Koen G > 05-02-2018, 09:22 PM
(05-02-2018, 09:12 PM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.At least you can say something about the linguistic typology of this language and about some basic grammar rules. With this features it should be very easy to identify the language used.
Torsten > 05-02-2018, 10:14 PM
(05-02-2018, 09:22 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(05-02-2018, 09:12 PM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.At least you can say something about the linguistic typology of this language and about some basic grammar rules. With this features it should be very easy to identify the language used.
Well, not entirely. Natural language (i.e. people talking to each other) and spelling are two separate things. Spelling is a human construct, and in the Middle Ages it wasn't standardized yet. If Voynichese is the result of a spelling experiment, or as some linguists see it a budding writing culture, it may deviate from its underlying natural language in all kinds of ways due to artificial human intervention.
-JKP- > 05-02-2018, 10:27 PM
Quote:Let me think of an analogy. For example, you present me with a string of numbers, 22 15 25 14 9 3 8 0 14 9 14 10 1.
Koen G > 05-02-2018, 10:49 PM
Torsten > 05-02-2018, 11:43 PM
(05-02-2018, 10:49 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Torsten: no, I'm saying that many properties of a spelling system, whether governed by rigid rules or not, are independent from human natural language. There is no intrinsic reason to ancient Egyptian why it should be written in hieroglyphs. This happened because of historical reasons.
Korean is spelled by forming a square out of each syllable. Arabic is spelled with omission of vowels and right to left. And those are just modern, well known examples.
What I'm getting at is that we are looking at a spelling system (with or without intentional obscurity), not an actual natural language. You can't write down a language, there is always human mediation, and that's where strange things can happen, which are not necessarily reflected in the spoken form of the language.
Koen G > 06-02-2018, 09:35 AM
Torsten > 06-02-2018, 10:12 AM
(06-02-2018, 09:35 AM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.True, the VM's relatively huge corpus should allow for easier identification of what's going on, and the fact that we still haven't been able to do that is an argument (not proof) in favor of meaninglessness.
But as you say, we can actually identify structure and spelling rules. This suggests that a real writing system is in place, but it obscures any underlying language. This could be because of our ignorance, or because of intentional obscurity, or because the writing system was flawed.
MarcoP > 06-02-2018, 06:05 PM
(06-02-2018, 10:12 AM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(06-02-2018, 09:35 AM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.True, the VM's relatively huge corpus should allow for easier identification of what's going on, and the fact that we still haven't been able to do that is an argument (not proof) in favor of meaninglessness.
But as you say, we can actually identify structure and spelling rules. This suggests that a real writing system is in place, but it obscures any underlying language. This could be because of our ignorance, or because of intentional obscurity, or because the writing system was flawed.
That we can identify structure and spelling rules only means that there is a system behind the VMS. We have to identify the spelling rules to reconstruct the system. Only then we will know if the script was designed to represent language or something else.
I have tried to identify the spelling rules and the relations between words in my paper from 2014 (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). If you know the rules the system is very simple.
Torsten > 06-02-2018, 07:16 PM
(06-02-2018, 06:05 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hi Torsten,
have you ever used your simple system to generate a long text on the basis of a fragment of the VMS? If so, is the output of that process available?
bi3mw > 08-02-2018, 07:08 PM
(04-02-2018, 09:27 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Just thinking about it philosophically (i.e. without much knowledge of the statistics involved) I'd say that it's impossible to prove. The reason is that in this particular case the statements "it has no meaning" and "the meaning is unknown to us" have the same effect.
Let me think of an analogy. For example, you present me with a string of numbers, 22 15 25 14 9 3 8 0 14 9 14 10 1.
I could say "it's a random string of numbers". But I don't know whether this is true. Until I find a way to read the numbers in a way which makes sense, I have no way of proving whether the numbers are randomly chosen or not. I could only disprove it by pointing out what you encoded and how you did it.