On plain texts and ciphers (a thought experiment)

[MarcoP]

I think it is worth remembering here what You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:

The difference between the script and the language is a really important one, because it could be that the underlying language is one that is known to us, but what stops us from getting there is just the script that's lying above it. And this is an element of the research which many people just don't seem to get. Even in recent discussions on the internet you get people confusing the issues of the script and language.

For instance, the fact that some glyphs typically occur in a fixed position (e.g. word initially and word finally) is a phenomenon that can be observed in a number of scripts. The example of the positionally constrained "9" abbreviation in Latin has already been mentioned: this obviously has very little to do with the Latin language per se and much to do with medieval Latin scripts.

In another thread, I mentioned the French manuscript You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. - Virgil - [Le livre des Eneydes] - late XV Century.
   

Nablator pointed out that a full transcription is available online. This fragment reads:

Avez passe et leurs voyes copees,
Reprenez cueur et plus ne vous doulez,
Car tost aurons repos si vous voulez.
Laissez apart regrect et peur et craincte,
Ne faictes plus gemissemant ne plaincte,
Car peut estre qun jour le temps viendra
Quant de ce faict au mains il souviendra

The characters highlighted in circles are all rigidly positional:

• blue "r" (word-initial only)
  
• green "v" (word-initial only)
  
• red "s" (word-final only)
  

I have underlined the different shapes of the same characters used in other positions.

The glyphs in circles behave very much like Voynichese q- or -n. Like we shouldn't attribute the behaviour of these glyphs to weird properties of the French language, we should be careful with Voynichese glyphs. Some behaviours will reflect properties of the language, but others will be properties of the script, possibly totally unrelated with the underlying language.