The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[kckluge]

I am troubled by the paper's assuming that spaces matter to claim word length and paragraph word count distributions match in Section 3 but then assuming they can be ignored to get matches to "daiin" in Section 4.

To clarify, I understand that the claim in Section 4 isn't that spaces don't matter, but rather that (1) spaces can be uncertain ("...word spaces in the SPS are quite variable, and there is a substantial number of ambiguous gaps..."), and (2) scribes make errors ("Moreover there is evidence that the Scribe(s) who penned 6 the text sometimes omitted a word space altogether, or inserted one where it did not belong."). Those are both perfectly reasonable points. The problem is that you have to assume the right wrong spaces to get some of the "daiin" matches.  Unless I'm mistaken this is the transcribed text of the paragraph in question used in Section 4, with the 8 matches to "daiin" including "the similar words dair and laiin as possible quasi-homophones" highlighted:

f105v    32 38 <%>poar.keeo,daiin.qoair.ar.acphhey.qoeedeody.qokaiin.qotedair.apo,rair,apy-
lsheody.tair.oteey.oteeo.ol.otaiin.okeey.qokaiin.or.aiir.al.dar-
sheeo.daiin.chsd.qokeeey.dair.okaiin.otaiin.chedaiin.olkal.lkl,dain-
doee.okcheeo.ltaiin.otcheedy.chor.aiin.odaiin.chedy.otaiin.al.kaishd-laiin.sheod.okeeody.qoaiin.ytaiin.otair.chdal,dy,daim.chdaiin.ockhhy-
yshey.ckhy.sheo.qoeeo.lkaiin.chs,okol.tchdy.sheeey.okaiin.ar.aildy-
cheody.oaiir.ain.okshey<$>

So 4 of the 8 require ignoring spaces. Do any of those "missing" spaces look uncertain? What kind of scribal error rate do we have to assume if "missing" spaces involving "daiin" are typical, and how reasonable is that? Also note that this error-prone scribe doesn't miss any of the spaces *after* "daiin/dair/laiin", only before (although given that "aiin" is [almost?] always word-final I'm willing to consider that being an easy rule for the scribe to remember).

Re: "The most common Voynichese word in the SPS is daiin, which occurs 306 times, or 0.93 per parag. (In this count and in the rest of this section we are ignoring word spaces in the SPS, so that kydaiin and daiiny count as occurrences of daiin.) When considering the hypothesis that the SPS is some version of the SBJ, it is natural to investigate whether the daiin may be the Voynichese equivalent of the Chinese character 主." If you *don't* ignore spaces, "daiin" is the 7th most common word at 121 occurences(*), while "aiin" is the most common at 193 (only ~7 of which follow a word ending in 'd'). if "daiin" is "zhu", what is "aiin" -- if this is some kind of phonetic encoding they presumably should be related --  and does that make sense in context?

(*) using the transcription Stolfi was initially referencing in this thread:
"# The Starrred Parags section from the VMS.
# Extracted from the Landini/Zandbergen/Stolfi interlinear version 1.6e6,
# with some cleanup.
# Takeshi Takahashi's transcription (';H') only.
# Pages You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. line 30.")


I want to be clear that this is intended as constructive criticism, not piling on.