Old Polish (geoffreycaveney's theory)

[tavie]

Actually Marco, the reason that I did not explain every detail of the Old Polish / Silesian syntax and morphology is that I assumed that either (a) readers were already familiar with Slavic syntax and morphology, so they did not need me to be condescending to them and explain things they already know and can see and figure out for themselves, or (b) other readers do not know anything about Slavic languages, so it would be too much to try to teach them everything they need to know about Slavic syntax and morphology in order to be able to understand the grammar of a passage in a language and language family that they do not know. For them, I simply provided the English translation. 

...But ok, you want the details of the syntax and morphology? I'll give you the details of the syntax and morphology. I'll give you lots of them. Please sit down and settle in and get comfortable, this is going to take a while.

... I did not realize that the purpose of this thread was for me to teach a class in basic morphology and syntax of Slavic languages, but that seems to be what Marco wants and in fact demands, so everybody sharpen your pencils and get a big notebook, you're going to have to take a lot of notes. 

...This process will proceed more smoothly and comprehensibly for you if you take a few semesters of a university course in a Slavic language first; it will be even better if you also take a university course in Old Church Slavonic as I have. But we are where we are: Marco demands an explanation of the syntax and morphology of these lines directly, even for readers who have never studied any Slavic language before...

Delurking to say this is just...silly.  And self-defeating.  Your VCI is interesting work, and Polish could well be the solution but you will never know it with this approach.  You have presumably seen many others argue their theories on this forum, not least the recent Turkish disappointment.  Why are you repeating their mistakes?  

You don't need to offer a course in Slavic grammar.  People want to see a theory show evidence of consistent syntax, predictable sound changes, and of course consistency with the bizarre features of Voynichese.  This quality of consistency separates a serious theory from all the many others claiming they have translated the Voynich.  And it is absent in the latter because they have fallen prey to two traps that kill off any hope of good work:

• Trap 1.  They fail to take account of the human brain's predisposition to see non-existent patterns:  “It can’t be a coincidence!”  Once you believe there is a pattern, confirmation bias pushes you towards further results supporting your theory.  Every person with a Theory seems to falls down this trap, even seemingly those who knew about it like Stephen Bax.  And the more degrees of freedom there are, the bigger the hunting ground is for your mind, which will always find the right word.
  

• Trap 2.  They get over-invested emotionally in their theories.  Their theory becomes something to defend against aggressors, like it is their child or part of themselves.  Rather than something to be tested rigorously and then abandoned when it fails.  Again, they raise the bar for what constitutes failure, but this time out of self-defence.
  

The Turkish theory thread is a study in both these.  They had a few phrases "translated" that were interesting but no proof yet of it being more than a coincidence; fixated on this being proof it was Turkish; over-invested themselves including by going public; said any Turkish linguist that didn't recognize it had a mental problem; and then when "translating" more words expanded their flexibility to include pretty much any word in a Turkic language.  When this gaping hole in their methodology was pointed out to them, they argued that the more languages they were able to look in, the *harder* it was to find the true word.

They completely missed the point, and it seems from the way you've responded to all the criticism that you may have as well.  Any true Voynich solution is bound to be "messy", with quite a lot of degrees of freedom employed; if it was otherwise, it would have been long found by now.  But the "messier" a theory is, the more logical consistency it will need to compensate for that.  Take that requirement as your starting point.  And then also take the fact that the odds are astronomically against you having found the solution and unfortunately are extremely high that you are falling into at least one of the traps above.  Because everyone else so far has.  So you need to provide a considerable amount of consistency...and yet you only gave 5 lines.

So….without being an expert in Slavic languages, nor wanting a course in Old Church Slavonic, I would ask simple questions like the following:

• How often and to what extent do you find yourself making many changes to the phonemes in order to match with dictionary words?
  
• Is there a sign of consistency, regular patterns in your changes?  e.g. have you made similar changes to the one that turns "iz rcz#" into "zrzucił"?
  
• If you've found patterns, do they match historical sound changes?  Do they resemble known ones in Silesian/Polish or close relatives?  If there are exceptions, are they limited?  Anything connecting them?
  
• How much re-arranging do you have to do with the wordsalad to get something coherent?  Any consistent trends? 
  
• Are there any signs of grammatical rules, pre and post alteration?  Grammatical rules that resemble Silesian/Polish syntax? 
  
• What effect do any of your sound changes, including changing endings, have on the syntax?
  
• Do the words you've "identified" make sense in other contexts elsewhere in the Voynich?  Do they behave in similar ways?
  

It doesn’t seem, from your response to the comments, that you considered questions like this before posting.  And with five lines as the evidence base, that’s nowhere near enough to answer them and show proof of consistency.    You were quick to be sharp with others earlier for giving a short critique rather than a detailed analysis of your findings.  But the findings you yourself gave them were only a meagre five lines, with words that 

1. had undergone several transformations, at least two of which have yet to be proved reproducible by others; and
   
2. had been reworked to make semi-grammatical phrases; and 
   
3. even now after that still sound like a wordsalad in English.  And from what it seems, it doesn’t sound much better to Polish ears either.
   

This is not sufficient for anyone to conclude that the resemblance to Polish words is anything more than either a coincidence or a consequence of the degrees of freedom in the methodology.  That is why people are comparing it to other theories.