, that wall will also enclose a number of real words, which is where point 2) comes in. Some words which are uncommon or rare aren't representative of the text as a whole even if their readings are correct. They contain combinations of characters, such as [arl], or chimeric structures, like [qokaiinos], which are themselves rare.
I don't know why some words are unlike the rest. They should be studied and may even yield a lot of information about the text. But rules which attempt to include them would stretch so wide as to become useless. My goal is not to describe the text in detail but to typify it into patterns.
RE: word starting [q] must have a valid counterpart word starting [o] - -JKP- - 05-04-2018
(04-04-2018, 07:46 PM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
For point 1), we know that there are transcription errors. That situation may improve over time, but there's a real possibility that words with one token have been misread. Likewise, there is an unknowable number of writing errors. We can never identify them until we can read the text.
This is not a possibility. If you are using the Takahashi transcription, it is a fact. Many one-glyph tokens have been combined with a nearby token even when there is a distinct space and, as I have mentioned a few times, a number of tokens with cccc have been collapsed to ccc.
Quote:The answer is to build a wall around the problem.
My answer was to create my own transcription. I was not even close to satisfied with the quality of the others.
Quote:I don't know why some words are unlike the rest. They should be studied and may even yield a lot of information about the text. But rules which attempt to include them would stretch so wide as to become useless. My goal is not to describe the text in detail but to typify it into patterns.
Maybe they are names, dates, numbers, corss-references, or place-names, information that is only occasionally or situationally relevant.
RE: word starting [q] must have a valid counterpart word starting [o] - davidjackson - 05-04-2018
Quote:Maybe they are names, dates, numbers, corss-references, or place-names, information that is only occasionally or situationally relevant.By they should all comply with the language rules, (here I extrapolate from known natural languages ) unless they are loan words - in which case, how is the encoding system working if it is bending a bigraph?
English works well in this case, it has no problem in accommodating q+vowel but only in the case of loan words. A peculiarity of which I know of no studies.
But how would an encoding system capable of producing voynichese cope with these loan words
RE: word starting [q] must have a valid counterpart word starting [o] - davidjackson - 05-04-2018
To continue through the logic :
If it is q+? in the majority of cases, then we are looking at a bigraph such as is common in English (qu).
In which case, Voynich ese is syllabic and can be pronounced.
(this is only not true in the case that unigrams are being mapped to bigrams. Which makes no sense unless we are looking at an expansion cipher; in which case the bigrams must always map back to the same letter).
What is needed now is some statistics to see just how common q+? Actually is and what maps to?