21-10-2019, 07:52 PM
The outcome of a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) experiment is interesting since the algorithm doesn't know anything about vowels and consonants.
The result of Acados experiment was that there is "no clear separation among vowels and consonants". Acado tries to explain this as follows: "Perhaps, the most simple explanation for the absence of a clear separation among vowels and consonants in these four cases is that we are confronted with another example of letters that can function as both vowels and consonants as in the case of 'y' in English. However, for the Voynich manuscript, we have four letters with this capacity and this is a peculiarity whose meaning we cannot unravel for the moment. Another possibility is that the Voynich alphabet is some kind of abjad ..." (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., p. 11f).
Knight and Reddy also found a similar result: "Another method is to use a two-state bigram HMM over letters, and induce two clusters of letters with EM. In alphabetic languages like English, the clusters correspond almost perfectly to vowels and consonants. We find that a curious phenomenon occurs with the VMS – the last character of every word is generated by one of the HMM states, and all other characters by another; i.e., the word grammar is a∗b" (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., p. 80).
It is noteworthy that the two experiments confirm the observations described by Currier: "There seem to be very strong constraints in combinations of symbols; only a very limited number of letters occur with each other in certain positions of a 'word'" (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). Note: Typical in word final position are 'y' (15409 out of 37919 words or 40.6 %), 'n' (6064 times or 16%), 'l' (5909 times or 15.6 %) and 'r' (5689 times or 15 %). Typical in word initial position are 'o' (8530 out of 37919 words or 22.5 %), 'c?' (6921 times or 18.3 %) and 'q' (5389 times or 14.2%).
The result of Acados experiment was that there is "no clear separation among vowels and consonants". Acado tries to explain this as follows: "Perhaps, the most simple explanation for the absence of a clear separation among vowels and consonants in these four cases is that we are confronted with another example of letters that can function as both vowels and consonants as in the case of 'y' in English. However, for the Voynich manuscript, we have four letters with this capacity and this is a peculiarity whose meaning we cannot unravel for the moment. Another possibility is that the Voynich alphabet is some kind of abjad ..." (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., p. 11f).
Knight and Reddy also found a similar result: "Another method is to use a two-state bigram HMM over letters, and induce two clusters of letters with EM. In alphabetic languages like English, the clusters correspond almost perfectly to vowels and consonants. We find that a curious phenomenon occurs with the VMS – the last character of every word is generated by one of the HMM states, and all other characters by another; i.e., the word grammar is a∗b" (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., p. 80).
It is noteworthy that the two experiments confirm the observations described by Currier: "There seem to be very strong constraints in combinations of symbols; only a very limited number of letters occur with each other in certain positions of a 'word'" (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). Note: Typical in word final position are 'y' (15409 out of 37919 words or 40.6 %), 'n' (6064 times or 16%), 'l' (5909 times or 15.6 %) and 'r' (5689 times or 15 %). Typical in word initial position are 'o' (8530 out of 37919 words or 22.5 %), 'c?' (6921 times or 18.3 %) and 'q' (5389 times or 14.2%).
![[+]](https://www.voynich.ninja/images/collapse_collapsed.png)