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Positional Rigidity in the VMS

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• Positional Rigidity in the VMS

• Positional Rigidity in the VMS

  -JKP- > 17-09-2017, 08:51 PM

  Emma May Smith Wrote:

  (17-09-2017, 12:25 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.How many natural languages have restrictions as severe as these as to a character's position in a word? I've done a very extensive search of languages trying to find something that is even half as restrictive and have not, so far.

  
  Lots.
  
  English, for example, only allows /ng/ in the syllable coda and it must come immediately after the vowel. Also, /h/ is only allowed in the syllable onset and only in combination with a semivowel.
  
  And English is [i]nowhere near the most restrictive language on Earth. Indeed, it is relatively liberal.[/i]

  
  
  The VMS is much more restrictive.
  
  For example, in English, ng can appear in a variety of positions in the word:
  
   mid/end    mid        mid        mid       mid/end
  
  ongoing, wrangle, elongate, lengthen, bringing
  
  
  So I think nc might be a better example than ng, if one is looking for parallels in English, since it is constrained both before and after (it needs a vowel).
  
  once, invincible, fence, wince, dunce chance
  
  
  But even though nc may behave like some VMS pairs, here's the important part... notice that the letters adjacent to nc move around also (the associated vowels a, e, i, and o can show up in different positions in words in addition to preceding or following the ng or nc pairs). This is not what one sees in Voynichese.
  
  
  There are large numbers of pairs in English (and other languages), that can appear in different positions in the word (like ng, some require a preceding vowel or consonant, exhibiting some restrictions as to neighbors, and there are  some that don't). Here is a very short list of examples of pairs that can appear in numerous positions in English words:
  
  Beginning                    Middle                                    End
  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  
  psychology, apse, lopsided, copse, tips, chirps, cups, helps, chumps     (preceding letters a, o, i, r, u, l, m)
  
  clement, acclimate, carbuncle, muscle, decline, circle, debacle      (preceding letters c, n, s, e, r, a)
  
               entail, apprentice, fountain, leant, burnt, flint, font     (preceding letters e, u, a, r, i, o)
  
  great, agree, regret, digress, pilgrim, margrave, mangrove, meagre, ogre    (preceding letters a, r, e, i, l, n, o)
  
  shift, ashes, Welsh, publish, push, mesh            (preceding letters a, l, i, u, e)
  
  
  This list could go on for pages and pages, I didn't even include consonant-vowel or vowel-vowel pairs, because it would take days to list them all. This level of flexibility in letter arrangement has no direct parallel in Voynichese.
  
  
  Unlike English, in which most single letters can appear in almost any position in a word, in Voynichese, there are only a few single-glyphs that can move through a vord in various positions. And there is only a small group of pairs can move through any position. Also, unlike English, the glyphs around them are not similarly flexible when associated with the movable glyphs.
  
  There is a great variety of pairs English (as in many other languages), and also a wide variety of letters that can directly precede or follow these pairs. This variety of combinations and flexibility of position is not characteristic of Voynichese.
  
  
  Voynichese restricts position in three ways:
  
  1. by constraining certain glyphs to the beginning, middle, or ends of Vwords,
  2. by constraining which glyphs can appear adjacent to these glyphs, and
  3. by constraining sequential glyph repetition (only cc occurs with any regularity).

• RE: Positional Rigidity in the VMS

  Koen G > 17-09-2017, 08:59 PM

  The first two points are of course special, but I don't see a problem with the third one. If a language is written phonetically and does not use double glyphs to express different sounds, there will be no sequential glyph repetition. 
  
  For example in Spanish, this is rare. It usually occurs in r-rr and L-LL. The double letters express a different single sound. This is a spelling convention and is not strictly required.

• RE: Positional Rigidity in the VMS

  davidjackson > 17-09-2017, 09:00 PM

  Quote:mid/end    mid        mid        mid       mid/end
  
  ongoing, wrangle, elongate, lengthen, bringing

  I'm not sure about those, Jkp.
  I would pronounce them differently:
  ONgoiNg, wraNgle, elonGate, lengTHen, brinGING.
  
  Again, with NC:
  
  

  Quote:once, invincible, fence, wince, dunce chance

  
  It would be /n/s for all except invinCible.
  
  Again, with the next row:
  

  Quote:psychology, apse, lopsided, 

  
  /si/cology, apZe, lop-Zide
  
  So I'm not sure if it's different dialects going on, or just me

• RE: Positional Rigidity in the VMS

  Koen G > 17-09-2017, 09:20 PM

  Are we talking about spelling or pronunciation? It's important to distinguish between the two. Comparing English spelling to Voynichese is nonsense because English spelling is notorious in that it does not reflect very well how words are pronounced.

• RE: Positional Rigidity in the VMS

  -JKP- > 17-09-2017, 09:27 PM

  (17-09-2017, 08:59 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The first two points are of course special, but I don't see a problem with the third one. If a language is written phonetically and does not use double glyphs to express different sounds, there will be no sequential glyph repetition. 
  
  For example in Spanish, this is rare. It usually occurs in r-rr and L-LL. The double letters express a different single sound. This is a spelling convention and is not strictly required.

  
  
  MarcoP has also pointed out that in Veneto language doubled letters are less common.

• RE: Positional Rigidity in the VMS

  davidjackson > 17-09-2017, 09:39 PM

  I'm talking about digraphs, which is what we were discussing before. English spelling is irrelevant in Voynichese, so I assumed that's what we were talking about.
  So tow, mow have a different digraph from cow, now in English.
  If you were creating English afresh with a new script, one would naturally give those digraphs different letters, or indications of pronunciation.

• RE: Positional Rigidity in the VMS

  -JKP- > 17-09-2017, 10:04 PM

  (17-09-2017, 09:39 PM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm talking about digraphs, which is what we were discussing before. English spelling is irrelevant in Voynichese, so I assumed that's what we were talking about.
  So tow, mow have a different digraph from cow, now in English.
  If you were creating English afresh with a new script, one would naturally give those digraphs different letters, or indications of pronunciation.

  
  David, since Emma brought up the point about how certain letters are associated with ng (in English it is always preceded by a vowel) in response to my post about positional rigidity in the VMS, I was mainly thinking about pair behavior in the VMS (in terms of glyphs, not necessarily sounds, which is also a good discussion, but wasn't specifically what I was responding to when I saw Emma's post).
  
  
  Maybe we need a separate thread about how sounds change when the order of adjacent letters change. This one might get gnarly if we try to discuss them both together and sound correspondence is an interesting topic.

• RE: Positional Rigidity in the VMS

  Anton > 17-09-2017, 10:10 PM

  Is not this discussion of character positioning heavily relied on the implicit assumption that the Voynichese spaces are spaces, and that there are no underlay spaces where we don't observe them?

• RE: Positional Rigidity in the VMS

  -JKP- > 17-09-2017, 10:19 PM

  (17-09-2017, 10:10 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Is not this discussion of character positioning heavily relied on the implicit assumption that the Voynichese spaces are spaces, and that there are no underlay spaces where we don't observe them?

  
  
  It is very heavily reliant on the assumption that the spaces are spaces.
  
  Many times I've suggested the spaces might be contrived (and I truly think they might be) but there seems to be a certain resistance to this idea (both in informal discussions and in statistical approaches and in the variously announced "solutions"), so I finally decided, okay, there are quite a few people who want to treat the spaces as literal (and maybe there are good reasons for it), so let's discuss it from that point of view and see where it gets us and if it doesn't get us anywhere, then we can move on to the next possibility.
  
  
  I don't know if this is a reasonable way to think about it, but that's where I stand right now. I'm deferring to the majority for the time being.

• RE: Positional Rigidity in the VMS

  Emma May Smith > 17-09-2017, 10:19 PM

  So, the first thing we need to distinguish is between script and sounds. Most scripts map onto sound only imperfectly and we don't know how good or bad the mapping is for the Voynich script. We have to presume that Voynich characters (or what we think might be characters) represent a single sound, even though that might not be true. However, when we discuss other languages we need to be clear when we're referring to the script and when we're referring to sound. I'll write Voynich script in square brackets [] and sounds in slashes //.
  
  Next, we need to distinguish between words and syllables. Many words are made up of more than one syllable, and the same is true of Voynich words (we can not only presume this, but propose this with proof). Sounds are structured within syllables in all languages, and we can broadly think of syllables having three parts: onset, nucleus, and coda. The nucleus is the vowel, the onset is all the consonants before the vowel, and the coda all the consonants after a vowel. The onset and the coda are often optional, but the nucleus is obligatory. Syllables can only have one vowel (at most a compound vowel).
  
  Most languages have different rules for what consonants can appear in the onset and coda, and how they are structured. Notably, the rules for the onset and the coda are not the same in many (or most) languages. Typically, onsets are more complex than codas, but that's not always the case. There are some general linguistic rules about how consonants are ordered when more than one appears in either the onset or the coda of a syllable.
  
  Also, we must be aware that whole-word rules may determine where sounds occur. Some sounds can occur at the start of a syllable, but only if they are at the start of a word.
  
  Let's get on to the issues with Voynich words and how they are structured. Specifically, we want to know if sounds in natural language can do what Voynich characters do.
  
  1. Constraining characters to the start, middle, or end or words.
  
  The character [q] is the most obvious example of this. It almost always occurs at the beginning of a word. Is this natural language like? Yes. The sound /h/, for example, was almost always word initial in Ancient Greek. The sounds /ng/ can only be word initial in Maori. Many languages, English included (some dialects), only allow a glottal stop at the beginning of a word, though it's not really phonemic.
  
  Some characters, such as [t, k], may appear only at the beginning or in the middle of words. The reason for this is that the end of a word is also either the nucleus or the coda of a syllable. If [t, k] aren't vowels, then they would have to appear in the coda. As many languages restrict certain consonants in the coda, this is no surprise. Something like one in ten languages don't allow any sounds in the syllable coda, and most have other restrictions.
  
  2. Constraining character adjacency.
  
  I'm not sure exactly which characters you are speaking of here, so I'll be broad. Obviously some characters written as two letters in our transcription are likely to be one character in the script, such as [ch, sh]. Most of the other rules for character adjacency depend on how syllables are structured.
  
  When we have more than one consonant in the onset or coda of a syllable they are typically ordered according to their sonority. We won't worry about what sonority is, but it is enough to say that sonority should be highest toward the vowel and lowest further away. So in any language /kra/ is more likely than /rka/ and /ark/ is more likely than /akr/. There are always exceptions, but it is a general tendency.
  
  Thus we might find [e] always before a vowel. I don't know what [e] stands for, but it may be that it has the highest sonority of any consonant and thus must be followed by a vowel. The character [ch] must have a lower sonority because [cheo] is an acceptable sequence but [echo] typically not.
  
  We must also remember, as mentioned above about coda restrictions. Characters such as [l, r] might often be preceded immediately by [a, o] simply because 1) they're in the syllable coda, and 2) only a single consonant is allowed in the coda. It's not possible for them to be further away from [a, o] than this unless they're in the onset, in which case they would be preceded by a space because sequences with them in the second position in an onset don't seem to be possible.
  
  3. Constraining character repetition.
  
  
  If the sounds in a language don't repeat then there is no reason for the characters to do likewise. Most repeated characters in English are not representing repeated sounds. 'Glimmer' has one /m/, 'less' has one /s/, and 'muddle' has only one /d/. Some repeated vowels, such as 'oo' and 'ee' in England are representing long vowels, not repeated ones.
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