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Implications of the continuity of Currier "languages" - MarcoP - 20-12-2018
Several researchers have pointed out that the features underlying Currier's A and B "languages" do not form two separated sets, but spread over a continuous range. For instance, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. represents pages on the basis of word frequencies: Donald used Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to reduce the number of dimensions from the long raw vectors to plottable 2d points.
Currier A (green), Currier B (red), or uncertain (black).
[I have trimmed the image and made it more contrasted]
Similar results are presented by You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. The continuity between the two "languages" appears both in character-based and word-based analyses (this plot is by Sarah Goslee).
Researchers have drawn different conclusions from this evidence:
Donald Fisk Wrote:...Prescott Currier reported in Papers on the Voynich Manuscript that the text is in two separate languages or dialects, now commonly referred to as Currier A and Currier B. It will be shown here that this distinction is somewhat fuzzy. There are differences (see "A Principal Component Analysis of the Voynich Manuscript Words"), but these can be explained more simply by differences in the text's subject matter.
Rene Zandbergen Wrote:When Currier identified his languages A and B, he did this on the basis of the different statistics of the initial herbal pages in the MS [...]. It is clear that these have distinct properties - the clouds do not overlap. He also checked the other pages, and noted more variations, but his criteria for distinguishing the languages did not allow him to see that the overall statistics demonstrate that there is a continuum, and the other (not herbal) pages actually 'bridge the gap'.
This does not demonstrate that the text is meaningful, or that the text variations are caused by different subject matter (as suggested in by Montemurro and Zanette). If that were the case, the difference between herbal A and herbal B should not exist. The cause of the (statistical) language variation is still unexplained.
As always, things are puzzling. I understand that both points of view have their value.
Let's speculate
What are the implications of these findings?
What the reasons for the observed phenomena can be?
RE: Implications of the continuity of Currier "languages" - Helmut Winkler - 20-12-2018
i think the problem is that nobody has the slightest idea whether these statistics have a basis in reality. I doubt that and therefore keep away from the statistics
RE: Implications of the continuity of Currier "languages" - Koen G - 20-12-2018
Could they be like scribal habits that changed as the project went along? This still leaves open both the possibilities of one scribe evolving or one or more others jumping in.
I can imagine a scenario where first you don't abbreviate much, then you start abbreviating in some situations and then a lot. I'm not saying that it must be abbreviation, but this is an example of a gradual process I can think of, which would tend to vary based on the habits the scribe employs while writing a whole segment.
But in concrete terms, what is it exactly that causes this gradual change? Vocabulary? Or the increasing and declining use of glyphs/clusters in specific positions (kind of like morphemes)?
RE: Implications of the continuity of Currier "languages" - nablator - 20-12-2018
(20-12-2018, 11:26 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But in concrete terms, what is it exactly that causes this gradual change? Vocabulary? Or the increasing and declining use of glyphs/clusters in specific positions (kind of like morphemes)?A "gradual change" or "drift" is visible on a large scale (entire quires) because the variations (sometimes sharp discontinuities) on a small scale (pages or even paragraphs) are smoothed. I am not denying the "drift" phenomenon, just noting that there is much more going on.
I agree with Nick Pelling's assessment that statistics capture "the evolution of the container layer, and not anything ‘semantic’ as such." You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
RE: Implications of the continuity of Currier "languages" - nablator - 20-12-2018
Quoting from the same blog post:
Nick Pelling Wrote:I think the key to resolving this is to grasp that there is some kind of generative or confounding principle at work within a rigidly predictable framework. That is, that even though there are lots of rules, these rules act as a kind of “container” for semantic or cryptographic variability to exist within.Even though there may well be some rigid rules, the existence of a large set of evolving rules is problematic: unproven and difficult to use in practice. All the discovered rules have exceptions. No one has been able to characterize anything with a set of rigid rules, only probabilistic ones.
In my opinion a better explanation than an evolving set of rigid rules (or probabilistic rules, even more difficult to tweak in practice) would be that the scribe(s) sometimes chose to try something new and then stayed on (recently) beaten paths as much as possible in order to increase the effectiveness of the "confounding principle". Instead of rules we are mostly seeing personal temporary preferences.
RE: Implications of the continuity of Currier "languages" - ReneZ - 20-12-2018
It is not difficult to come up with a possible explanation for this. In fact, one can up with many different possible explanations, both based on a meaningful text or on a meaningless text.
The difficulty is deciding which one is the right one.
Just some examples:
- two people started on a common agreement and both drifted in a different direction. (This can work both for meaningful and meaningless texts)
- there is a system behind the words that allows for some degree of freedom
- the words are some form of enumeration system and the structure of 'higher numbers' looks like a different language / dialect.
- the meaningful part of the text is only a fraction of what we see, and the Currier language properties are caused by the meaningless filler.
Note that the fourth case is not really a different case. It could be an example of both the first two cases.
RE: Implications of the continuity of Currier "languages" - MarcoP - 20-12-2018
(20-12-2018, 01:35 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It is not difficult to come up with a possible explanation for this. In fact, one can up with many different possible explanations, both based on a meaningful text or on a meaningless text.
The difficulty is deciding which one is the right one.
This seems to be our perpetual condition
(20-12-2018, 01:35 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Just some examples:
- two people started on a common agreement and both drifted in a different direction. (This can work both for meaningful and meaningless texts)
Why two people instead of one? Is this based on the hypothetical different hands?
(20-12-2018, 01:35 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.- there is a system behind the words that allows for some degree of freedom
I am lost here. The evidence we are discussing seems to me strongly suggestive of "some freedom" in how the underlying language was written. Still I don't understand how this explains the continuous mutation of language through the manuscript.
(20-12-2018, 01:35 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.- the words are some form of enumeration system and the structure of 'higher numbers' looks like a different language / dialect.
If I understand correctly, this idea implies that the apparent "drift" is an artefact induced by the cipher system?
Like: as I write, I build a dictionary in which I map different words (in the order in which they appear) to numbers.
Code:
the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
1 2 3 4 5 6 1 7 8Numbers are replaced to the original words: they are represented in such a way that (say) numbers below 10,000 are Currier A words and numbers above are Currier B. Is this more or less what you mean?
RE: Implications of the continuity of Currier "languages" - MarcoP - 20-12-2018
(20-12-2018, 11:26 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But in concrete terms, what is it exactly that causes this gradual change? Vocabulary? Or the increasing and declining use of glyphs/clusters in specific positions (kind of like morphemes)?
The change can be observed both in vocabulary and in "morphemes".
For instance
- the word 'chol' and the 'cluster' sho are typical of A
- the word 'aiin' and the fragment 'dy' are typical of B
The two aspects are of course related: -dy words tend to be more frequent in B than in A.
On the other hand, the 'cluster' aiin has more or less the same frequency in A and B, but as a stand-alone word it is about three times as frequent in B than in A.
RE: Implications of the continuity of Currier "languages" - Beatrice - 20-12-2018
Do you think the author could use up to ten different methods to code the language? Or could he shift from one linguistic permutation to another one throughout the manuscript? Could this explain the drift? Thanks.
RE: Implications of the continuity of Currier "languages" - Aldis Mengelsons - 21-12-2018
Author (not the copy maker) didn't put any code at all. Even the very first page saying that" you're free to take my knowledge, but if you have no soul your brains and Gods will be useless " There is no code ,justa way of reading,only mystery is a reason to use that alphabet.