22-09-2017, 07:18 PM
(This post was last modified: 22-09-2017, 07:22 PM by davidjackson.
Edit Reason: drawing the line under otol
)
I decided to go after otol otol. In essence, I wanted to see what affixes otol could have; and whether those affixes serve with other possible functors (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).
I used my regex parser to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. This tool is in beta, feel free to use it but don't rely on me not changing it.
47 Unique values found
Prefixes are (ignoring the damned !) (count is one unless specified - count includes duplicates with distinct suffixes):
p,q (59),che (2),ch (10),sh (4),ksh (and one t! on f80r.P.28 which I will ignore)
Suffixes are (again ignoring the damned !) (count is one unless specified - count includes duplicates with distinct prefixes):
om,s,o,chey,osheey,dy (12),dyl,y(3),cheo,ol (2),oaiin,ches,dos,or (2),chcthy,olees,am (2),oaram,chd,aiino,dyl (2),fcho,arol,sar,ky,chy,chd
It appears 74 times with a prefix ignoring suffix. 62 times with a suffix ignoring prefix.
18 times with a prefix and NO suffix. 49 times with a suffix and NO prefix.
13 times with a prefix and a suffix. 84 times by itself.
So, taking the numbers above, we can postulate that otol is a function word; and furthermore, that it takes modifications with the affixes. This is logical, because it can appear either by itself, or in conjunction with affixes - they are obviously modifying the core word, otherwise, what is their function?
And yes, otol may very well be a fusion of ot/ol, except for the fact that it appears primarily as a single entity; and both ot and ol are affixes which do not run concurrently inthe corpus (according to a very quick visual examination by me). OK - so this is circular logic. But we have to draw the line somewhere. So the evidence points towards otol being a separate word.
I run a search for the prefixes in the corpus to see whether they are attaching themselves to other words.
They all appear thousands of times as prefixes. I'm not counting them.
I repeat the search for the suffixes in the corpus.
Again, they are all popular as suffixes.
But what is even more interesting is that the suffixes appear, at first glance, to have an order. Ch can be joined on with /ey,/eo,/es,/ct,/d, etc. It can then have further suffixes plugged in, so we see chcthy ch/ct/ch/y. Etc, etc. Prefixes don't do this as much - we get infrequent versions of them, but not such long constructs as the suffixes.
I take another word. Chol.
Chol is a more popular word, and has 165 distinct forms in the corpus. All of the affixes of otol appear in the list, plus quite a few more. Here is the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
So to sum up: we have a popular word (otol) which survives perfectly well by itself. Sometimes it has a prefix; sometimes a suffix. The appendages can be tagged onto one another, in a rhythm. These appendages appear tagged onto another even more popular word (chol).
It's a bold thought but - I'm going to suggest that we see here is evidence of a fusional grammer, where we get a content-word which is modified by prefixes and suffixes to give context to the original content-word.
I'm not just talking about declensions; this is evidence of a strongly synthetic language. I take as an example Spanish, with the perfectly natural word grabandomelo. You take the gerund of to record (grabar), add it to me and end up with this fuser word. It's not exactly the same process as we're seeing here - there are no prefixes and the Voynich verb, if it is a verb, doesn't seem to decline - but it's a similar process.
The next step is to build up a list of the affixes and see if we can develop a comprehensive index to them.
I used my regex parser to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. This tool is in beta, feel free to use it but don't rely on me not changing it.
47 Unique values found
Prefixes are (ignoring the damned !) (count is one unless specified - count includes duplicates with distinct suffixes):
p,q (59),che (2),ch (10),sh (4),ksh (and one t! on f80r.P.28 which I will ignore)
Suffixes are (again ignoring the damned !) (count is one unless specified - count includes duplicates with distinct prefixes):
om,s,o,chey,osheey,dy (12),dyl,y(3),cheo,ol (2),oaiin,ches,dos,or (2),chcthy,olees,am (2),oaram,chd,aiino,dyl (2),fcho,arol,sar,ky,chy,chd
It appears 74 times with a prefix ignoring suffix. 62 times with a suffix ignoring prefix.
18 times with a prefix and NO suffix. 49 times with a suffix and NO prefix.
13 times with a prefix and a suffix. 84 times by itself.
So, taking the numbers above, we can postulate that otol is a function word; and furthermore, that it takes modifications with the affixes. This is logical, because it can appear either by itself, or in conjunction with affixes - they are obviously modifying the core word, otherwise, what is their function?
And yes, otol may very well be a fusion of ot/ol, except for the fact that it appears primarily as a single entity; and both ot and ol are affixes which do not run concurrently inthe corpus (according to a very quick visual examination by me). OK - so this is circular logic. But we have to draw the line somewhere. So the evidence points towards otol being a separate word.
I run a search for the prefixes in the corpus to see whether they are attaching themselves to other words.
They all appear thousands of times as prefixes. I'm not counting them.
I repeat the search for the suffixes in the corpus.
Again, they are all popular as suffixes.
But what is even more interesting is that the suffixes appear, at first glance, to have an order. Ch can be joined on with /ey,/eo,/es,/ct,/d, etc. It can then have further suffixes plugged in, so we see chcthy ch/ct/ch/y. Etc, etc. Prefixes don't do this as much - we get infrequent versions of them, but not such long constructs as the suffixes.
I take another word. Chol.
Chol is a more popular word, and has 165 distinct forms in the corpus. All of the affixes of otol appear in the list, plus quite a few more. Here is the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
So to sum up: we have a popular word (otol) which survives perfectly well by itself. Sometimes it has a prefix; sometimes a suffix. The appendages can be tagged onto one another, in a rhythm. These appendages appear tagged onto another even more popular word (chol).
It's a bold thought but - I'm going to suggest that we see here is evidence of a fusional grammer, where we get a content-word which is modified by prefixes and suffixes to give context to the original content-word.
I'm not just talking about declensions; this is evidence of a strongly synthetic language. I take as an example Spanish, with the perfectly natural word grabandomelo. You take the gerund of to record (grabar), add it to me and end up with this fuser word. It's not exactly the same process as we're seeing here - there are no prefixes and the Voynich verb, if it is a verb, doesn't seem to decline - but it's a similar process.
The next step is to build up a list of the affixes and see if we can develop a comprehensive index to them.
![[+]](https://www.voynich.ninja/images/collapse_collapsed.png)