05-03-2019, 10:15 PM
Aww man, I guess this means you won't believe my latest theory identifying <okorory> as the Hebrew word for "banana" when I read it in bigrams as a vowelless abjad...I was hoping to post about it around the beginning of next month 
I agree that it is quite worthwhile to investigate the linguistic structure of the text in its own right, as your blog does. I hope to learn a lot from reading more of your material there.
But I don't think that it's useless or worthless to consider and test hypotheses about possible underlying languages of the ms text. In the classic case of Linear B, yes, Ventris and others studied the structure of the Linear B tablets and language in its own right, as itself, just as your blog does. Clearly this work was essential. But Ventris also entertained and considered and tested hypotheses about possible languages. At the time, the prevailing consensus of researchers was that the text of the Linear B tablets could *not* represent any form of Greek! Ventris actually agreed with this, and he began the most critical stage of his deciphering with what he first thought was a routine check to confirm that certain affixes could *not* be Greek. Only when these affixes, to his own surprise, unexpectedly corresponded closely with Greek, did he find the scent of the trail that led him and Chadwick to decipher Linear B as the archaic form of Greek that we now know as Mycenaean Greek.
So I believe that the discussion of specific language hypotheses, and arguments for and against them, may likewise lead to progress on the Voynich ms. Of course all attempts will fail until the one that succeeds, if it ever does.
Of course I did not consider all of the language theories in my long list with equal seriousness. I was poking fun at myself by including the ones like Elfdalian, Gutamal, Orsamal, etc., that's all. I hope we are all able to poke fun at ourselves, and criticize ourselves, first and foremost in our critical analysis of this fascinating but very difficult Voynich ms text.
I agree that it is quite worthwhile to investigate the linguistic structure of the text in its own right, as your blog does. I hope to learn a lot from reading more of your material there.
But I don't think that it's useless or worthless to consider and test hypotheses about possible underlying languages of the ms text. In the classic case of Linear B, yes, Ventris and others studied the structure of the Linear B tablets and language in its own right, as itself, just as your blog does. Clearly this work was essential. But Ventris also entertained and considered and tested hypotheses about possible languages. At the time, the prevailing consensus of researchers was that the text of the Linear B tablets could *not* represent any form of Greek! Ventris actually agreed with this, and he began the most critical stage of his deciphering with what he first thought was a routine check to confirm that certain affixes could *not* be Greek. Only when these affixes, to his own surprise, unexpectedly corresponded closely with Greek, did he find the scent of the trail that led him and Chadwick to decipher Linear B as the archaic form of Greek that we now know as Mycenaean Greek.
So I believe that the discussion of specific language hypotheses, and arguments for and against them, may likewise lead to progress on the Voynich ms. Of course all attempts will fail until the one that succeeds, if it ever does.
Of course I did not consider all of the language theories in my long list with equal seriousness. I was poking fun at myself by including the ones like Elfdalian, Gutamal, Orsamal, etc., that's all. I hope we are all able to poke fun at ourselves, and criticize ourselves, first and foremost in our critical analysis of this fascinating but very difficult Voynich ms text.