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A key to understand the VMS

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• A key to understand the VMS

• RE: A key to understand the VMS

  Sam G > 10-01-2017, 05:55 PM

  (10-01-2017, 05:24 PM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The second important fact for the VMS is the reason for the observation that similar words occur with similar frequencies. Similar words occur side by side in the VMS  [see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.]! A line like <f108r.P.7> okchey okedy qokchedy chedy qokedy okar chdy okar char chkaiin chsy is therefore not a coincidence.

  
  There are many possible linguistic interpretations of such phenomena: reduplication, agreement, poetry or structured prose, etc.

• RE: A key to understand the VMS

  Torsten > 10-01-2017, 06:41 PM

  Quote:Sam G Wrote:
  There are many possible linguistic interpretations of such phenomena: reduplication, agreement, poetry or structured prose, etc.

  
  There are two important observations for the VMS. First, all words are similar to each other. Secondly, similar words do co-occur throughout the text.
  
  In natural languages a word normally (cf. poems) is used because of its meaning and not because it is similar to a previously written one. The result that the words are arranged such that they co-occur with similar ones is therefore not compatible with a linguistic system. Moreover similarly spelled words occur frequently one above the other.
  
  To change words which have already been written requires no additional tools.  It is reasonable to assume that with some training it is very efficient to copy a text using the text itself as a source. For doing so it is not necessary to switch between an external source and the text being written. For someone in the early 15th century it would therefore have been possible to use such a method to generate the text of the Voynich Manuscript while writing.

• RE: A key to understand the VMS

  ThomasCoon > 10-01-2017, 07:15 PM

  (10-01-2017, 03:07 PM)Sam G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.All this really shows is that Voynichese is not like English or Arabic.  By contrast, look at a table of allowed syllables in Mandarin Chinese, for instance:
  
  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
  
  The possible syllables of Mandarin certainly do form a "network".  It is not exactly the same as Voynichese in every respect, of course, but this is getting us a lot closer.

  
  Sam,
  
  Please forgive my straightforward speech, but I think this is a fallible tactic often used by proponents of the "natural language" hypothesis. There are 7000 natural languages to draw from. If one feature of the VMS is problematic (syllabic structure), one language is mentioned (Chinese). If another feature of VMS is problematic (relations between similar-looking words), a different language is cited (Japanese). If a third feature is odd, a third language is cited, and so on. I can't remember if you also mentioned Arabic in the past, or if that was only Emma.
  
  Either way you get my point: Voynichese can't be all these languages simultaneously with all these strange features. There is no language with the syllabic structure of Chinese, the "atomic roots" of a polysynthetic language, a head-right suffix system like the Japanese ko-so-a-do words words, etc. etc. etc. We would need a rare, mythical, platypus-like language and that seems unlikely.

• RE: A key to understand the VMS

  Sam G > 10-01-2017, 07:22 PM

  (10-01-2017, 06:41 PM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In natural languages a word normally (cf. poems) is used because of its meaning and not because it is similar to a previously written one. The result that the words are arranged such that they co-occur with similar ones is therefore not compatible with a linguistic system.

  
  Well I still don't see why not, even in poetry, and you ignored the (basically more important) suggestions that it could be due to reduplication or agreement.
  
  

  Quote:Moreover similarly spelled words occur frequently one above the other.

  
  This is not uncommon in meaningful texts either.  And obviously we can expect more of it by pure chance when the words are more similar in general.
  
  

  Quote:To change words which have already been written requires no additional tools.  It is reasonable to assume that with some training it is very efficient to copy a text using the text itself as a source. For doing so it is not necessary to switch between an external source and the text being written. For someone in the early 15th century it would therefore have been possible to use such a method to generate the text of the Voynich Manuscript while writing.

  
  Well, earlier in the thread I tried making some points about how the relative frequencies of the words don't look like they were produced by your proposed auto-copying method (e.g. my first post in this thread), and you said you didn't want to talk about it because you hadn't mentioned it in this thread.  Instead you wanted to talk about the properties of the word network only.  But now that I've shown that the word network is not really that different from monosyllabic Mandarin, it seems like we're back to the auto-copying idea?
  
  Alright then, here's my original question again:
  
  

  (04-01-2017, 03:25 PM)Sam G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

  (01-01-2017, 08:14 PM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.For the most frequently used word daiin it is possible to build a tree of similar words starting with o- or qo-. The frequencies for this words are very characteristic:
  
  Level 1:                                          daiin (863 times)
  Level 2:          okaiin (212 times)         |          otaiin (154)        |  odaiin (60)
  Level 3: qokaiin (262 times), kaiin (65) | qotaiin ( 79), taiin (42) | qodaiin (42)
  There are more words starting with ok- or ot- then with od- and the word starting with qok- is even more frequent then the word starting with ok.

  
  So qokaiin is more common than okaiin, but otaiin is more common than qotaiin.  Why should this be true, from the standpoint of your auto-copying hypothesis?  If the scribe is just randomly adding a q in some cases, shouldn't the ratios be roughly equal?

• RE: A key to understand the VMS

  Sam G > 10-01-2017, 07:57 PM

  (10-01-2017, 07:15 PM)ThomasCoon Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

  (10-01-2017, 03:07 PM)Sam G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.All this really shows is that Voynichese is not like English or Arabic.  By contrast, look at a table of allowed syllables in Mandarin Chinese, for instance:
  
  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
  
  The possible syllables of Mandarin certainly do form a "network".  It is not exactly the same as Voynichese in every respect, of course, but this is getting us a lot closer.

  
  Sam,
  
  Please forgive my straightforward speech, but I think this is a fallible tactic often used by proponents of the "natural language" hypothesis. There are 7000 natural languages to draw from. If one feature of the VMS is problematic (syllabic structure), one language is mentioned (Chinese). If another feature of VMS is problematic (relations between similar-looking words), a different language is cited (Japanese). If a third feature is odd, a third language is cited, and so on. I can't remember if you also mentioned Arabic in the past, or if that was only Emma.
  
  Either way you get my point: Voynichese can't be all these languages simultaneously with all these strange features. There is no language with the syllabic structure of Chinese, the "atomic roots" of a polysynthetic language, a head-right suffix system like the Japanese ko-so-a-do words words, etc. etc. etc. We would need a rare, mythical, platypus-like language and that seems unlikely

  
  Where have you or Torsten or anyone else ever put forward an argument of this form, i.e., that while the individual properties may be found in known languages, collectively they cannot be found?  Give me one example of this, please.  Certainly the arguments under consideration in this thread were not of this kind.
  
  The point still stands that individually all of these properties can be found in known languages.  Therefore these simplistic arguments of the form "it can't be a natural language because it has property X" are wrong.  That's all I'm doing here: refuting statements that are clearly incorrect.  I don't see how it can be considered a "fallible tactic" that I am responding to arguments that have been made rather than some other argument that has not been made.
  
  Note that I have stressed that these comparisons are not necessarily exact in every or any way.  Obviously we don't know Voynichese works so many of the properties of the text could have multiple possible explanations based on what we know now.  The point is only that there is no convincing argument against the idea that the VMS text is simply written in some unusual natural language.
  
  Now, if you want to make some case that the combination of properties in the VMS cannot occur in a single language, feel free to lay that argument out in detail somewhere.  Maybe try backing your argument up with some actual evidence, such as citing some literature on linguistic universals, rather than just making a baseless assertion and leaving it up to others to find the problems with it.  That would be a welcome change.
  
  Incidentally, I think you are engaging in a bit of projection in that the "fallible tactic" you accuse me of is one most frequently employed by cipher theorists - using different cipher methods to account for different properties of the text and then asserting that we're looking at a "mixed cipher system" or some such, when of course such a thing can never be demonstrated to actually exist.

• RE: A key to understand the VMS

  ThomasCoon > 10-01-2017, 08:24 PM

  Sam G Wrote:Incidentally, I think you are engaging in a bit of projection in that the "fallible tactic" you accuse me of is one most frequently employed by cipher theorists - using different cipher methods to account for different properties of the text and then asserting that we're looking at a "mixed cipher system" or some such, when of course such a thing can never be demonstrated to actually exist.

  
  Touché. That is a common "modus operandi" of the cipher theorists also. And you're right; this objection hasn't been fleshed out before (to my knowledge) and Torsten's thread wouldn't be the right place to do it. Sometime this week, I'll try to make a separate thread for it.

• RE: A key to understand the VMS

  Torsten > 10-01-2017, 09:16 PM

  Quote:Sam G Wrote:
  Well I still don't see why not, even in poetry, and you ignored the (basically more important) suggestions that it could be due to reduplication or agreement.

  
  First of all that the VMS contains language is your hypothesis. Therefore it is on you to demonstrate that all the features of the VMS can be explained by this hypothesis.
  
  My arguments against a language are that in natural languages a word normally is used because of its meaning and not because it is similar to a previously written one. Another reason is that ALL words in the VMS are similar to each other. A third reason is that the text considers the format of the page. For instance words ending in -m are typical for the end of a line. Words at the beginning of a paragraph start typically with a gallow glyph and gallow glyphs are more common in the first line of a paragraph. The first word in a line is on average longer then the other words in a line.
  
  

  Quote:Sam G Wrote:[url=https://www.voynich.ninja/post-10626.html#pid10626][/url]
  

  (01-01-2017, 08:14 PM)Torsten Wrote: Wrote:For the most frequently used word daiin it is possible to build a tree of similar words starting with o- or qo-. The frequencies for this words are very characteristic:
  
  Level 1:                                          daiin (863 times)
  Level 2:          okaiin (212 times)         |          otaiin (154)        |  odaiin (60)
  Level 3: qokaiin (262 times), kaiin (65) | qotaiin ( 79), taiin (42) | qodaiin (42)
  There are more words starting with ok- or ot- then with od- and the word starting with qok- is even more frequent then the word starting with ok.

  
  So qokaiin is more common than okaiin, but otaiin is more common than qotaiin.  Why should this be true, from the standpoint of your auto-copying hypothesis?  If the scribe is just randomly adding a q in some cases, shouldn't the ratios be roughly equal?

  
  Each word is related to all other similarly spelled words! The source word for qokaiin is not necessary okaiin like in <f86v6.P.16> taiin okaiin qokaiin. It is also possible that the source word for qokaiin was a word like aiiin like in[font=Trebuchet MS] [/font]<f107v.P.3> sain ain aiiin qokaiin.
  
  You expect that it should be possible to calculate the exact frequencies for each word. This would indicate a level of order in the VMS I would expect for a cipher. The auto-copying hypotheses on the other hand suggests that [font=Trebuchet MS]the VMS was written manually. For someone writing the script by copying words already written there was [/font][font=Trebuchet MS]no need to co[/font][font=Trebuchet MS]unt[/font][font=Trebuchet MS] the number[/font][font=Trebuchet MS] of times he was writing this or that word.[/font][font=Trebuchet MS] [/font]Therefore it is expected for the auto-copying hypothesis that the frequencies for the words vary.

• RE: A key to understand the VMS

  Psillycyber > 10-01-2017, 10:17 PM

  Quote:

  Quote: Wrote:Moreover similarly spelled words occur frequently one above the other.

  
  This is not uncommon in meaningful texts either.  And obviously we can expect more of it by pure chance when the words are more similar in general.

  
  You can see exactly how much more common this is in the VMS compared to several example languages in the most recent Torsten Timm paper.  Mandarin was not tested, but Arabic, German, and Latin were tried.  It is much, much more common in the VMS, and in other languages the pattern only holds for words at all in lines immediately above the given word in a straight line upwards, whereas in the VMS the same words and similar words (edit distance of 1) recur atypically frequently in previous lines to the left and right as well, which is not consistent with poetry.  There are spatial diagrams that explain what I am referring to better than I can explain it.  You basically just need to read the paper to see what I mean.  I found it to be very uncanny and a bit of a smoking gun to reveal how the author created the vords in the VMS. 
  
  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

• RE: A key to understand the VMS

  Torsten > 11-01-2017, 11:43 PM

  Quote:Sam G Wrote:
  Any chance you'd be willing to expand them further to include:
  
  - Roots: yk, yt, ykch, ytch

  
  [font=Verdana]Note: A[/font]t the beginning of a word it is possible to replace o with y if the glyph after o is not an e. W[font=Verdana]ords starting with y are more common at the beginning of a line. [/font]It is also possible to replace ee with ch and ch with Sh.
  
  ykaiin   (45) okaiin   (212) qokaiin   (262) qotaiin   (79) otaiin   (154) ytaiin   (43) yaiin   ( 6)
  ykain    (10) okain    (144) qokain    (279) qotain    (64) otain    ( 96) ytain    (13) yain    (--)
  ykair    ( 8) okair    ( 22) qokair    ( 17) qotair    ( 6) otair    ( 21) ytair    ( 3) yair    ( 2)
  ykar     (36) okar     (129) qokar     (152) qotar     (63) otar     (141) ytar     (26) yar     ( 2)
  ykal     (16) okal     (138) qokal     (191) qotal     (59) otal     (143) ytal     (19) yal     ( 1)
  ykam     ( 5) okam     ( 26) qokam     ( 25) qotam     (12) otam     ( 47) ytam     (13) yam     (--)
  ykor     (10) okor     ( 34) qokor     ( 36) qotor     (29) otor     ( 46) ytor     (14) yor     ( 2)
  ykol     (14) okol     ( 82) qokol     (104) qotol     (47) otol     ( 86) ytol     (12) yol     ( 2)
  yky      (18) oky      (102) qoky      (147) qoty      (87) oty      (115) yty      (24) yy      ( 1) 
  ykey     ( 8) okey     ( 63) qokey     (107) qotey     (24) otey     ( 57) ytey     (13) ychey   (17)
  ykeey    (58) okeey    (177) qokeey    (308) qoteey    (42) oteey    (140) yteey    (28) ycheey  (24)
  ykchy    (22) okchy    ( 39) qokchy    ( 69) qotchy    (63) otchy    ( 48) ytchy    (19) ychy    ( 4)
  ykshy    ( 2) okshy    ( 19) qokshy    ( 10) qotshy    ( 5) otshy    (  4) ytshy    ( 3) yshy    ( 1)
         
  ykedaiin ( 1) okedaiin (  3) qokedaiin (  3) qotedaiin ( 3) otedaiin (  3) ytedaiin (--) ychaiin (--) ochaiin ( 1)
  ykedain  (--) okedain  (  3) qokedain  (  4) qotedain  ( 1) otedain  (  2) ytedain  (--) ychain  ( 4) ochain  (--)
  ykedar   ( 1) okedar   (  6) qokedar   (  8) qotedar   ( 3) otedar   ( 11) ytedar   ( 3) ychar   ( 2) ochar   ( 2)
  ykedal   (--) okedal   (  7) qokedal   (  3) qotedal   ( 3) otedal   (  4) ytedal   (--) ychal   (--) ochal   (--)
  ykedam   (--) okedam   (  3) qokedam   (  3) qotedam   (--) otedam   (  3) ytedam   (--) ycham   ( 1) ocham   (--)
  ykedor   ( 1) okedor   (  3) qokedor   (---) qotedor   ( 2) otedor   (  1) ytedor   (--) ychor   (16) ochor   ( 6)
  ykedol   (--) okedol   (---) qokedol   (  1) qotedol   ( 1) otedol   (  3) ytedol   (--) ychol   (12) ochol   ( 5)
  ykedy    (23) okedy    (118) qokedy    (272) qotedy    (91) otedy    (155) ytedy    (24) ychedy  (13) ochedy  ( 8)
  ykeedy   (30) okeedy   (105) qokeedy   (305) qoteedy   (74) oteedy   (100) yteedy   (28) ycheedy ( 7) ocheedy ( 1)
  [font=Courier New]ykchdy   ( 8) okchdy   ( 21) qokchdy   ( 56) qotchdy   (23) otchdy   ( 39) ytchdy   (10) ychdy   ( 2) ochdy   ( 1)[/font]
  [font=Courier New]yksh[/font][font=Courier New]dy[/font][font=Courier New]   (--) okshdy   (  1) qokshdy   (  4) qotshdy   ( 3) otshdy   (  3) [/font][font=Courier New]ytsh[/font][font=Courier New]dy   (--) [/font][font=Courier New]ysh[/font][font=Courier New]dy   (--) oshdy   ( 1)[/font]

• RE: A key to understand the VMS

  Torsten > 12-01-2017, 12:25 AM

  To illustrate the auto-copying hypotheses I have published in 2016 the app "VoynichTextGenerator" for iOS. The App is available via the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. 
  
  After selecting a starting line within the VMS the app will generate a pseudo text with statistics similar to that of the Voynich Manuscript. Furthermore it is possible to search for similar words within the text of the VMS. For this purpose it is possible to select a word on any page of the VMS. The app will then highlight all similar words which exists for the same page.
  
  The code for the app is available via You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. An important class of the app is You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. with functions like chooseSourceGroup() or morphGroup(). Another important class is You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. This class contains arrays defining which glyphs can replace each other or which glyphs can follow each other.
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