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+--- Thread: Was Voynichese meant to be pronounced? (/thread-2968.html)
RE: Was Voynichese meant to be pronounced? - MarcoP - 11-10-2019
(10-10-2019, 11:05 PM)Stephen Carlson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm wondering if Voynichese was meant to be pronounced or pronounceable.
If it was, it would fit an unknown-language or glossolalia hypothesis, but not so much a ciphertext hypothesis. The answer seems neutral on a hoax hypothesis.
In favor, the glyphs really do look like an alphabet (some glyphs even present in Latin MSS), the "vords" seem to have an onset-nucleus-coda structure (which is pronounceable), and the EVA representation is pronounceable.
Thank you, Stephen! Your question points to a specific problem that is of the greatest interest for all Voynichese theories.
Your argument about EVA seems quite strong to me: the script can be mapped into sounds in such a way that the result is pronounceable. It either is so by-design or coincidentally. A coincidence seems unlikely for something as complex as a phonetic system. Of course, EVA was designed to be pronounceable, but, for a random text, it would have been impossible to achieve good results.
A while ago, I compared the performance of a few written texts in terms of the level of alternation that can be reached by You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. into two classes that basically correspond to vowels and consonants. This was inspired by You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. on the application of Sukhotin's algorithm to Voynichese. What I found is that levels of alternation in the VMS are as high or higher than the linguistic texts I examined. Results of course depend on the transcription system: the better results require treating repeating EVA characters (i-sequences, e-sequences) and benches as corresponding to a single sound.
The You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Emma and I wrote also points in the direction of a pronounceable text: the same kind of alternation that is observed within words also occurs across spaces between adjacent words. For instance, the dislike for identical glyphs to repeat inside words can also be observed across words: oo and dd are rare inside words and word sequences like sho.okeeo and ched.daiin (where '.' represents a space) also are rarer than expected.
(10-10-2019, 11:05 PM)Stephen Carlson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Against, no phonetic values are known,
It seems to me that the state of things you describe is necessary for this discussion to be meaningful. Per-se, it does not disfavour the idea of glossolalia or an unknown phonetic language.
(10-10-2019, 11:05 PM)Stephen Carlson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.the script has layout effects (e.g., first character of lines, first lines of paragraphs, etc.)
I agree that there are several features that seem difficult to reconcile with a linguistic interpretation, and line-effects are among these. Line-effects can be observed (for instance) in the case of poetry, the usage of abbreviations (which tend to be more frequent at line-end), embellishments like You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (which are more frequent in the first lines of paragraphs) and hyphenation (which results in pseudo-words at line end/start which do not appear anywhere else). Some of these phenomena might concur to line-effects in the VMS, but I am not sure and I don't think they can explain everything. On the other hand, we know little of glossolalia. If one was producing glossolalia by speaking (in his head or aloud) while writing, there could be other unintentional effects at line boundaries. Sadly, this speculation is difficult to proof or disproof. Transcriptions of glossolalia could allow us to understand more of things like the level of word reduplication, but would not help with line-boundaries effects.
About JKP's observations with respect to the positional rigidity of characters in Voynichese, it is important to remember the difference between script and language. He writes that "letters in natural languages move around within words. For example, the letter "a" can be in any position in a word", but he knows very well that in medieval scripts this is not always the case. E.g. the Latin "9" abbreviation typically occurs at the beginning and end of words, short "s" and long "s" are positionally constrained etc. The problem he describes exists, but part of the phenomenon can be explained as a property of the script, rather than the language (see for instance You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that a and y are phonetically equivalent positional variants of a single sound).
(10-10-2019, 11:05 PM)Stephen Carlson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.many vords seem differ by only a stroke or two and may have been generated by purely graphic means (see Timm & Schinner).
I believe these differences mostly depend on e-sequences and i-sequences. If each sequence corresponds to a single sound, and these sounds are related, differences like these seem to me compatible with glossolalia (or, more optimistically, the degree of spelling variation in a medieval manuscript). For instance an ain aiin aiiin might correspond to different accents, or lengths, of final 'a' (an unknown vowel) - I believe that something similar was proposed by Emma.
Another element contributing to similar (often consecutive) words is the presence / absence of q (e.g. okeey.qokeey). While linguistically this is quite puzzling, I see no problem in believing that similar patterns occur in glossolalia.
The possibly glossolalic You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. includes word sequences like "ard ardo arga arges argah" "umas umascala um" "arcasa arcasan arcusma". I think they are rarer than in Voynichese, and consecutive words appear to differ more than in Voynichese, but they do suggest that quasi-reduplication can be a feature of glossolalia.
RE: Was Voynichese meant to be pronounced? - -JKP- - 11-10-2019
Quote:Aga: It smells like encryption to me, and it also answers your question about the distribution of letters.
Aga, it's a handy overview chart but I'm sorry, it doesn't answer the question about the distribution/position of VMS glyphs in relation to natural language.
The glyphs still have to "map" to each other in some way if it's an encrypted natural language, but the structural patterns of each are quite different.
In fact, the way it is laid out, the VMS is more like syllabic languages than western languages BUT... not sufficiently similar (or flexible enough) to reveal correspondence.
You can hunt through languages all over the world, but until you resolve this discrepancy (the two disparate patterns), then you are not going to be able to bridge VMS with whatever languages you think are best matched.
RE: Was Voynichese meant to be pronounced? - Aga Tentakulus - 11-10-2019
@Rene
Most of the icons are from your Voynich Keyboard list. And some of them are from the VM book.
I think there must be a few more. So I think there's another marker in the upper left corner. ( sharp-edged or round ). So a simple alphabet would be complete.
RE: Was Voynichese meant to be pronounced? - Aga Tentakulus - 11-10-2019
It should not be seen as syllables, but as combinations.
The whole thing as a single and combination sign.
Example:
RE: Was Voynichese meant to be pronounced? - Koen G - 11-10-2019
That's all fine, but the problem of positional rigidity remains. For example, if [q] is "ex", how would you write a word like "Pontifex" in Voynichese?
RE: Was Voynichese meant to be pronounced? - Aga Tentakulus - 11-10-2019
exactly as on page 116v, with (s)
RE: Was Voynichese meant to be pronounced? - Aga Tentakulus - 11-10-2019
@Koen
These are just examples. Reality is certainly a bit more complex.
RE: Was Voynichese meant to be pronounced? - Monica Yokubinas - 11-10-2019
(11-10-2019, 07:45 AM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Doesn't u find that weird in some way?
They are always the same symbols, but linked differently.
It smells like encryption to me, and it also answers your question about the distribution of letters.
Some of the character glyphs are actual You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. used on page 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. for alchemical and angelic is on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in the 4 corners of the page. the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. has both inside.
Hebrew utilizes different glyph alphabet symbols for the ending of certain letters. It also utilizes vowel points for sound You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
So I agree with you that the additions to a glyph shows a different phonetic sound.
RE: Was Voynichese meant to be pronounced? - Searcher - 11-10-2019
(11-10-2019, 08:51 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The glyphs still have to "map" to each other in some way if it's an encrypted natural language, but the structural patterns of each are quite different.
...
You can hunt through languages all over the world, but until you resolve this discrepancy (the two disparate patterns), then you are not going to be able to bridge VMS with whatever languages you think are best matched.
One of my ideas was that any glyph of the VMs has one meaning at the beginning, second - inside of the word (not only a root), and third - at the end of the word.
For example, the word dydyd (dydyd). Let's suppose d1 = p (beginning), d2 = d (central), d3 = t (ending). As we know, y-symbol inside of the construction is quite rare in the VMs, thus, we can consider it either a rare letter, or an abbreviation-symbol, which meaning differs from those that appear at the end and beginning, similarly to Latin abbreviations. Most likely, a part of glyphs substitutes abbreviations for prefixes, ends and suffixes, and, obviously, sometimes (but not so frequent) abbreviations happen inside of the words (or roots). In my example, I will consider it the abbreviation - en-.
We get the word You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Latin verb, 3rd person, indicative active future, plural) .
It's not a real attempt of deciphering, it's just a random substitution to show what I mean. Unfortunately, I couldn't find an ideal combination, but, possibly, I have to make more efforts.
RE: Was Voynichese meant to be pronounced? - -JKP- - 11-10-2019
(11-10-2019, 11:17 AM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
@JKP
It should not be seen as syllables, but as combinations.
The whole thing as a single and combination sign.
Example:
Most of these are common ligatures (combinations) in Latin, I've blogged about them numerous times, but we do not know if that is how they work in Voynichese. It's possible that they do, but there's no evidence yet to prove it.
Even of they are ligatures (which I think is possible), it STILL doesn't solve the problem of their positions within tokens. In fact... it makes it makes the problem worse, because normally these kinds of ligatures are not just associated with one or two shapes, as in Voynichese, usually they are more flexible than in Voynichese, and are associated with numerous shapes.