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Statement: IF Voynichese does not represent natural language... - Koen G - 30-03-2019
I'll present a statement which I believe is true, and I wonder what you think about it. Note that the statement starts with an IF clause. I don't believe the IF clause is true, but assuming this as a given, then I do believe the consequences are true.
IF Voynichese does not represent natural language, then:
- it is still intended to look as if it does
- it is intentionally deceptive
Some arguments are the following:
- High resemblance between Voynichese glyphs and scribal conventions, both in form and positioning.
- Weirdos on first page, one of which I have recently found a parallel for in an initial "V".
- Layout as left-aligned paragraphs following the images to a large extent
So in conclusion I would say that the VM text either is natural language, a real text written in a way we don't understand
OR it is intended and designed to look as such
Is there anything wrong with these statements?
RE: Statement: IF Voynichese does not represent natural language... - -JKP- - 30-03-2019
A fine point...
I've often said that VMS differs from natural language in a number of structural details. But... that does not necessarily mean that natural language does not underlie it in some way. If it were a numeric cipher, for example (I'm not talking about simple substitution, but about something that needs to be processed), the text would not be structured like natural language, but it MIGHT ultimately translate into letters (which in turn, might be natural language).
I'm not sure how that distinction can be simply stated or integrated into what you have proposed, but I thought it was important enough to mention.
RE: Statement: IF Voynichese does not represent natural language... - Emma May Smith - 30-03-2019
A few points:
- We have to be careful that "natural language" doesn't exclude some kind of artificial language or engineered language. It's perfectly possible (however unlikely) that we're dealing with something which is linguistic but not natural. Assuming any such language is intended to be used and spoken, it shouldn't make a difference to how we generally approach the text. The problem comes when we select a candidate language to fit the text, as no such candidate really exists.
- We can say that the text "looks like a language", but the question is to whom? We know it looks similar to a language, but we can also see some differences or mismatches. For somebody in the early 1400s, what would a language look like? I guess they would be more easily fooled and less capable of performing a more indepth study of the text.
- This leads us to the question of what a person in the early 1400s would do in order to deceive his contemporaries. The text is complex, it is patterned, it displays relationships between glyphs, between words and the page, which nobody would have been able to fully explore in the creator's lifetime. These could have been added to deceive, but clearly the creator would have put in more effort than was needed, which leads us to question whether we have the correct explanation.
- However, the whole idea of "deception" is rather solipsistic. It privileges our negative knowledge as a positive fact: we don't understand the text and therefore the text is "not understandable". To us, yes, but as a fact of the text? Nope.
RE: Statement: IF Voynichese does not represent natural language... - Koen G - 30-03-2019
Emma: to be clear, "deception" is low on my list of possibilities. I think there are several indications that the text is linguistic. But if it is not, wouldn't it automatically mean we are dealing with something that's made to look more language-like than it is? The only third option is that the language-like properties we see in script, statistics and layout are an UNintended side effect of whatever else is going on. But that feels so unlikely.
RE: Statement: IF Voynichese does not represent natural language... - Linda - 30-03-2019
(30-03-2019, 05:18 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'll present a statement which I believe is true, and I wonder what you think about it. Note that the statement starts with an IF clause. I don't believe the IF clause is true, but assuming this as a given, then I do believe the consequences are true.I am a little bit confused as to which part you believe is true, but sure, let's see where it takes us.
Quote:IF Voynichese does not represent natural language, then:Ok so assuming the first line to be true, i would say yes, it does still look like it does at first glance, at the word level, at least, and that this would probably not be a natural result of a structured system, ie one might expect to see equal length words or perhaps no spaces at all, at least in the type of constructed data i have in mind.
- it is still intended to look as if it does
- it is intentionally deceptive
Whether it is intentionally deceptive depends on the deconstruction of the text. For instance, if the way to solve it was to write the letters of the first word below one another and then keep populating in that manner with the following glyphs, spaces included, for that many lines, i could see how it would seem to create natural word lengths without being intentionally deceptive as to the fact that the result still looks sort of natural. (But it would still be intentionally deceptive in that it was processed at all)
Quote:Some arguments are the following:
- High resemblance between Voynichese glyphs and scribal conventions, both in form and positioning.
- Weirdos on first page, one of which I have recently found a parallel for in an initial "V".
- Layout as left-aligned paragraphs following the images to a large extent
Agreed on the first point, except that we can't seem to read it.
The problem comes up when you start comparing the words and noting the glyph ordering within many of the words is similar. Why would such a large number of labels start with o? Why would so many labels be a letter or two off from the others? Why are some glyphs never found in certain positions? This is why i think there has to be some level of artificial language of some type involved, although at the same time i would think that the decryption would be a one step process, due to practicality. Such a lot of text to have to write out this way and then that way or however many steps, you would need reams of paper if the process required more than one go around to get a readable copy that wasnt a mess due to writing it in decode mode, rather than transcribing. The preferred view in terms of this practicality idea would be that they could read it straight off the page, be it natural or constructed.
Second point not so clear to me. Yes it could be a V, or i have also seen similar in conjunction with astronomical context. Dont know about the others. They strike me as ancient, somehow.
Agreed on the third point. You had once done something with colouring the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. text that showed the different sections and i thought it fit perfectly to denote each grouping of illustrations.
Quote:So in conclusion I would say that the VM text either is natural language, a real text written in a way we don't understand
OR it is intended and designed to look as such
Is there anything wrong with these statements?
I guess those are the main choices, they dont seem wrong to me, although i think there needs to be at least third possibility to consider,
OR it is not natural language, but the fact that it looks natural was not the intention nor the design of the process.
Maybe a combination
Maybe just the latter but a combination of constructs that when unravelled lead to both data and natural language
Maybe encoded such that spaces are part of the shuffle, which is why it still looks natural
RE: Statement: IF Voynichese does not represent natural language... - MarcoP - 30-03-2019
None of these is particularly close to the VMS, but they could still be relevant:
Thinking of language-like phenomena, there's You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. The purpose of this invented language is not clear, but it can probably be defined as "mystic". It's more or less an example of the artificial languages mentioned by Emma, but I think it mostly consists in a dictionary and it doesn't have a grammar of its own.
Another example we discussed long ago are the pseudo-cufic / You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. inscriptions that can be seen in several medieval works of art. These certainly are decorative, but they might also be meaningful in some symbolic (non-linguistic) way.
Than there is "glossolalia", which has been recently mentioned by Geoffrey. The phenomenon apparently exists since ancient times, though I don't think there are ancient written examples.
RE: Statement: IF Voynichese does not represent natural language... - Koen G - 30-03-2019
Marco: glossolalia is an alternative indeed. I guess the main difference with deception is that supposedly the performer of glossolalia is convinced of the genuine nature of his product. In the case of the VM that would mean that someone was "writing in tongues" for a couple of hundred pages - quite the affliction
Pseudo-Arabic and the like sounds very close to what I have in mind if the VM does not contain linguistic meaning. There might be some different significance but it doesn't encode a text.
RE: Statement: IF Voynichese does not represent natural language... - VViews - 30-03-2019
(30-03-2019, 07:34 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Than there is "glossolalia", which has been recently mentioned by Geoffrey. The phenomenon apparently exists since ancient times, though I don't think there are ancient written examples.Emphasis mine.
I don't believe that's really a given and can only state that I would be very cautious about this.
This thread is probably not the best place to discuss such a matter but it might be worth a thread in the "non-voynich medievalia" subforum to present and discuss the supposed evidence for this. In my understanding, the biblical passage described by Markus in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. thread is ambiguous at best, the Catholic Church only dedcided to embrace such claims by charismatic movements in the 20th century and, as I stated in that thread, the glossollalia terminology was given the meaning that we understand today during the 20th century.
As MarcoP states, there are (to my knowledge) no prior written examples of glossolalia, nor is there any reason that would lead me to believe that any christian religious subcultures existed in the middle ages that practiced speaking in tongues in the sense that we attribute to it today.
ETA: I broadly agree with Koen G's concluding statements in the OP.
RE: Statement: IF Voynichese does not represent natural language... - -JKP- - 30-03-2019
If there's a separate thread for glossolalia, it might be worth also discussing echolalia in that thread.
RE: Statement: IF Voynichese does not represent natural language... - Linda - 30-03-2019
(30-03-2019, 07:02 PM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.A few points:
- We have to be careful that "natural language" doesn't exclude some kind of artificial language or engineered language. It's perfectly possible (however unlikely) that we're dealing with something which is linguistic but not natural. Assuming any such language is intended to be used and spoken, it shouldn't make a difference to how we generally approach the text. The problem comes when we select a candidate language to fit the text, as no such candidate really exists.
Can you give an example of something which would be linguistic but not natural? Would it be like languages in fiction? Newspeak or Nadsat, or would it have to be something completely removed from a recognizeable language, like Klingon?
I am not clear on the differences between artificial, engineered, and constructed, are they the same?
Quote:
- We can say that the text "looks like a language", but the question is to whom? We know it looks similar to a language, but we can also see some differences or mismatches. For somebody in the early 1400s, what would a language look like? I guess they would be more easily fooled and less capable of performing a more indepth study of the text.
It would seem like those in the 1600s at least thought it was different enough to be Egyptian hieroglyphs or Glagolitic script, although i would have thought they would see the similarities that we see all the better, being closer in time. Maybe they didnt really look? Blocked by the bits they didnt recognize? It would be a shorter task to ask others than to do the work?
Quote:It kind of depends on who wrote it and why. Is it a product of an affected mind? It might not be considered effort, per se, if one had ocd, for instance, which manifested in a need to write and/or draw or paint in this manner, whether or not it has meaning.
- This leads us to the question of what a person in the early 1400s would do in order to deceive his contemporaries. The text is complex, it is patterned, it displays relationships between glyphs, between words and the page, which nobody would have been able to fully explore in the creator's lifetime. These could have been added to deceive, but clearly the creator would have put in more effort than was needed, which leads us to question whether we have the correct explanation.
It seems like it is the reverse of those p vs np situations, Unsolved problem in computer science: If the solution to a problem is easy to check for correctness, must the problem be easy to solve? we are at a stage where the problem is not solved and possible solutions are not easy to check for correctness, so must the problem be difficult to solve? Or are we just lacking the key. If the creator had passed along his trick, if there had been an instruction sheet stapled to it, might it have been quickly solvable? (Even if the trick was that it has no meaning, if we knew that, it would be solved.)
Quote:
- However, the whole idea of "deception" is rather solipsistic. It privileges our negative knowledge as a positive fact: we don't understand the text and therefore the text is "not understandable". To us, yes, but as a fact of the text? Nope.
Can a solipsist accuse someone else of deception?
But i agree, that is why i added the option that it may just be a factor of how the construction works.
Is that the only reason a number of us seem to mention deception or obfuscation, though? The not knowing? There are several instances where the imagery seems intentionally reversed or misplaced in comparison to my perceived reference, just enough that it cannot be clearly seen to align with it, and yet it does not feel like i am trying to fool myself into making it fit because i want it to, it feels like they moved things around for reasons beyond the perceived obfuscation that resulted due to the positional changes. Some may not be changes at all, they may simply have been placing each element randomly on the page rather than attempting to align them positionally, possibly because of having only piecemeal examples, so it could be wrong assumptions about why it is out of place. But some of it seems like commentary on mistakes or misinterpretations of similar references, in that they too have analogous traits of wrongness.
That is why i think the history of each glyph should be carefully considered, especially any that are known to have caused errors of transcription in the past, ie before 1400ish. They may stand for the error, rather than for what they themselves are known to stand for. Like how sloppy t can look like 4, or r rotunda can look like 2 or z.