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My readings of the plant labels - Koen G - 15-04-2016
Anton just posted an observation about my readings of the plant labels in another thread. Since I appreciate input and criticism and would like to know possible objections to what I'm doing, I thought it would be neater to move this to a new thread. This is what he wrote:
Quote:Since Koen elsewhere expressed his belief that pharma section labels represent plant names, I did some screening checks and then I found this thread in which I would like to state the following discouraging considerations as to the aforementioned proposal.
1) Many of the pharma section labels are unique words. E.g. in f88r, even if we exclude the labels that might be attributed to jars, 38% of labels are unique; in f88v, using the same principle, 50% of labels are unique.
2) Furthermore, not all non-unique labels are mentioned in the botanical folios. In f88r, 25% of non-unique labels, and in f88v, 40% of
non-unique labels, are those which are mentioned only outside of the botanical folios.
Considering 1) and 2), we can state that for the book, the opening part of which is an extensive herbal, it is strange to have so many herbs not mentioned in the descriptive subject section.
3) Some labels are re-used through the pharma section. Like, otoldy is used in f89r1, then in f89r2 (but here it can be attributed to the jar), but also in 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. where it labels two roots of entirely different appearance.
4) Here and there there are more labels than plants, even if we provide for the jars. Like in the third row of f99r: tha jar has its own label inside, so to the right of it we have 8 labels for only 7 objects. In the third row of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. we have 7 labels for 5 objects.
Point 4) is not decisive, because there could be plants which names are encoded with multiple vords arranged in an uncareful fashion.
Taken together, all these points, I am afraid, waive the possibility that the pharma section labels are plant names.
Anton, I understand your objections, but there are some factors that could explain your findings:
- The first label in a row is always attributed to a jar. I think these are geographical names related to trading (like ports or local trade centres), which may not be repeated elsewhere, but I have only a number of proposed readings, which I haven't published yet. The interpretation is very tentative, but they do belong to the jars. The more ornate jars just don't have their label written on them because that would ruin their appearance and make the label hard to read.
- A core part of my interpretation is that the labels are the local names for the plants, i.e. the names that were foreign to the reader. They may be repeated in other sections, but don't need to. It's like if you had a book in English about French plants, with first a botanical description of the plant, and then a list of the French names. The first part can mention the French name, but doesn't need to since its focus is not linguistic.
- I read the gallows as "ornate" forms of sounds that can also be expressed in ligatures (like the "bench"). I don't understand this well enough yet to describe how it works entirely. In the root and leaf section, ornate glyphs are used to stress certain sounds. So it's possible that the same plant name appears in two different forms, in which case I would expect the less ornate form in the "large plant" section. I have found one example of this, which I will gladly explain if so desired.
- It cannot be denied that there are plants that appear in both the "large plants" as the "small plants" section, but there is definitely no one-to-one correspondence. Many plants from either section can't be found in the other one. I'd be more worried if you found more corresponding words. I'm rather comfortable with the numbers you mention.
- The "more labels than plants" problem is easily explained, usually in the way that you suggested already. The labels often refer to products rather than the actual plant, which may result in a label that reads "wood (of) teak", like in my post about You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. I'm rather happy with the label reading there (although it is a bad example of how the plant name is similar to the mythological mnemonic name, but that part is less relevant in this discussion). Similarly, I have recently found out that the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. plant's label refers to the juice of the fruit, rather than the plant's name, so it reads "juice (of) ???". The first word of that label I read as "Ros", which still appears in many Indo-Iranian languages as "ros" or "ras" meaning sap or fruit, just like it did in Sanskrit. At the time of posting, I hadn't discovered this yet, so this isn't reflected in the post. So this would refer to a fruit of which the juice was economically interesting or used as provisions for a ship's crew.
- About some labels being re-used, that is to be expected. We're dealing with foreign plant names, and those names often got borrowed to name different plants, or got assigned to different plants in different places over time. Given the fact that Voynich roots are especially mnemonic, i.e. modified, we can expect roots that look different to bear the same, or a similar name. Also, since we're dealing with a transcription of these names for Greek speakers, some phonological differences in the original languages won't be reflected. For example, to a Dutch speaker who's not used to English, the words "thorn" and "torn" will sound the same, just like "bet" and "bed".
RE: My readings of the plant labels - Anton - 15-04-2016
Koen, thanks for providing the reply into this discussion. Actually I also thought to open a separate thread, but then I found a corresponding one. Anyway.
First of all, some of your counter-objections are based on the assumption that the Voynichese script conveys some natural language in plain text. There has been extensive criticism of that assumption, but since this assumption is not decisive in your argumentation, I will not touch it here. Your argumentation could be adapted to be used under the cipher-theory as well.
Quote:A core part of my interpretation is that the labels are the local names for the plants, i.e. the names that were foreign to the reader. They may be repeated in other sections, but don't need to. It's like if you had a book in English about French plants, with first a botanical description of the plant, and then a list of the French names.
It is not clear why would the descriptive part (the botanical section) use one language, and the pharma section would use another. On the contrary, as we see through some herbal examples which colleagues such as Marco, Rene or Ellie bring to our attention (although I admit I do not follow them very closely), the "descriptive pages" often specify both the "foreign" (= Latin) and the local (e.g. German) name of the plant. That is only reasonable - the author says "this is konig's wurz, and by the way it is called dulcis saporis among learned men". Now, according to your point of view, the pharma section lists local, "familiar" names while the descriptive botanical section uses "foreign" or maybe "learned" alternatives without aiding the reader with the link between the two. It is like I begin to speak about Betula forgetting to specify that it is a birch, and then I switch to speaking about birches.
More important still, the observed practice is not consistent. While there are pharma labels not present in the botanical section, there labels that are. I think with your two languages assumption this should have been one way or the other, but not both at the same time.
Quote:So it's possible that the same plant name appears in two different forms, in which case I would expect the less ornate form in the "large plant" section.
This could be also in the case when one plain text word could be enciphered in a number of ways, yielding different ciphertexts. Unfortunately, this would render useless making any assumptions based on the labels consistency throughout the MS (which course I took).
Quote:The labels often refer to products rather than the actual plant, which may result in a label that reads "wood (of) teak"
Actually this negates the proposal that the pharma labels stand for the plant names, because the name is "teak", not "teakwood".
Quote:About some labels being re-used, that is to be expected. We're dealing with foreign plant names, and those names often got borrowed to name different plants, or got assigned to different plants in different places over time. Given the fact that Voynich roots are especially mnemonic, i.e. modified, we can expect roots that look different to bear the same, or a similar name.
A similar name - maybe. The same name - well, not in this kind of section, apparently aimed at preparation of some medicals, mixtures or meals. We should expect consistency here. It is true that, say, "cat's tail" can be used to name different plants (at least it is so in the Russian tradition), but in a recipe book it would be really strange to mix the two under the same name, especially on two adjacent pages.
Furthermore, if the roots are "especially mnemonic", then developing this consideration we come to the conclusion that they don't need names to be put near them. Mnemonics is the first and foremost consideration why I began to doubt those labels as plant names - otherwise, I could not have answered the question "how the plants are to be identified by the reader if they are not labeled with names?".
RE: My readings of the plant labels - Koen G - 15-04-2016
Anton,
Your counterarguments are based on the assumption that the VM plant sections are, and behave, like "plant books" we know. My view, largely agreeing with Diane's, is that both sections were originally compiled for someone (a trader, an Alexandrian official...) willing to learn about the trade routes. In Greco-Roman Alexandria, all "books of the ships" were copied, giving its library a vast amount of documents to use as sources. I think a scholar was hired to structure information from such sources into a way that would make them relatively easy to digest for the intended reader(s). Hence the large amount of mnemonics.
This resulted in an overview of useful plants from various areas around the trade routes. These documents were then copied a number of times more for preservation, and somewhere along the line, other sections got added to them, and they were likely taken East. Eventually they found their way back to the Mediterranean, in the north this time, where they were copied one last time, a thin layer of medieval European veneer was added, the script was altered for reasons unknown, and the final result is known as MS Beinecke 408.
I think the script is a late addition, because I agree with others that it looks rather Latin, and indeed I often read the glyphs as if they were their closest Latin counterparts.
Quote:It is not clear why would the descriptive part (the botanical section) use one language, and the pharma section would use another.
The descriptive section probably talks about the plants in the reader's own language, or one of the languages familiar to him (educated people mastered a number of languages in those days). It may or may not mention names in other languages. The mnemonics in this section, as Diane analyses them, are practical: they focus on what the plant can be used for as ship's supplies, for ship repair, or its commercial value.
The "pharma section", which I consider my own "area of expertise", is not a pharma section at all. It has been constructed to teach the local names for these plants to a person professionally interested in learning them. Its main purpose is linguistic. That is why the mnemonics are based on Greco-Roman myth: these stories and images were familiar to the intended audience, which would allow them to learn the names of the foreign plants easier: "Right, this plant was drawn to resemble Heracles, so its name sounds a bit like Heracles". I didn't invent this system - it was known already in antiquity, and modern memory experts recommend something similar. Similar systems are exploited in the modern "memory palace", which seeks to activate the visual part of the brain to remember information (hence the name of my blog, the Voynich memory temple
Quote:This could be also in the case when one plain text word could be enciphered in a number of ways, yielding different ciphertexts. Unfortunately, this would render useless making any assumptions based on the labels consistency throughout the MS (which course I took).
It doesn't render anything useless, in my opinion. There is a double "cipher", if you want to call it like that, but only if you would call "THIS" and "this" two sets of ciphers. Also, for example, the common Dutch diphthong "ij" is, in informal contexts, also written as "y", which would result in different readings if you don't know the language. In summary, I think a number of sounds can be written in two different ways, but that is not much different from things we still do today, and is perfectly readable for those accustomed to it.
Quote:Actually this negates the proposal that the pharma labels stand for the plant names, because the name is "teak", not "teakwood".
True. In many cases, it's the product gained from the plant, given the purchase-oriented focus of the section (as I see it). Of course, in many other cases, the name for the plant/product/fruit will be the same either way.
Quote:if the roots are "especially mnemonic", then developing this consideration we come to the conclusion that they don't need names to be put near them
Here I must disagree. Plants in their local language aren't named after Greek gods. The mnemonics works as a memory booster, something you know that you can tie the name to, but you still need a label to tell you what that name is. For example, the local, Indic name for sugar was something like sharkara. It may be impossible to come up with a mnemonic that sounds just like that - likely, there is no word in your language that comes close to /sharkara/. So what they did is try to match part of the word with the mnemonic, or only the consonants, for example. This is usually enough to kickstart your memory into remembering the foreign word.
In the case of sugar, the mnemonic was "Khara", Grace - the plant was drawn as the three Graces, popular figures in classical mythology and in later eras as well. The person will still need the word "sharkara" written for him, but the mnemonic is there to help him remember it.
RE: My readings of the plant labels - Anton - 15-04-2016
Quote:Your counterarguments are based on the assumption that the VM plant sections are, and behave, like "plant books" we know.
Actually yes, but this may be generalized without detriment to my argumentation. Say, the botanical section "introduces" plants into the book (for whatever purpose), and the pharma section "makes use" of plants (whatever use).
Quote:The "pharma section", which I consider my own "area of expertise", is not a pharma section at all. It has been constructed to teach the local names for these plants to a person professionally interested in learning them. Its main purpose is linguistic.
As a sidenote, that means that the local names can be conveyed through the same script as the non-local names. Generally, no problem - you could e.g. transmit Russian with English alphabet (although not very neatly).
But we get three issues here.
First, this still leaves unexplained why the supposed local names for some plants are found in the botanical section.
Second, the pharma section also contains paragraphs of text. Which tongue are they written in - "local" or "non-local"?
Third, what does otol do as a pharma label "local" name? The most frequent "Voynich star" suddenly turns to be written the same way as some "local" plant name? Well, well
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But there are other examples - like okaiin with its 212 exact matches.
And: what jars do have to do with linguistics?
RE: My readings of the plant labels - Koen G - 16-04-2016
Quote:Actually yes, but this may be generalized without detriment to my argumentation. Say, the botanical section "introduces" plants into the book (for whatever purpose), and the pharma section "makes use" of plants (whatever use).There is no one to one correspondence. The botanical section makes the commercial value of some plants easy to remember, the small plant section teaches the vocabulary. Some plants are in both sections, some aren't.
Quote:As a sidenote, that means that the local names can be conveyed through the same script as the non-local names. Generally, no problem - you could e.g. transmit Russian with English alphabet (although not very neatly).All local names are phonetic transcriptions. All the reader was interested in was what the word sounded like. He didn't want to learn a dozen scripts. Indeed, some areas wouldn't have had written language at the time. The reason Voynichese script was invented at some point may have to do with this as well, but that is too speculative at this time.
Quote:First, this still leaves unexplained why the supposed local names for some plants are found in the botanical sectionI haven't spent a lot of time studying this, but some possible explanations should be clear from the partial overlap between the plants. Also, maybe the local name is mentioned in some parts because it happened to be needed there, while on others they just talked about the use.
About the paragraphs in the small plant section, I haven't studied those in detail yet. I would hypothesize that the main language is the one familiar to the reader. If these paragraphs list possible variations for the local plant names though, they may mostly be composed of often similar foreign words, with only some Greek or Latin words to give structure.
The star name being the same as a plant name can be explained through homonyms. Indic for juice is /ros/, while in Dutch this word means horse or red haired. In other Indic languages the word for juice is /ras/, which is the Dutch word for race or an archaic word for fast. Especially in these short words, but at times also in longer ones, such coincidence can be expected.
Besides, even if we stay within the same language, one word can have very different meanings, so I don't see why this should be a problem.