The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Jorge_Stolfi]

The syntax of The Art of War is no more complex [than that of the SBJ]

That is obviously false.  The Art of War is a discursive text. Your example sentences are long and complex with subordinate clauses, conditionals, logical ties, tenses, moods, etc.  The SBJ has practically none of that.  It is almost like comparing Hamlet to a train timetable.

this matters because the way for The Author to learn these forms

The dictation scenario does not require the Author to learn any Classical Chinese quirks.  It does not require that ability even from the Dictator.  The latter could have known only the meaning of the individual hanzi.  Not even of the compound terms.  Mastering the old Classical Chinese syntax would have been of little help, for both of them.

you cannot account for the output of an LLM, and you cannot expect me to do it for you.

Well, then why should I take your objections seriously?  

 You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. several of the mistakes Google's LLM made

Not really.  In that post you showed how speakers of various languages might write "rooster" in hanzi.  That is irrelevant (and is not what I asked GAI about). The Dictator had one written text with 雄鸡 (but in traditional characters) on it, and the Author knew one spoken language, say Cantonese.  They did not need to know that other languages existed and that there were other ways of writing "rooster"; it would make no difference at all.

I have offered lexicographical accounts, the judgement of experts, and now translations by and for humans that back my position.

And I have refuted all those arguments (or showed that your positions were irrelevant to the issue at hand).

But you have not answered two simple questions: if a Dictator today read aloud the Rooster recipe 
丹雄鸡味甘微温主女人崩中漏下赤白沃补虚温中～
to a Cantonese speaker who does not know Mandarin or Classical Chinese, by reading each hanzi as a Cantonese syllable,

daan1 hung4 gai1 mei6 gam1 mei4 wan1 zyu2 neoi5 jan4 bang1 zung1, lau6 haa6
cik1 baak6 juk1 bou2 heoi1 wan1 zung1 ...

what would the guy miss because of the wrong syntax?   And if the Dictator instead read 

daan1 hung4 gai1 mei6 gam1 mei4 wan1 zyu2 jiu3 hai6 ji1 neoi5 jan4 ge3 bang1 zung1 lau6 haa6
cik1 baak6 juk1 zung6 ho2 ji5 bou2 heoi1 wan1 zung1 ...

which is supposed to be valid Cantonese syntax -- would the guy understand it any better?

If a flight info site says

  ✈ AA1211 [Plane taking off Icon] 11:00 LAX [plane landing icon] 18:10 SFO

and a text-to-voice software reads it out as

  "flight A A one two one one departure one one zero zero L A X arrival one eight one zero S F O"

would a blind person get totally lost, because that is not grammatical English? Of course it would be easier for him if the software said instead

  "the flight with number A A one one two one will depart at eleven hours from the L A X airport
   and then arrive at eighteen hours and ten minutes at the S F O airport"

but would he really need this grammatical stuffing to understand the important info? 

Why do I get this feeling that you do not really care about the Chinese Origin theory, but are upset about some positions of mine about language politics in China that you imagine are implicit in the dictation scenario?  Let me assure you that I have no such intentions, and I don't really care about that topic...

There are also implications for the nature of Voynichese itself if the number of Voynich letters per Chinese character falls below the average number of letters per Voynichese word

So far the two still match as well as one could expect, considering all the uncertainties about word spaces.

All the best, --stolfi

PS. By the way, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. seems to be a good intro to the story of Mandarin in China.