14-12-2021, 09:44 PM
Strangely enough, I remember that Marco P's above-linked discussion of glyph occurrences at image breaks was actually on my mind when I left Patrick Feaster the comment on his blog encouraging him to join Voynich.ninja, and I wondered what he'd have to say about it. So reading this thread feels a little uncanny. Ain't the internet grand?
Marco, if I recall correctly, the take away lesson from that study of yours is that vords to the immediate left of images tend to be typical line-final vords, and vords to the immediate right of images tend to be typical line-initial vords. Your study supports the idea that an image interruption is a functional line break.
Patrick, I seem to recall that your current understanding of labels in the VMs, is that of functional line units of a single vord. In other words, a label tends to begin like a typical line-initial vord, and end like a typical line-final vord.
I'm reminded of the metadata of telegrams and ham radio communications done in Morse Code, whereby the start and end of a string is indicated inherently in the structure of the communication itself — think of old movies where someone reads a telegram out loud, and pronounces the "stop" at the end of each line. Or protein synthesis, where specific triads of base pairs code for "start here" and "stop here". Each of the information strings in the VMs, whatever their meaning or intended use, seem almost as though they're designed to contain explicit indicators of where one ends and another begins.
Given Patrick's demonstration of downward effects at the paragraph and page level, and the old problems of Grove words and the affinity of [f] and [p] for the first lines of paragraphs, it wouldn't surprise me if Voynichese also contains apparent metadata for "start a new page", "same paragraph new line", "new line new paragraph", and other formatting and line placement instructions.
The question then becomes, what kind of information, recorded and shared and of value to people in the early 1400s, would have benefitted from having this kind of formatting and placement metadata attached to it? For example, might there have been any situations in the olden days whereby someone would orally dictate strings of information to a scribe whose writing surface he couldn't see, to be transported and read out loud elsewhere by a courier, to others taking dictation from the courier? In such a setup, formatting and placement metadata would help ensure that the final recipient received the strings of information in the same order, grouped and laid out in the same way, as the originator. Just a thought.
Marco, if I recall correctly, the take away lesson from that study of yours is that vords to the immediate left of images tend to be typical line-final vords, and vords to the immediate right of images tend to be typical line-initial vords. Your study supports the idea that an image interruption is a functional line break.
Patrick, I seem to recall that your current understanding of labels in the VMs, is that of functional line units of a single vord. In other words, a label tends to begin like a typical line-initial vord, and end like a typical line-final vord.
I'm reminded of the metadata of telegrams and ham radio communications done in Morse Code, whereby the start and end of a string is indicated inherently in the structure of the communication itself — think of old movies where someone reads a telegram out loud, and pronounces the "stop" at the end of each line. Or protein synthesis, where specific triads of base pairs code for "start here" and "stop here". Each of the information strings in the VMs, whatever their meaning or intended use, seem almost as though they're designed to contain explicit indicators of where one ends and another begins.
Given Patrick's demonstration of downward effects at the paragraph and page level, and the old problems of Grove words and the affinity of [f] and [p] for the first lines of paragraphs, it wouldn't surprise me if Voynichese also contains apparent metadata for "start a new page", "same paragraph new line", "new line new paragraph", and other formatting and line placement instructions.
The question then becomes, what kind of information, recorded and shared and of value to people in the early 1400s, would have benefitted from having this kind of formatting and placement metadata attached to it? For example, might there have been any situations in the olden days whereby someone would orally dictate strings of information to a scribe whose writing surface he couldn't see, to be transported and read out loud elsewhere by a courier, to others taking dictation from the courier? In such a setup, formatting and placement metadata would help ensure that the final recipient received the strings of information in the same order, grouped and laid out in the same way, as the originator. Just a thought.