The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[JoJo_Jost]

Note: Stolfi posted this response to my questions here in the Chinese thread in my Bavarian thread. I’m bringing my reply back to this thread to keep the discussion organized. For context, I'll give you the link? of his answer.

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@ Stolfi,

The "attraction" that you see is the sum of individual word attractions, so it is dominated by a few high-frequency words.

That is precisely the explanation I have already tested. And it is not sufficient.
   

In the hapax group, each preceding word form occurs exactly once. That is the group we need to examine. Nevertheless, 20.8% of sh-tokens are followed by a qo-token, compared with only 10.8% of ch-tokens. There are no frequently repeated preceding words in this group that could dominate the difference.

My statement that a hapax cannot have a collocation may have been too absolute. But that correction does not explain away the finding: a few repeated word pairs do not explain the difference within this group.

First, many hapax words in the VMS are probably malformed, truncated, or joined versions of words that appear multiple times.

You are introducing an additional assumption here: that the rare forms are actually erroneous variants of frequent words. That may or may not be the case. It is another unsubstantiated assumption on your part. The much more important question is: does this assumption actually account for the difference between sh and ch? If YOU introduce assumptions, YOU need to substantiate them. Sorry, but that is how it works.

Well, I think that it is you who should answer that question.

You propose frequent word pairs as an explanation. I show you a finding that this explanation does not account for. Replying that I should explain it is not an adequate answer, even if intended as a joke. ?

Your explanation must fit the data. Not the other way around.

If the ch-words are mostly variant spellings of the sh-words, then the two variants should show similar attraction or repulsion for each qo-word (or any other word) that follows it.

Okay, then let us look at the corresponding forms.

I compared all exact shXXX/chXXX pairs in which both forms have at least 20 occurrences with a following token on the same line. The entire remainder is identical. Only sh and ch differ.

The result: 21 pairs of forms. In all 21 cases, the sh-form is followed by qo more frequently. Not a single pair shows the opposite direction.

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Here, too, shedy cannot produce the difference observed for sheor. Each pair of forms is compared separately. Yet every pair shows the same direction. This consistent direction therefore calls for an explanation.

None of the checks you requested has refuted the phenomenon.

Then I would expect that the two will have different attraction or repulsion numbers.

Of course different words can have different neighbors. But the question is not whether differences are possible.
The question is: why is it specifically the sh-form that has the higher rate in all 21 pairs?

“These are different words” does not yet explain this shared pattern. And “these are spelling variants” does not explain it either, as long as the alternation between sh and ch is supposed to be independent of context.

There is also the comparison of the exact words shor and chor, without prefixes: after shor, the next token begins with sh in 26.6% of cases; after chor, only in 7.3%. Conversely, ch follows chor in 32.7% of cases, but shor in only 11.7%. Clear differences remain even when each distinct complete token pair is counted only once.

You can make all kinds of assumptions here: errors, variants, or grammatical classes. But sorry, you need to show which of these explanations actually accounts for the finding. Further assumptions do not dispose of my objections either. Show that this fits Chinese. (English comparisons do not establish that, given how different Chinese and English are.)

It is not that, but rather that this kind of result is unlikely to lead to any useful insight into the Voynichese "grammar".

Through this analysis, we have established that the difference exists among forms occurring only once, shows the same direction across frequency groups, and favors sh without exception in 21 exact sh/ch pairs.

What justifies dismissing this information as unproductive before you can explicitly explain it?

Here in the Chinese thread, my question therefore remains: what specific relationship in your proposed language and writing system produces these patterns?

Once again, several assumptions have been put forward without the supporting evidence. A demonstrated explanation is therefore still missing. Your response does not refute the findings, nor does it justify abandoning the analysis that brought them to light.