25-02-2023, 10:04 PM
I have little belief in the "block paradigm" in the strict sense of the word (that is, as it was put forward by Nick), because there is, in my opinion, very little probability of discovering the plain text source from which the VMS borrows something. If the VMS text is unique, then no such source has ever existed. If it is not unique then the respective primary sources are most probably lost forever by now, because the best indicator would be similar drawings, however the VMS drawings are quaint even in the seemingly commonplace patterns such as the Zodiac, and have no perfect parallels to themselves.
However, I think that the prospective approach would be, so to speak, the "loose block paradigm". Meaning that one takes texts of more or less the same time period, of supposedly more or less the same place, subject and underlay language (these three of course are not certain and are subject to educated guesses) and tries to explore correlations between word-level statistics of these known texts with the same of the VMS.
My favourite idea is to switch from character-level to the word-level. This of course requires assuming no character shuffling as the starting point of research, but the overwheming majority of character-level approaches did assume the same.
However, I think that the prospective approach would be, so to speak, the "loose block paradigm". Meaning that one takes texts of more or less the same time period, of supposedly more or less the same place, subject and underlay language (these three of course are not certain and are subject to educated guesses) and tries to explore correlations between word-level statistics of these known texts with the same of the VMS.
My favourite idea is to switch from character-level to the word-level. This of course requires assuming no character shuffling as the starting point of research, but the overwheming majority of character-level approaches did assume the same.