Syllabification

[Sam G]

Okay... let's start with this: do you honestly believe that every ciphertext in existence has a glyph-for-glyph mapping onto the Roman alphabet that makes it pronounceable?  Because this is what you and others seem to be arguing here, and if you seriously believe this to be true then I don't really know what I'm supposed to say.

Actually I did not thought about it, but this is an interesting question. To answer it, we in the first place need to introduce some language-independent measure of pronounceability. Don't know if it exists (as I said, I'm zero in linguistics), but offhand it seems to me that pronounceability depends largely on the pronounciation rules of the language of choice (or perhaps it will be more appropriate to speak of language families here?) - what is pronounceable in one language may be not pronounceable in another language using the same alphabet.

As for ciphers, at least all substitution ciphers would have glyph-for-glyph pronounceable mapping onto the Roman alphabet. That's just trivial. Beyond substitution, I would not venture to assert anything, but offhand I don't see any reasons why at least a subset of ciphers may not have at least one "pronounceable" mapping (even however vague be the notion of "pronounceability").

Well, maybe you should look into some cipher mechanisms and see which ones have pronounceable output comparable to that which we see with the VMS. Because beyond simple substitution ciphers (for which finding a way of making them pronounceable is generally to go over halfway toward solving them), and a few other contrived types of ciphers (e.g. verbose cipher) that can be excluded for other reasons, outputs of cipher mechanisms aren't pronounceable.  If you want to dispute this, then please provide examples.  And if you can't provide examples of such ciphers then I don't see how you can assert that the pronounceablility of the VMS text is meaningless.  Of course the pronounceability is, all by itself, already a very strong indicator that we are simply looking at a natural language text written in the plain, not at a ciphertext.

That you don't understand it doesn't mean it was the author's intention to make it obscure.  All texts in languages that you can't read are obscure to you - that says nothing about the intentions of the people who wrote them.

That's true, but that does not waive the possibility of that intention.

Which isn't my argument.  I wrote above: Everything about the script suggests that it was intended to emphasize the structure of the text, not obscure it. You responded to that with the non-sequitur about the meaning remaining obscure, and I was just addressing that.

While I suggest to take the possibility of deliberate obfuscation of the message by means of these "pseudo-vowels" as one of the options for consideration, you prefer to waive it altogether. Actually you take them (the pseudo-vowels) at face value just because of their shape. What's the proof that they are vowels indeed?

The proof that they are indeed vowels is that assuming them to be vowels makes the text pronounceable.  If it were a cipher that randomly assigned consonants to vowel-like shapes then we shouldn't see this property, which can be easily demonstrated by looking at the unpronounceable output of simple substitution ciphers of English or other European languages.

The point is that the script was clearly devised by someone who knew how to write Latin, a point which I'm not sure if you're actually disputing, or if you're just trying to nitpick.

No I am not disputing this (mailnly because this is supported by You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. marginalia),

Which is probably not the best way to go about understanding the origins of the script when you consider the possibility that the VMS is a copy made by someone who did not create the original.  But if you at least agree that the scribe who created the VMS script knew Latin, then it seems impossible to deny that the apparent vowels in the VMS script are at least intended to resemble those of the Roman alphabet, a point which you seemed to not fully accept above, by disputing that the shapes of these letters are of any relevance.

but there are researchers who are. I won't speak for Bax or O'Donovan or others (let them defend their points of view themselves). What I mean is that scientific discourse should be based on criteria of scientific truth, not on assertions like "this is clear" or "this is evident" or "thus spake D'Imperio". What is "clear" for one researcher may be not "clear" for another - and the lack of consensus upon essential aspects of the VMS amongst different researchers shows that there are too few things that are really clear - that means, commonly acknowledged.

Well, I wonder what could possibly constitute 100% proof of the origins of the VMS script in your mind.  Maybe you could elaborate on these "criteria for scientific truth".  Obviously we can't redo the creation of the VMS in a laboratory experiment.  I see no problem using terms like "clear" and "obvious" because in my view that's as good as it can realistically get with historical questions like this.  We can amass all the evidence in the world, but at the end of the day everyone is still free to believe whatever he or she wants.

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...  The point is that the script was clearly devised by someone who knew how to write Latin, a point which I'm not sure if you're actually disputing, or if you're just trying to nitpick.

The script was clearly devised by someone who was familiar with Latin scribal conventions.

• As in Latin, the "9" char is usually at the end, sometimes at the beginning, and only occasionally elsewhere.
  
• As in Latin, the Eva-s are Eva-r are sometimes in a longer word and sometimes alone, between words. Even though single chars are otherwise uncommon in the VMS, these two shapes behave more-or-less as they do in Latin.
  
• As in Latin, the shape that looks like a bench is sometimes broken into two shapes that stand alone.
  
• As in Latin, the terminal shape in a word-token sometimes has a tail stretching up and back over the last glyph.
  

Well, I basically agree with this, but if someone wants to say that all these points and many others that can be raised are just a meaningless coincidence, then what are you supposed to do?  I feel like that's where I'm at with pointing out the obvious similarity in the vowel shapes.

But, the script does not otherwise behave like Latin. While the variability of the letters may match or be similar to a number of natural languages in a purely numeric sense, the problem is that the VMS imposes strict rules on the position of letters in a word that are different from most natural languages, including Latin and most Germanic languages. Which makes me wonder whether the Latin conventions are used to represent similar conventions in a language of a less variable structure or, if they were added to make it superficially look like Latin (as a ruse or as a comfortable way to write something less familiar in a familiar system).

My view, which is somewhat similar to the second of the options that you present, is that the VMS script was created by a Latin scribe for some non-European language that he encountered and wanted to be able to write down.  He adapted the writing system(s) he was familiar with to writing this new language and to make a script that reflected its peculiar structure.  That just seems to be what the evidence of the VMS itself indicates is correct.