15-11-2022, 11:19 PM
I appreciate all comments, suggestions and critiques. At every step there is an aweful lot to consider. I work through it slowly and methodically, but necessarily proceeding on hunches and clues in the work of others.
Regarding the ‘parsing’ – or chopping up – of lines of text, it could of course be done on almost any basis. Since our text is not a random mash of glyphs but has structure and design, different divisions are likely to reveal patterns of some sort. If you cut up a Persian rug, each piece will retain some suggestion of the design.
But some divisions are surely more warranted than others. To continue the rug analogy, we can cut with the thread or against it, or follow the lines of the design, or ignore them.
We can, as Marco says, chop up English at every occurrence of the letter E. But why would we? What about the language suggests to do this? Why would we think the letter E has some special status and that breaking the text up accordingly might be revealing?
Whereas in Voynichese we have a very conspicuous set of four glyphs that by various criteria stand out from the others. This is clearly by design. English has no such group begging for our attention. Not by design.
If nothing else, the gallows letters stand out because they stand above. Put simply, they are taller than the other glyphs. They are elevated, on legs, on stilts. They stand apart in a vertical decomposition of the text.
I see three distinct levels in the text which can be described in terms of height, elevation or altitude.
Here I apply a mountain metaphor to it as illustrated by these examples:
It is then a natural observation that some vords have peaks and some do not.
In other words, the breaking of the text I made at every vord with a gallows glyph follows – finally - a visual signal in the morphology of the text itself. That is its justification. The tallness of the four gallows glyphs is what privileges them over other signals.
Dividing lines on the basis of consonant/vowels is also invited by the text. It follows from other studies that suggest there is a default binary pattern running through the text that seems to conform to the familiar consonant/vowel distinction in natural languages. We describe it, in any case, as consonants and vowels, ever aware that this may not be the right binary. Qonsonants and voyels, indeed.
Actually, this suspected consonant/vowel distinction is embodied in the morphology of the glyphs too. The vowels are confined to the ground level. The consonants – aside from the gallows – have benches or ligatures that mark or intrude into the level I have called the plateau.
An exception is [l]. As an aside: The letter [l] is an unhappy choice in EVA. L is a tall letter whereas the gesture of the Voynich glyph [l] specifically denies any elevated extension. It’s gesture, like that of [y], is to go to ground.
Here, to demonstrate, are several lines I used as examples previously. The visual trigger for the breaks are alternations of ground level initial glyphs (vowels) and plateau level (or higher) initial glyphs (consonants.)
We can make distinctions and divisions, perhaps, according to certain horizontal criteria - such as the flow of c-curves and backslashes (minims) in Brian Cham's Curve and Line system - but there are meaningful distinctions to be made from the vertical organisation of the glyphs.
Regarding the ‘parsing’ – or chopping up – of lines of text, it could of course be done on almost any basis. Since our text is not a random mash of glyphs but has structure and design, different divisions are likely to reveal patterns of some sort. If you cut up a Persian rug, each piece will retain some suggestion of the design.
But some divisions are surely more warranted than others. To continue the rug analogy, we can cut with the thread or against it, or follow the lines of the design, or ignore them.
We can, as Marco says, chop up English at every occurrence of the letter E. But why would we? What about the language suggests to do this? Why would we think the letter E has some special status and that breaking the text up accordingly might be revealing?
Whereas in Voynichese we have a very conspicuous set of four glyphs that by various criteria stand out from the others. This is clearly by design. English has no such group begging for our attention. Not by design.
If nothing else, the gallows letters stand out because they stand above. Put simply, they are taller than the other glyphs. They are elevated, on legs, on stilts. They stand apart in a vertical decomposition of the text.
I see three distinct levels in the text which can be described in terms of height, elevation or altitude.
Here I apply a mountain metaphor to it as illustrated by these examples:
It is then a natural observation that some vords have peaks and some do not.
In other words, the breaking of the text I made at every vord with a gallows glyph follows – finally - a visual signal in the morphology of the text itself. That is its justification. The tallness of the four gallows glyphs is what privileges them over other signals.
* * *
Dividing lines on the basis of consonant/vowels is also invited by the text. It follows from other studies that suggest there is a default binary pattern running through the text that seems to conform to the familiar consonant/vowel distinction in natural languages. We describe it, in any case, as consonants and vowels, ever aware that this may not be the right binary. Qonsonants and voyels, indeed.
Actually, this suspected consonant/vowel distinction is embodied in the morphology of the glyphs too. The vowels are confined to the ground level. The consonants – aside from the gallows – have benches or ligatures that mark or intrude into the level I have called the plateau.
An exception is [l]. As an aside: The letter [l] is an unhappy choice in EVA. L is a tall letter whereas the gesture of the Voynich glyph [l] specifically denies any elevated extension. It’s gesture, like that of [y], is to go to ground.
Here, to demonstrate, are several lines I used as examples previously. The visual trigger for the breaks are alternations of ground level initial glyphs (vowels) and plateau level (or higher) initial glyphs (consonants.)
We can make distinctions and divisions, perhaps, according to certain horizontal criteria - such as the flow of c-curves and backslashes (minims) in Brian Cham's Curve and Line system - but there are meaningful distinctions to be made from the vertical organisation of the glyphs.