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RE: The incompatibility of Voynichese with natural human language - Alin_J - 11-03-2020
(11-03-2020, 05:25 PM)Ben Trovato Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(11-03-2020, 12:01 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Thank you, Jonas, that sounds interesting!
I am not sure I understand correctly the kind of repetition in Kalevala. Is it perfect-reduplication like e.g. daiin daiin? If so, is it anywhere close to the almost 1% rate in the VMS?
I have only seen translations of this text, but IIRC, the repetitions are patterns like this:
The men go to the meadows,
the men go to the pastures,
the men go to the fields.
They sing songs of their country,
they sing songs of their families,
the sing songs of freedom...
and so on ... and on ... and on.
Fun fact, Borges named his most famous detective "Lönnrot". He didn't end up well.
Yes, I have only counted perfect reduplication. It seems like its usually the same word separated by ','
For example: "neiti, neiti" or "poika, poika". Sometimes the word is at the end of a line and the same word is found at the beginning of the next line.
RE: The incompatibility of Voynichese with natural human language - Alin_J - 11-03-2020
(11-03-2020, 12:01 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(10-03-2020, 07:51 PM)Alin_J Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Apart from the lack if longer sequences, you could also make the claim that the frequent repetitions of the same word one after another is incompatible with natural texts. The Voynich manuscript contains about twice as many consequent word-repetitions as would be expected of a randomly word-shuffled text. Indeed, most natural language writings contain many fewer consequent repetitions than their random counterpart. So that basically while identical words in most natural texts tends to avoid each other in proximity, the Voynich words behave more like magnets and wants to stick together. It is therefore also interesting to note that there is in fact one well known text in natural language containing meaning that has words behaving like magnets instead of what is usual for a natural writing, and it also shows about twice as many repetitions as its random counterpart: the Finnish work "Kalevala", collated by Elias Lönnrot (1835) (available from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). This is an example of a poetic writing/prose and this particular found "black swan" perfectly shows the tendency to perhaps sometimes get too misled by our own cultural expectations and assumptions of writings, given the "typical" (and most statistical analyses will be based on the typical samples due to the lack of availability of a few good atypical candidates) - and we know that the Voynich book is a very atypical book, so why should we expect anything else of the text it contains?
Thank you, Jonas, that sounds interesting!
I am not sure I understand correctly the kind of repetition in Kalevala. Is it perfect-reduplication like e.g. daiin daiin? If so, is it anywhere close to the almost 1% rate in the VMS?
A while ago, Koen pointed out Latin poetry with several occurrences of immediately repeated words (his "MiscCarmina" collection, discussed You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). But in that case the perfect-reduplication rate was still too low (about 0.5%). Moreover, quasi reduplication is extremely rare in that case (about 0.1%).
Yes, I have only measured perfect reduplication and the words seem mostly separated by commas. Sometimes the word appears at the end of a line followed by the same word starting the next line.
I don't know how to express it in percentage, it depends on what you are measuring relative to, and I have only analyzed from the beginning up until to word 40 000 (approximately the same number of tokens as in the VM).
I have calculated the expected number of pair-occurrences in a random word-shuffled version of the text based on each individual word's total amount of occurrences in the original text. For example, the word "neiti" has a frequency count of 65 among the 40 000 first tokens in Kalevala, so the expected number of pair-repetitions of this word is approximately (65/40000)^2 * 40000 = 0.106... If you do this calculation for all unique words and sum them, you get the expected number of pair-occurrences among all words if the word-order is random, and so for Kalevala you get approximately 27 expected occurrences of repeated words. The actual number of repetitions is 64 (approximately double). The corresponding figures for the VM (101 format) are 118 vs. 228, also approximately double the expected amount but the expected amount is larger than in Kalevala due to higher frequency counts of the unique words in the VM.
RE: The incompatibility of Voynichese with natural human language - MarcoP - 11-03-2020
Thank you, Jonas!
As a percentage, I consider the number of perfectly reduplicating consecutive word couples vs the total number of consecutive word couples (N.words-1).
According to the numbers you provided, we have 64/40.000 i.e. 0.16%, about one fifth of the VMS average. But, as pointed out by your expected/actual argument, it is clear that these occurrences are very significant.
It seems to me that the majority of the cases occur in the position you described: around line breaks (a line ending with word W, followed by a line starting with word W). This is something I have never seen: definitely interesting.
Possibly even more interesting, the text also features several instances of quasi reduplication. E.g.:
tuuriasi, tuumiasi.
mustien mutien
selvältä selältä
My first impression is that, also in this case, we are far below VMS rates, still it is very exciting to see a text featuring both systematic reduplication and quasi-reduplication!
Thank you again for mentioning Kalevala!
RE: The incompatibility of Voynichese with natural human language - Alin_J - 11-03-2020
(11-03-2020, 08:55 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Possibly even more interesting, the text also features several instances of quasi reduplication. E.g.:
tuuriasi, tuumiasi.
mustien mutien
selvältä selältä
That was also interesting !
RE: The incompatibility of Voynichese with natural human language - Emma May Smith - 12-03-2020
On the original topic of this thread, I can only pose this rhetorical question: is the Voynich text compatible with a medieval cipher?
RE: The incompatibility of Voynichese with natural human language - Aga Tentakulus - 12-03-2020
@ Emma May Smith
You know how it is. When you write about decryptions and possible solutions in the VM, you are hardly listened to.
But I'll try it anyway based on my experience.
Basically it is possible with a medieval system.
I think he has at least 3 techniques connected with each other. But that can't be all, there must be something more.
Example of simple application on the keyword "Taurus"
RE: The incompatibility of Voynichese with natural human language - -JKP- - 13-03-2020
If you choose specific glyphs, you can always turn them into something in some language.
If you can get a phrase, then maybe you have something, but one or two words can easily exist by coincidence.
RE: The incompatibility of Voynichese with natural human language - Aga Tentakulus - 13-03-2020
@JKP
You got that right. It could just be a coincidence.
The important thing is that I stay in the system. If I keep moving there, the results must remain constant with the same use.
Meanwhile I have so many results that I can no longer assume coincidence. But maybe I have not yet hit the system correctly.
"Taurus" lat. "Taurum" = T aur g = Tg = 8g = tum / tus
It's all based on system.
RE: The incompatibility of Voynichese with natural human language - Aga Tentakulus - 13-03-2020
Actually, it's like Easter. He hides the eggs, and I look for them.
Example:
Where is the "S" and how does he use it in the system?
Not even the order plays a role here.
Sorry, everyone works in German.
seen ? c=e
RE: The incompatibility of Voynichese with natural human language - nickpelling - 13-03-2020
(12-03-2020, 09:14 PM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.On the original topic of this thread, I can only pose this rhetorical question: is the Voynich text compatible with a medieval cipher?
Taking the rhetorical bait :-) , I'd say that Voynichese is incompatible with what cryptological historians might classify as "mainstream" medieval ciphers, but for broadly the same reasons that make it incompatible with just about every natural language under the sun.
Furthermore, even though Currier A and Currier B have many language-like facets (for want of a better word) in common, I'd be surprised if I was the only researcher who finds that the two read immensely differently. The A/B differences are so fundamental and structural that they surely cannot be merely artifacts of a change in vocabulary.
Hence I'd say that what we see in Voynichese is not only incompatible with natural human language, it is incompatible with natural human language twice over.