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+--- Thread: Sequential word repetitions in the VMS (/thread-61.html)
RE: Sequential word repetitions in the VMS - Pepper - 14-10-2019
I hand-copied a few folios of the MS to familiarise myself with the glyphs. I made so many repetition errors; sometimes just one per 'paragraph' but, at worst, I accidentally repeated three words in just four lines of the MS.
Of course, that only helps explain the Voynich if that was also being copied from something else, and the statistics seem to indicate the repetition isn't random. But it was an interesting (anec)data point for me.
RE: Sequential word repetitions in the VMS - Koen G - 14-10-2019
That's an interesting anecdote, Pepper. Do you have an idea about why you accidentally repeated words?
RE: Sequential word repetitions in the VMS - -JKP- - 14-10-2019
The farther away the exemplar, the tougher it can be to find the correct place on the page and continue from where you were.
Some of these parchment sheets were pretty big. I imagine it must have been a challenge (and to take a lot of patience and discipline) to do it well.
RE: Sequential word repetitions in the VMS - Pepper - 14-10-2019
As JKP says, when I looked back at the VMS for the next word, my eyes kept finding the word I'd just copied instead. I didn't make any mistakes on the very first page I copied, when I was so concerned with getting the glyphs the right shape that I was paying very close attention. As I got more familiar with the glyphs - which happened surprisingly quickly - I made many more repetition errors.
I do remember thinking that if I were a paid scribe using expensive parchment, I would've been trying harder not to make errors.
Repetitions were my most frequent mistake, but there were also a few times when I skipped a line. So I wrote half of line 2, then finished it with the last half of line 3.
RE: Sequential word repetitions in the VMS - arca_libraria - 15-10-2019
A lot of work has been done on mistakes in medieval manuscripts. The main types of copying mistakes are:
- dittography - accidentally repeating a letter, a group of letters, or whole words.
- haplography - accidentally omitting a letter, group of letters, or whole words, particularly when the letters or the words are similar, e.g. "philogy" for "philology".
- homoeoteleuton - this means "same ending" and it is when a scribe's eyes jump to words with the same ending and inadvertently miss out a few words or even a few lines.
- homoeoarchy - this means "same beginning" and it is when a scribe's eyes jump to words with the same beginning and inadvertently miss out a few words or even a few lines. This is particularly common when scribes are copying lists where each entry has the same beginning.
As an aside, when I was learning paleography, my teacher used to make us practice sometimes with languages we couldn't read fluently, or at all, so we would transcribe texts in Old Irish or Welsh, or medieval French and German dialects alongside all of the Latin. Transcribing something in a language you can't read is much harder than transcribing something you can understand. I imagine copying something like the VMS, at least at first, is even harder, and more like copying something written in a script system you can't fully read or understand.
A slightly(?) related anecdote: although it's not my major research specialism, I sometimes work with texts written in Old English and Old Norse where the scribes have used runes rather than the Roman alphabet. I can read those languages, but I only work with runes maybe once or twice a year and for the first hour or so when I'm transcribing I'm very slow and I make so many mistakes compared to when I'm working with a text written with the Roman alphabet.
RE: Sequential word repetitions in the VMS - Gavin Güldenpfennig - 24-12-2019
Merry Christmas to you all!
I have a question (if it should be in another thread, please put it in this thread). Does anybody of you, if there is any list of the Voynich words or of the most frequent words? I have done some experiments and it turned out, that there seems to be a tendency, which maybe gives us chance to locate the manuscriptes origin and age. I will do some further experiments before I gave you my suspicion.
For now only this: If you think, that a language could be dead, may it lives in the underground. But I have also found out, that it is not Basque, as I wrote some months ago. My old phonetic substitution wasn' t accurate.
RE: Sequential word repetitions in the VMS - Anton - 25-12-2019
Hi Gavin,
Your question is indeed off-topic, but I can recommend the free Voynich Reader tool: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Under the "Analyze -> Word Stats" menu you will find the vord statistics based on the chosen transcription
RE: Sequential word repetitions in the VMS - Gavin Güldenpfennig - 26-12-2019
Thank you, Anton,
but that is exactly my problem. I can´t use this Voynichreader, because, it is for Windows and I have a Mac Book.
RE: Sequential word repetitions in the VMS - bi3mw - 26-12-2019
(26-12-2019, 01:48 PM)Gavin Güldenpfennig Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Thank you, Anton,
but that is exactly my problem. I can´t use this Voynichreader, because, it is for Windows and I have a Mac Book.
@Gavin Güldenpfennig: See here:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Load a (cleaned up) VMS Corpus in AntConc and click on "Word list".
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
RE: Sequential word repetitions in the VMS - Anton - 26-12-2019
(26-12-2019, 01:48 PM)Gavin Güldenpfennig Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Thank you, Anton,
but that is exactly my problem. I can´t use this Voynichreader, because, it is for Windows and I have a Mac Book.
What about You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.?