how to deconstruct the VMS text and label words repeated twice or more

[-JKP-]

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I know many of the leading lights in the group trying to solve the puzzle of the VMS do not like that my scheme seems to show some way to construct and deconstruct the VMS words. For some of them, it would obviate years of work trying to find a solution using more modern techniques to account for an early Fifteenth Century manuscript. For others, that fact that the scheme cannot be made to fit any known language's words as a direct deciphering/transposition scheme of some sort or another is anathema. That's okay....

Sorry I didn't respond sooner, Don, but I've been swamped with work (no sleep for days).


You won't get any arguments from me, Don. I've been saying for a long time it doesn't fit the STRUCTURE (and I've often used caps when saying this) of a natural language and that "the rules are strict". I also alluded to some of those rules in my blog about how to write Voynichese so it looks more like Voynichese (it's a blog, aimed at a general audience, not all of whom are interested in decoding the script, they just want to write it so it looks like Voynichese and I wanted to encourage interest in the manuscript, so I tried to keep it short and based it only a fragment of the text, BUT the concepts of construction (a rule-based combinatorial method) are at the heart of how I see the text).


Also, I get the feeling he came to his conclusions independently because he has good observation skills and has been following the "logic" of the script for a while (rather than trying to impose something upon it), but if you look at Wladimir D's charts, you will see he is doing much the same thing but using a flow-chart style. Different approach, same idea.

I haven't had a chance to look at Torsten's system yet (or to try his algorithm as I'm on a Mac and I think it was written for Windows?) but from glancing at his thread (Torsten, sorry I haven't given it more attention), I suspect he's evaluating the text in a similar manner, as well.

So, while there may be detractors out there, I think you will find you also have support for your approach.


I also have charts that are more comprehensive (and specific) than what I alluded to in my blog (didn't want to let the whole cat out of the bag, just the nose). Mine are constructed from a slightly different point of view from your charts and from Wladimir's charts but yield very similar results.


One thing I'd like to add to what you've posted... you've created a very good deconstruction, it's a good foundation. There are two things that have prevented me from posting what I have (I constantly wrestle with an unfortunate personality quirk that I want to figure it ALL out before talking about it):

1. In the main text (which may differ slightly from the labels) there appears to be an additional dynamic that goes beyond the word-tokens, and that involves the construction of a line. In other words, there are rules for the "syllables" (what they are and where they are located) and there are ALSO rules for lines (you can particularly see this at the ends of lines) and I haven't fully puzzled those out yet. It's a challenging problem but may be important.
   
2. There are a few "syllables" (deconstructed groupings) I have not resolved yet (and which might explain some of your "exceptions") because they are sometimes in between other deconstructed units, which makes it unclear which one of the glyphs belongs to a) the preceding "group", b) the following "group" or c) to itself (you may already have noticed this). These are a minority of cases, most of the tokens can be found in enough context throughout the manuscript to determine whether they belong on the right or left side or neither, and it probably won't be necessary to unravel this minority to figure out the VMS, but... it's still important, at some point, to resolve the length and composition of these ambiguous groups.
   

One more thing I have observed. It is my belief that these groups (for a few years, I've been thinking of them as "atomic" groups) have specialized functions. In other words, I believe there is a grammar involved (it's not as simple as stringing adjectives or nouns together), one that borrows concepts from natural languages, but which is specific to the VMS. In other words, imagine a constructed language that borrows some of the basic grammatical rules found in older languages in a more regular way than we see them in our mongrelized loan-word-evolved modern languages.

I have a list that includes some of the grammatical rules that I'm fairly sure of, but there are a few I haven't nailed down yet and once again, I am highly reluctant to post them until I have a more complete list/analysis.