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+--- Thread: [split] (lack of) scribal mistakes / corrections (/thread-2658.html)
RE: [split] (lack of) scribal mistakes / corrections - -JKP- - 25-02-2019
There are a couple of places in the VMS where a small amount of text appears to be scraped, but unfortunately, I noticed it long before the forum existed and have since forgotten where they were. Not enough hours in the day to record every little detail.
RE: The Impossibility of Double Gallows - ChenZheChina - 26-02-2019
(22-02-2019, 11:12 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.…
Hebrew has a lot of root words (in which the only difference between related words is the vowels or one character), so in that respect it's tantalizing to think the repetitious character of the VMS might be an abjad based on a system of root words with the vowels omitted, but Hebrew is NOT rigidly positional like the VMS—the letters move around within words much more than in Voynichese. Maybe the VMS is some sort of abjad (perhaps a synthetic abjad), it's closer to Hebrew structure than many languages, but... when you look at glyph position, then the differences loom large (I'm sure you already know this, but I'm describing my thinking process at the time).
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Hi JKP.
What is synthetic abjad?
RE: [split] (lack of) scribal mistakes / corrections - -JKP- - 26-02-2019
A synthetic language is one that is made up, an invented language (usually one that works according to a set of rules).
An abjad is a language written without vowels.
So, let's pretend we are inventing a language. Let's say that it's based on root words, so that alterations in the word can create other words.
For example, maybe bk stands for the idea of a book.
Now if we add + in front then it is someone who makes books, thus +bk would be a bookmaker or +cr might be a carmaker, or +drs might be a dressmaker.
If we want to turn it into a verb, maybe we add - to the end, so bk- becomes booking cr- becomes "carring" (the concept of driving or going in a car), or drs- becomes dressing (or dressmaking).
So a grammar is established based on root words with different beginnings or endings (or other ways of manipulating the words). A number of ancient languages were written without vowels, and some languages (like Hebrew) have a root-word structure to create new words. It wasn't until literacy began to expand that they started adding vowels. In many Asian languages, as you know, the vowel sound is built into the syllable or character and doesn't need to be explicitly written.
So we know it's possible to write readable text without vowels. And we know there are languages that have a root-word structure.
If you put those two ideas together, you end up with something SIMILAR in structure to the VMS EXCEPT (and this is an important difference), the Voynich tokens have too many glyphs that are always in the same position in the word compared to natural languages that work this way.
So there's always the question, is Voynichese a natural language? Or something else? A synthetic language? A symbolic language? A nonsense text?
I know people have mentioned that dain daiin and daiiin look similar to Roman numerals (I think so too). But I think it goes beyond that. I think Voynichese, overall, is more similar to Greek or Roman numerals in the way the glyphs are positioned than it is to natural languages (IF the spaces are assumed to be word breaks). With numerals, position is everything.The number 53 is not the same as the number 35, and Roman numeral VI is not the same as IV. Numbers always have to be written in a certain order or we have no way of interpreting which one is the larger quantity. The order of the VMS glyphs is quite rigid. ot is not usually found at the ends of tokens and daiin dy or am are not typically found at the beginnings of tokens (although they can stand alone). There are certain glyphs that can move around, but there are some that move around much less than one might expect in natural language. How often is i found at the beginnings and ends of tokens?
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Position is, in some way, very important to Voynichese. It might be a consequence of how the tokens are constructed (e.g., picking them off of charts in a certain order?) or it might be a positional code (in which the position conveys information about the glyph or the token). I am doubtful that it is a natural language, the positions of the glyphs don't vary enough. So perhaps it's synthetic or symbolic. If it is natural language, then it's probably a multi-step code, not a straight substitution code, and the spaces might have to be evaluated differently.
RE: [split] (lack of) scribal mistakes / corrections - Koen G - 26-02-2019
I don't like it when people nit-pick about terminology, but in this case there is cause for confusion so I'll complain
One of the properties of a language that can be used for classification is where it falls on the synthetic vs. analytical spectrum. Synthetic languages put a lot of grammar inside of the word, instead of chopping them up.
Latin is more synthetic than English, since English needs more little words to say the same thing. Rosarum - of the roses. Vidi - I saw....
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So a synthetic abjad is a language that's written with omission of vowels, and with lots of meaning that goes inside the main word. It probably uses cases, extensive conjugation, no personal pronouns etc.
Interestingly, most European languages have seen a gradual decline in syntheticness over the centuries.
RE: [split] (lack of) scribal mistakes / corrections - ChenZheChina - 26-02-2019
(26-02-2019, 05:06 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.A synthetic language is one that is made up, an invented language (usually one that works according to a set of rules).
(26-02-2019, 07:23 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Synthetic languages put a lot of grammar inside of the word, instead of chopping them up.
Hi JKP, Koen.
Thank you for your explanations, but it seems to me that you are talking about totally different aspects of language.
I guess JKP means “invented language” when they uses the term “synthetic”, but I prefer calling “invented languages” as “constructed languages”, or simply “conlangs”. This is also how You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
Koen’s usage of the term “synthetic” seems more common to me.
RE: [split] (lack of) scribal mistakes / corrections - -JKP- - 26-02-2019
In this case, I do actually mean synthetic (thank you for the clarification, Koen). An invented language with a synthetic structure.
Packing meaning into the structure of each word is more in line with Voynichese than a language like modern French that has a lot of joining words (e.g., It not is not there).
Older western languages sometimes don't even have articles like "the" (they simply aren't necessary). In Scandinavian languages, there is no "the". You simply tack on an ending if you want to be specific about the noun. Instead of saying, "The cat caught the mouse", if English worked like this you would say, "Catten got mousen". In other words, the "sense" of the word "the" is part of the word, not a separate word. Some languages append a letter or two to the beginning of the word to denote an article. Same idea, different way of doing it.
Some languages do this with "and". It is part of the preceding or following word, rather than a separate word.
Voynichese has a very high level of repetition at the beginnings and ends of tokens.
RE: [split] (lack of) scribal mistakes / corrections - MarcoP - 26-02-2019
(26-02-2019, 07:23 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So a synthetic abjad is a language that's written with omission of vowels, and with lots of meaning that goes inside the main word. It probably uses cases, extensive conjugation, no personal pronouns etc.
Hi Koen,
as Stephen Bax said in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:
Quote:I have to insist again and again, the difference between the script and the language is a really important one, because it could be that the underlying language is one that is known to us, but what stops us from getting there is just the script that's lying above it. And this is an element of the research which many people just don't seem to get. Even in recent discussions on the internet you get people confusing the issues of the script and language.
An abjad is a kind of script, not a kind of language. The fact that "meaning goes inside the main word" is a feature of the language, but writing or omitting vowels is a feature of the script.
RE: [split] (lack of) scribal mistakes / corrections - -JKP- - 26-02-2019
Stephen Bax Wrote:I have to insist again and again, the difference between the script and the language is a really important one, because it could be that the underlying language is one that is known to us, but what stops us from getting there is just the script that's lying above it.
To me, this is stating the obvious, but I suppose he's right that a lot of people don't seem to get it (I'm pretty sure Koen gets it).
But I am amazed at how many proposed "solutions" are substitution codes that basically assign the EVA key assignments to most of the Voynich glyphs. In other words, they seem to think that EVA key assignments represent the actual meaning of the glyphs (conflating the script and the underlying structure).
RE: [split] (lack of) scribal mistakes / corrections - -JKP- - 26-02-2019
I just re-read Koen's post and he didn't get them confused.
He explained what a synthetic language was and then he explained what "synthetic abjad" would mean (if you have a script that combines the two characteristics).
I was doing the same thing. I was saying that Voynichese has some properties of synthetic languages, and it has some properties of an abjad. Yes, one is how the words are constructed and the other is how it is written. There's no reason they can't both be characteristics of an invented script. I think the STRUCTURE of Voynichese is similar to what you might get if you created a synthetic abjad (a synthetic language that could be written without vowels).
RE: [split] (lack of) scribal mistakes / corrections - Koen G - 26-02-2019
Yeah I get it
There's a chance Voynichese is highly synthetic. Take your example of Scandinavian articles. It looks like there may be no equivalents (in frequency/positioning...) to articles in Voynichese, so maybe it's more like the Scandinavian system. "Skog" (forest) vs. "skogen" (the forest). Like that you get lots of -en at the end of words.
Here's the problem though. If we assume that recurring parts of Voynichese words are grammatical bits, then what's left for the semantic bits? In other words, if we omit the parts of Voynichese that may be grammatical, then is there enough body and variety left to express actual vocabulary?
One might even turn it around and wonder whether Voynichese may not rather be highly analytic?