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Why we can't read it and Michael Coe's "Five Pillars of Decipherment" - kckluge - 27-04-2024
A while back I can across a very interesting blog post by a linguist (Peter Bakker, an expert on creole languages) offering thoughts on the MS 408 text from a linguistic perspective (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. -- the would-be decipherer he refuses to name is clearly Cheshire...). His conclusion is that "If it would have been a real language, in a rational and regular writing system, experts would have figured it out by now."
While I don't think Michael Coe has ever commented on the Voynich text, he's someone who has experience as a key player in the decipherment of the Mayan script. As a result, he has a good understanding of the historical prerequisites for successful decipherments of unreadable scripts, which he has articulated in a number of places as the "Five Pillars of Decipherment" (see, for instance, 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.; Zender gives a slightly revised list of the pillars in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). Here are the five pillars (quoted from Coe's paper on the Indus script):
"1 A large and well-published database: there should be many texts, and most of these should encode complete sentences.
"2 A known language which is encoded by the script, preferably reconstructed in phonology, grammar, and syntax to the period in which the script was in use.
"3 One or more bilingual texts, one member of which is in an already deciphered or otherwise readable script.
"4 A well-understood cultural context to aid in the understanding and reading of the texts.
"5 If the script is logographic or logo-syllabic, there should be accompanying pictorial references (as there are in Egyptian and Classic Maya) to apply to the texts.
"Even texts written in an alphabetic system can be difficult to understand if some of these conditions are not met; consider Etruscan, which violates no. 2 in this list - although we can read Etruscan inscriptions (since the alphabet is very similar to the Greek), they are not readily intelligible.[....]"
Looking at the "pillars" in the context of the Voynich mss.:
Pillar #1 (large database): While there is only one "text", the total length of the manuscript text is fairly large. If there is a meaningful underlying text, it is unclear that the entire codex is in a single natural language (or cipher system/key as the case may be) -- as Bowern & Lindemann observe (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.), "Although there is some overlap, the most common vocabulary items of Voynich A and Voynich B are substantially different. While the words in both languages are built from the same three-field structure, they do not clearly correspond to each other. They might be the result of different encoding processes, or they might represent different underlying natural languages." Even so, given the volume of text just the Herbal A dialect pages or the Bio B pages would seem to provide ample material to work with.
Pillar #2 (known language): What Coe means here isn't simply that the underlying language is attested somewhere. He's talking about the way the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics leveraged the assumption that non-Egyptian names were transcriptions of Greek names using the phonetic values of the characters, and that the texts as a whole were in a language closely related to Coptic; or the way the decipherment of Linear B leveraged the assumption that the underlying language was an early form of Greek; or the way the decipherment of the Mayan script leveraged the assumption that the underlying language was closely related to the Conquest-era spoken Mayan language. It would be fair to say there is no consensus regarding any underlying natural language (whether enciphered or not).
Pillar #3 (bilingual texts): Yeah...we don't have that. 'Nuf said.
Pillar #4 (cultural context): Unfortunately, we don't have much certainty about that. The bulk of the analysis of the imagery that has been done has focused (understandably in light of Pillar #5) on trying to identify the plant images; there has been much more limited published art historical analysis of the other imagery. Diane O'Donovan has written extensively on the subject, and hopefully will follow through on her current plan to submit several papers describing her views for publication -- as someone who isn't an art historian by training, I'd like to see other professional art historians engage with her views on the subject. Others such as Koen Gheuens have mapped specific motifs over a more limited European range. It's very unfortunate that we don't have any visibility into the content of Martina Pippal's recent course on the subject at the University of Vienna.
Pillar #5 (accompanying pictorial references): In principle, we have those. The plants would seem to offer the most likely leverage point -- efforts to identify the plant drawings go back to Ethel Voynich and Theodore Petersen; Jorge Stolfi put forward an argument that the first word of the herbal pages was likely the plant name (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). Unfortunately, efforts to use the plant drawings as cribs haven't worked (at least partly because many of the plant identifications are uncertain or contested).
So, in summary -- yes on Pillar #1, no on Pillars #2 & #3, unclear at best on Pillar #4, and in principle a yes on Pillar #5. Looked at through the lens of Coe's pillars it's not all that surprising the text (if there is one) hasn't been read.
Karl
RE: Why we can't read it and Michael Coe's "Five Pillars of Decipherment" - Koen G - 27-04-2024
(27-04-2024, 10:11 AM)kckluge Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Others such as Koen Gheuens have mapped specific motifs over a more limited European range. It's very unfortunate that we don't have any visibility into the content of Martina Pippal's recent course on the subject at the University of Vienna.
I just want to point out here that the mapping over a limited European range is not restricted by choice, but rather by the evidence. For example, when I referred to academic publications that indicate that the T-O diagram is an expression of a medieval Christian world view, Diane protested that my scope was too limited. But I can't expand my scope if there is nothing to expand it to. When I asked for examples of a similar T-in-O diagram in non-Christian cultures, the answer was silence.
RE: Why we can't read it and Michael Coe's "Five Pillars of Decipherment" - pjburkshire - 27-04-2024
What if the Voynich Manuscript is a natural language but a constructed alphabet? Would that fall under Pillar #2 of the "Five Pillars of Decipherment"?
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"Some scripts were invented for spoken languages that did not have adequate writing systems, including the Hangul, Cherokee, Canadian Aboriginal syllabics, N'Ko, Fraser, Tangut and Pollard scripts. Armenian, Georgian, and Glagolitic may fit in this category, though their origin is not known."
It looks to me like the people who invented the Voynichese alphabet adopted some Latin letters, maybe some Greek letters, and maybe some letters from other places, and then invented some of their own out of thin air. A hodge-podge alphabet that was uniquely theirs.
To me, the letter "a" looks like the handwritten lowercase letter "a". To me, "s" looks a little like a lowercase Greek Zeta "ζ".
The Voynichese letter that has always intrigued me the most is "l". To me it looks like one of those memorial ribbons that people wear to support a cause. It looks like the rune, Othala "ᛟ" and also the Turkic "?".
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RE: Why we can't read it and Michael Coe's "Five Pillars of Decipherment" - kckluge - 28-04-2024
(27-04-2024, 01:34 PM)pjburkshire Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What if the Voynich Manuscript is a natural language but a constructed alphabet? Would that fall under Pillar #2 of the "Five Pillars of Decipherment"?
[...]
I'm only being slightly facetious when I respond by saying that at the end of the day all scripts are "constructed scripts" (or adaptations of already existing scripts) -- some are just constructed over a longer period of time. With the caveat that I'm not a linguist (nor do I play one on TV), from the reading I've done on historic decipherments I'm not sure from a process point of view why that would change things. Read Coe's Breaking the Maya Code and look at all the complications the people working on that script had to deal with -- multiple forms of the same glyph, multiple glyphs representing the same syllable -- the Cherokee syllabary would be a walk in the park compared to that. Now, if it was a constructed script by a non-native speaker that might complicate things because they might do a poor job of capturing aspects of the spoken language (e.g., see the history of romanization of the Chinese language).
Karl
RE: Why we can't read it and Michael Coe's "Five Pillars of Decipherment" - kckluge - 28-04-2024
(27-04-2024, 11:02 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(27-04-2024, 10:11 AM)kckluge Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Others such as Koen Gheuens have mapped specific motifs over a more limited European range. It's very unfortunate that we don't have any visibility into the content of Martina Pippal's recent course on the subject at the University of Vienna.
I just want to point out here that the mapping over a limited European range is not restricted by choice, but rather by the evidence. For example, when I referred to academic publications that indicate that the T-O diagram is an expression of a medieval Christian world view, Diane protested that my scope was too limited. But I can't expand my scope if there is nothing to expand it to. When I asked for examples of a similar T-in-O diagram in non-Christian cultures, the answer was silence.
I hear what you're saying. I'm not unsympathetic, especially with respect to the issue of T-O maps in general and f68v3 in particular. Having said that:
* Diane is not the only person to make facially plausible claims that some of the plant drawings depict Asian plants that were unfamiliar to Europeans prior to the mid 15th century (if you take the date of the vellum as a terminus ad quem) and/or unrepresented in European manuscripts through that period. (I think I got that right.) If that's the case, then maybe we do need to consider broader cultural horizons.
* As surprising as it may be given some of my more...vigorous...comments, I do try to keep an open mind. (I've been posting to the mailing list, etc. for 30+ years, and we all have bad days with regard to tone and/or accuracy.) So when Diane writes about artistic conventions regarding the depiction of unclothed female bodies over time and space, I recognize that I lack the necessary background to take issue with her opinions in an informed way. Which is why I wish we had the luxury of having other trained art historians engage with her analyses and claims. Which I hope will happen. Ideally by her submitting to and being published in journals that not only do peer review but also accompany published papers with commentary by the reviewers.
* And I think the broader point remains, which is that we sorely need a critical mass of professional art historical attention directed at MS 408 that has been lacking to date. For its own sake as well as how it may potentially help inform reading the text.
By the way, I actually meant to refer to J. K. Petersen (not to deprecate the comparative studies you've done) -- so shout out to J. K....
Also by the way, I still think that the potential f68v3-BNF Fr. 565 connection (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) is one of the best threads we have to pull on. Unlike the oak-ivy drawing where there is a family resemblance to a number of manuscripts, it seems plausible that the creator of f68v3 had that specific manuscript in front of them as a model -- so what is the relevant set of people who that could have been true of? Unfortunately, I think the real problem we face is that the sort of people who were likely involved in the creation of MS 408 are not the sort of people whose papers were preserved and whose lives were well documented. Consider the notebook (sic) of the architect Villard de Honnecourt -- it's not unique because there was something special about the author, or there's something special about the contents, or because it's at all likely that Villard was unusual in keeping such notes. It's unique because it survived.
Karl
RE: Why we can't read it and Michael Coe's "Five Pillars of Decipherment" - R. Sale - 28-04-2024
One of the "best threads we have to pull on", eh? My gracious, it's ten years old! Pull on it, already.
Rene said this today in another thread: "Little by little, the evidence turned up and we got a more and more complete picture."
Sometimes little by little occurs with a tectonic nature. Sometimes nothing happens for a long time, then all of a sudden... The discovery by E. Velinska was one of those events <IMHO>. The original posting also included a cosmic diagram from Harley 334 with some interesting similarities. Harley 334 also has an illustration of a mermaid and 'friends' similar to the VMs.
BNF Fr. 565 has ties of provenance to Oresme, to Jean de Berry and to Paris c. 1410. The structure of the cosmos is atypical. There are no planetary or heavenly spheres. Harley 334 (Paris, 2nd Qtr. 15th) shows that this cosmic structure has a Parisian connection during the C-14 dates.
The VMs cosmos clearly looks different. Starting with the central Earth, it is apparent that this part of the VMs depiction is not pictorial. The representation has undergone a code shift from pictorial to linguistic. The inverted T-O structure remains, but any chance of visual similarity is out the window. And that is a useful concept because it works elsewhere as well. The artist has intentionally manipulated appearance, in the stars and in the cosmic boundary / cloud band. In the VMs cosmic cloud band, the 43 undulations of ''565" ambiguously play hide and see between the intersecting, curved spokes from a version of Shirakatsi's wheel (Eight Phases of the Moon). And this part of the deal as weel - ambiguity. The artist isn't playing fair. The artist is not spoon-feeding the reader. It's a puzzle.
Other investigations have tied the VMs mermaid to mythical Melusine, who was held to be ancestral, through Bonne of Luxembourg, to the Valois (Berry & Burgundy etc.) rulers of this era. The VMs "mermaid" is clearly a special case. Mermaids do not have thighs. Melusine of Luxembourg was more like a mermaid than the winged and dragon-like Melusine of Lusignan.
Incidentally, the use of a simple nebuly line as a cosmic boundary is uncommon but can be found in the Berry Apocalypse.