My thoughts on the VMS

[MarcoP]

MarcoP wrote:

Hi Thomas,
why should not an inflected agglutinative language be enough to explain this?

From Aeneides Book I (much shorter than the VMS):

qui
quibus
quicquid
quid
quidve
quies
quiescit
quietas
quietem
quietum
quin
quinquaginta
quippe
quirinus
quis
quisquam
quisquis


quo
quocirca
quod
quodcumque
quondam
quoque
quorum
quos
quove

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What distinguishes Voynichese from this list and from the behavior of letters in natural languages is the lack of positional flexibility.

For example...

In Thomas's chart of 4o- vords, EVA-r, EVA-s, EVA-ell, and EVA-n occur only at the ends of vords, never anywhere else. In contrast, in the Latin qu- list, all the letters at the end appear elsewhere in other words in the list.

If one considers written Latin from medieval manuscripts, quite a few abbreviations tend to appear at the end of words (which is pretty obvious for abbreviations).

See for instance:
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The symbols similar to 4 3 9 ; ~ only appear at the end of words (for -arum, -m, -us, -[q]ue, -ur).
In ms Vat.Lat.410, these abbreviations have no positional flexibility (but other abbreviations appear in different  positions, and other scribes used abbreviations differently).

As I wrote above, I don't think that the VMS is written in Latin, but the Latin language and Latin manuscripts can provide useful parallels for some phenomena.


qo- words with EVA:r,s,l in non terminal positions exist in the Voynich ms:
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So I would say that positional flexibility is in some cases limited both in the VMS and in Latin manuscripts.