[split] Verbose cipher?

[geoffreycaveney]

For those who are interested, on a provisional basis I have developed a new transcription of the Voynich ms character inventory primarily based on Koen's treatment of selective n-grams (multi-glyph sequences) as single units, by means of which he managed to raise the conditional character entropy (h2) to a European natural language-like level while maintaining a normal basic character entropy (h1). I have incorporated most of the suppositions I proposed You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in order to incorporate Koen's treatment of [o+glyph] as a single unit as well as to explain a certain remarkable anomaly in the character distribution. I have adjusted a few things, added a few things, and the aim is to present a transcription based on this new analysis that is as complete as can be possible at this provisional stage. I have tentatively titled this system the Voynich Verbose Cipher Character Inventory, which I abbreviate as VCI.

I hasten to underline that I have striven to avoid making this transcription look like any particular candidate language that the Voynich ms text could possibly be written in. The series of soft / palatalized consonants in this transcription, represented by ligatures and glyph sequences with EVA [ch], is based exclusively on the language-neutral analysis presented in my prior post. The concept of [o+glyph] as representing the voiced counterparts of the plain voiceless [glyph] consonants was inspired by Koen's insights, although of course as always any mistakes or errors in my incorporation of Koen's analysis into this provisional transcription system are my responsibility alone. The idea of treating [qo+glyph] sequences as nasal consonants was presented in my prior post. 

One major adjustment since my prior post is the provisional identification of EVA [l] as VCI <s>. The motivation for this proposal is the observation of the relatively frequent sequence EVA [lk] (1079 occurrences) in contrast with the relative infrequency of the sequence EVA [lt] (107 occurrences). It is already natural to propose <t> as a plausible value of EVA [k], due to its frequency and relation to other glyphs. The frequency of the EVA [lk] = VCI <st> sequence is further quite natural in many European languages, hence the proposal EVA [l] = VCI <s>. 

This further leads to the natural identification of EVA [s] and [r] as VCI <r> and <l> respectively. It is natural to suppose that these glyphs with similar shapes represent similar liquid phonemes. (I have to admit that this analysis, although genuinely motivated as a consequence of the language-neutral EVA [lk] = VCI <st> identification above, does create the proposed transcription EVA [sh] = VCI <rž>, which may look like Slavic or specifically East Slavic or Czech. Those who prefer may represent it rather as simply <r'>.)

Regarding the tentatively proposed "vowel" glyphs and glyph sequences, first of all I note that I have left EVA [y] as VCI <y> because this glyph has a very complicated pattern of conditional occurrence in relation to other glyphs, and I prefer not to speculate about its phonemic quality at this stage, even to the extent of its label in the VCI transcription. As for [ch], it is only natural that <j> and <i> could be represented by the same glyph/sequence. Naturally researchers should choose one or the other VCI representation of it for use in statistical analysis.

I regard the simplification of EVA [aiin] to VCI <o> as a kind of cutting of the Gordian knot. I very much like Koen's treatment of EVA [aiin] as a single unit. It is high time to develop a transcription that makes it look like a single unit as well. Let's look at "[daiin]" as a two-phoneme CV syllable rather than a 5-letter word! For good measure my system treats EVA [an] / [ain] as VCI <u> / <ú>, and in general the number of EVA [i]'s are consistently treated as vowel length markers.

The representation of EVA [al] was the most difficult decision I had to make. In the spirit of Koen's analysis of this sequence as a single unit, the VCI system here lets go of the identification of the glyph EVA [l] with "<s>", and simply treats EVA [al] as VCI <a>. We shall see how this decision works out, both in statistical analysis and in linguistic analysis of the ms text. EVA [am] is treated as a "long" version of [al], and hence represented as VCI <á>.

Geoffrey Caveney