27-02-2024, 04:46 AM
Dear Ahmet,
there are a few issues with some of your arguments.
I just want to highlight the first one:
" 1-) It is not possible to reach a solution with approaches outside linguistic methods. "
This is not generally correct. It could be (partially) correct *IF* the text is meaningful, in some language.
The two main problems are:
- It is not yet certain, at all, that the text is meaningful.
- If it IS meaningful, it may have been encrypted, and in that case, it would require cryptological methods in addition to linguistic methods.
So, yes, liguisitic methods would be needed, but by themselves they might not be sufficient.
Note also that statistics are nowadays an important tool in linguistic methods, and they can be used to either confirm, or disprove, certain hypotheses.
There are two very different situations:
A) Someone presents a solution that translates the vast majority of the text, and it largely makes sense.
In this case, there is:
- much less doubt that the text could be meaningless,
- not much doubt about the language of the text
- much less need for statistical tools to confirm or deny the result
B) Someone presents the beginning of a solution
(This is what we get in almost all cases. The few exceptions could be discussed separately).
The beginning of a solution means that one presents translations of individual words, or some short fragments.
This is an incomplete solution and in this case nothing is confirmed. Instead:
- there is still doubt that the text could be meaningless
- the language has not yet been confirmed
- statistical methods can be used to estimate the likelihood that this method can translate the rest of the text.
For me, there is no doubt that you are in this second situation (B).
If not, you would be able to translate the most frequent words (as I proposed in another thread), and these words would also be frequent words in old Turkish. This is just one example.
To judge whether any particular solution of type B has a chance to be correct, requires two things:
- Linguistic knowledge of the proposed source language
AND:
- Knowledge of the special features of the text in the Voynich MS.
The second point is of critical importance. Now I have to assume that you have some understanding of these special features, but you do not seem to address them.
I am very doubtful that the linguistic experts who are positive about your work have this knowledge, so it will be impossible for them to properly estimate the likelihood that your solution is correct.
Right now, there are more than half a dozen proposed solutions that are based on individual words or short fragments, and I cannot see any reason to prefer one above the other.
In fact, all of them have serious issues which make all of them equally unlikely to be correct.
It is a perfect example of an undecided match:
Person A argues that it is language X, and you need to know language X to judge the result.
Person B argues that it is language Y, and you need to know language Y to judge the result.
Now person A does not know language Y and person B does not know language X.
In that situation there is nothing to decide who is more likely to be correct.
Person C might not know either language X or Y, but understands statistics, and can see that the methods proposed by both A and B cannot reproduce these statistics.
there are a few issues with some of your arguments.
I just want to highlight the first one:
" 1-) It is not possible to reach a solution with approaches outside linguistic methods. "
This is not generally correct. It could be (partially) correct *IF* the text is meaningful, in some language.
The two main problems are:
- It is not yet certain, at all, that the text is meaningful.
- If it IS meaningful, it may have been encrypted, and in that case, it would require cryptological methods in addition to linguistic methods.
So, yes, liguisitic methods would be needed, but by themselves they might not be sufficient.
Note also that statistics are nowadays an important tool in linguistic methods, and they can be used to either confirm, or disprove, certain hypotheses.
There are two very different situations:
A) Someone presents a solution that translates the vast majority of the text, and it largely makes sense.
In this case, there is:
- much less doubt that the text could be meaningless,
- not much doubt about the language of the text
- much less need for statistical tools to confirm or deny the result
B) Someone presents the beginning of a solution
(This is what we get in almost all cases. The few exceptions could be discussed separately).
The beginning of a solution means that one presents translations of individual words, or some short fragments.
This is an incomplete solution and in this case nothing is confirmed. Instead:
- there is still doubt that the text could be meaningless
- the language has not yet been confirmed
- statistical methods can be used to estimate the likelihood that this method can translate the rest of the text.
For me, there is no doubt that you are in this second situation (B).
If not, you would be able to translate the most frequent words (as I proposed in another thread), and these words would also be frequent words in old Turkish. This is just one example.
To judge whether any particular solution of type B has a chance to be correct, requires two things:
- Linguistic knowledge of the proposed source language
AND:
- Knowledge of the special features of the text in the Voynich MS.
The second point is of critical importance. Now I have to assume that you have some understanding of these special features, but you do not seem to address them.
I am very doubtful that the linguistic experts who are positive about your work have this knowledge, so it will be impossible for them to properly estimate the likelihood that your solution is correct.
Right now, there are more than half a dozen proposed solutions that are based on individual words or short fragments, and I cannot see any reason to prefer one above the other.
In fact, all of them have serious issues which make all of them equally unlikely to be correct.
It is a perfect example of an undecided match:
Person A argues that it is language X, and you need to know language X to judge the result.
Person B argues that it is language Y, and you need to know language Y to judge the result.
Now person A does not know language Y and person B does not know language X.
In that situation there is nothing to decide who is more likely to be correct.
Person C might not know either language X or Y, but understands statistics, and can see that the methods proposed by both A and B cannot reproduce these statistics.
![[+]](https://www.voynich.ninja/images/collapse_collapsed.png)