Emma May Smith > 26-09-2016, 11:40 AM
Quote:Anyway, I don't dispute that y does in fact behave like o in many cases. But I think it also behaves as a consonant in other ways. Basically it seems to have a role in two separate subsystems of the script, if that makes sense.
Maybe this will make it clear what I'm getting at:
or ar
os es
ol al
oy ey
Basically it seems that l is to y as r is to s, both in terms of where these letters may and may not occur (at least with respect to when they follow vowels), and in terms of the shapes of the letters themselves. Now, I know that these shapes are borrowed from (abbreviated) Latin, and in Latin the similarities between these shapes are coincidental, as they are not related to one another. But in Voynichese they're clearly not coincidental - whoever devised the script selected letters such that their shapes would relate to the role the letters play in words and so that the script would have this kind of symmetry and structure in it.
I don't feel comfortable throwing this kind of information away, and in fact in my mind it takes precedence over ideas from linguistic theory. But there's not necessarily a contradiction. If on the one hand y sometimes behaves like o and on the other hand it's part of a system with other letters that seem to be consonants, then one explanation could be that it's a syllabic consonant. Another explanation, and perhaps a better one, is that y is simply representing two entirely different sounds (one a vowel and one a consonant). Maybe there are other possibilities. I admit that I've found it a bit puzzling.