01-04-2021, 09:55 PM
Some readers on this forum may be interested in the following lexical analysis of the words from this passage that I include in the glossary section of my document:
Of the 83 identifiable words or word forms, I find that 59 also occur elsewhere in the Voynich ms, while 24 are hapax legomena that only occur in this passage of folio page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 4.
The hapax legomena are frankly not all that useful for further investigation of this hypothesis, since their meanings cannot be confirmed or refuted by examining them in any other context.
Most interesting and useful are the words with distinctive lexical meanings (not just the most common grammatical and function words) that do occur elsewhere in the Voynich ms. It will be interesting to see if their proposed meanings in this passage can be helpful in attempting to interpret other passages where they occur, hopefully with the same meaning but in a different context.
For example, I interpret [oepor] as chlebów 'breads' in the phrase "Christ cut the white breads". The root [oep-] occurs in 3 other places in the Vms, and it would be interesting to see if the meaning 'bread' can also make sense for this root in a different context, such as in a recipe for example.
Likewise, I mentioned the word [pchedar], which I interpret as przeciał 'cut' (past tense) in both of the phrases "sin has cut the thread" and "Christ cut the white breads". This same word occurs in 9 other places in the Vms, and it will be interesting to see if the meaning 'he/she/it cut' will also make sense for this word in other, perhaps more mundane and practical, contexts in other sections of the Vms.
In other cases it is more likely that homonymy is involved in some of the Voynich words occurring elsewhere in the ms. I already note in footnote 27 of my document the difficulty of interpretation created by the homonymy of [otedy] as either będzie 'will be', biec 'to run', or bek 'a bleat, a cry' in this passage. Such homonymy clearly must be in the nature of the Voynich ms writing system and cannot be avoided entirely in the interpretation.
I have added to each glossary entry the number of occurrences of the word in the entire Voynich ms, and if it is a hapax legomenon, it is so noted. I am uploading a revised and updated version of my document as an attachment to this message, for those who are interested in having this information conveniently available for each word interpreted in this passage and included in this glossary.
Geoffrey
Of the 83 identifiable words or word forms, I find that 59 also occur elsewhere in the Voynich ms, while 24 are hapax legomena that only occur in this passage of folio page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 4.
The hapax legomena are frankly not all that useful for further investigation of this hypothesis, since their meanings cannot be confirmed or refuted by examining them in any other context.
Most interesting and useful are the words with distinctive lexical meanings (not just the most common grammatical and function words) that do occur elsewhere in the Voynich ms. It will be interesting to see if their proposed meanings in this passage can be helpful in attempting to interpret other passages where they occur, hopefully with the same meaning but in a different context.
For example, I interpret [oepor] as chlebów 'breads' in the phrase "Christ cut the white breads". The root [oep-] occurs in 3 other places in the Vms, and it would be interesting to see if the meaning 'bread' can also make sense for this root in a different context, such as in a recipe for example.
Likewise, I mentioned the word [pchedar], which I interpret as przeciał 'cut' (past tense) in both of the phrases "sin has cut the thread" and "Christ cut the white breads". This same word occurs in 9 other places in the Vms, and it will be interesting to see if the meaning 'he/she/it cut' will also make sense for this word in other, perhaps more mundane and practical, contexts in other sections of the Vms.
In other cases it is more likely that homonymy is involved in some of the Voynich words occurring elsewhere in the ms. I already note in footnote 27 of my document the difficulty of interpretation created by the homonymy of [otedy] as either będzie 'will be', biec 'to run', or bek 'a bleat, a cry' in this passage. Such homonymy clearly must be in the nature of the Voynich ms writing system and cannot be avoided entirely in the interpretation.
I have added to each glossary entry the number of occurrences of the word in the entire Voynich ms, and if it is a hapax legomenon, it is so noted. I am uploading a revised and updated version of my document as an attachment to this message, for those who are interested in having this information conveniently available for each word interpreted in this passage and included in this glossary.
Geoffrey