geoffreycaveney > 10-04-2019, 03:53 AM
(09-04-2019, 08:24 AM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(08-04-2019, 10:15 PM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.about the alternation of final [-y] and [-aiin] as suffixes of the same roots: Many researchers have observed that the glyph [y] has the shape of the common medieval Latin ms abbreviation for the "-us" suffix. If [-y] is also being used here to represent a suffix "-Vs", then this alternation could represent for example [-y] = nominative "-Vs" and [-aiin] = accusative "-Vn". In this case, the vowel is written as [a] in the [aiin] suffix, but not written separately in the [y] suffix. Such an explanation could be valid for this phenomenon in a number of medieval European languages.
Hi Geoffrey,
that idea is discussed by Jacques Guy inYou are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (1991). I think Guy's paper marked a significant step forward in Voynich studies: it is definitely worth reading. Guy observes that (in the part of the text he analyzed) -y 'accounts for 50% of word finals, an extraordinarily high proportion. Do folio 79v and 80r contain a text with every other word or so ending in "-us" or "-os", or even plain "-s"? Possible of course, but quite improbable and thus a poor working hypothesis'. Such a high frequency strongly suggests that y must be a vowel (if the script is phonetic and not an abjad).
Guy also mentions the well known fact that in Medieval Latin manuscripts the '9' abbreviation 'word-initially [represents] the prefix "con-" or its variants (com-, cun-, cum-)'.
Of course, if one thinks that -9 as a suffix works as in Latin manuscripts, an implication is that also 9- as a prefix does so. But evidence suggests that EVA:y represents the same sound word-initially and word-finally. In particular, words ending with -y are followed by words starting with y- less frequently than expected (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). This can be observed for all Voynichese symbols that can occur both word-initially and word-finally. In many languages, the consecutive repetition of the same sound across word-boundaries is avoided through alteration of one of the two words (e.g. in Italian word-ending vowels are often dropped before words starting with the same vowel). See also Emma's discussion of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
MarcoP > 10-04-2019, 07:48 AM
geoffreycaveney > 10-04-2019, 11:45 AM
MarcoP > 10-04-2019, 01:08 PM
(10-04-2019, 11:45 AM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.At the same time, any proposal will need to explain [qokeedy qokeedy qokeedy] and similar sequences anyway, which may be related to the unusual letter distribution features.
Quote:Those who propose that [y] represents a vowel, will need to demonstrate how the very limited inventory of other characters can possibly represent all of the consonant phonemes of a language.
geoffreycaveney > 10-04-2019, 01:54 PM
(10-04-2019, 01:08 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(10-04-2019, 11:45 AM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.At the same time, any proposal will need to explain [qokeedy qokeedy qokeedy] and similar sequences anyway, which may be related to the unusual letter distribution features.
The statement that the systematic exact repetition of words could possibly "be related to the unusual letter distribution features" seems quite obscure to me.
(10-04-2019, 01:08 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Quote:Those who propose that [y] represents a vowel, will need to demonstrate how the very limited inventory of other characters can possibly represent all of the consonant phonemes of a language.
If you believe that Voynichese symbols are too limited to represent the sounds of a language, the problem is there independently on y being a consonant or a vowel. Not a good argument to disregard all evidence about y behaving as a vowel.
MarcoP > 10-04-2019, 03:43 PM
(10-04-2019, 01:54 PM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If the author repeated certain words in the text extremely often, to a degree that is not typical of most written texts that we are familiar with, and if those certain words that are repeated extremely frequently happen to end in a final "-s" in the underlying language of the text, then this feature of systematic exact repetition of words could indeed also cause and explain an unusually high proportion of the total number of words in the text that end in a final "-s".
(10-04-2019, 01:54 PM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Importantly, I also note that if certain conjunctions, prepositions, articles, and other particles that are typically written as separate words in standard Greek text, are rather in the Voynich MS typically written as prefixed elements of the following words, then this could dramatically reduce the frequency of vowel-final words in the whole text, since many of these words are vowel-final, which could in turn dramatically increase the frequency of "s"-final words, for example.
(10-04-2019, 01:54 PM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It is well known in linguistics that while vowel sounds are more important for recognizing words heard in oral speech, on the contrary consonant letters are more important for recognizing words that one reads in written text. This is why all-consonant abjads exist and have long existed historically, while nobody ever heard of a writing system that only represents the vowels and not the consonants. To see this, just compare "lng exstd hstrcll" and "o eie ioiay".
The point is, if a particular writing system has the problem of a small number of characters to represent the entire language, it is much more important to reserve as many of them as possible to represent as many consonants or groups of consonants as possible, rather than to use too many of them to represent vowels. We can afford to sacrifice the representation of a vowel or vowels much more readily than we can afford to sacrifice the representation of a consonant or consonants.
Quote:I believe that, if the script is phonetic and it is not an abjad, there is little doubt that EVA: e, o, a, y correspond to vowelsThis opinion is based on accurate analyses by several researchers, using different transcriptions and different methods.
geoffreycaveney > 10-04-2019, 04:04 PM
(10-04-2019, 03:43 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The idea of an abjad could well be one of the most important aspects when considering Voynichese phonology.
If the writing system is not an abjad, vowels and consonant should alternate; they should cumulative have something (very roughly) comparable with a 50-50 share of character occurrences (not types: vowels will have less types, with more occurrences per type). That is basically the principle underlying both Sukhotin's algorithm and Hudson's OCP software (and possibly 2-states HMM as well).
[...]
On the other hand, if the script is an abjad, it might be as you say. I don't know much about abjads, but if vowels can sometimes be totally absent, then (if Voynichese is such a case) y would obviously represent a consonant.
Abjads are a subject I would like to investigate more. For what is worth, the fact that Sukhotin's algorithm results in a higher Consonant-Vowel alternation rate for the VMS than for the comparison languages I have checked (German, Italian, Latin, English) suggests that Voynichese does represent vowels.
Stephen Carlson > 18-09-2019, 12:54 AM
(08-04-2019, 08:09 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hulden defines the obligatory contour principle (OCP) as "a universal cross-linguistic tendency to avoid redundancy or repetition of similar speech features within a word or morpheme, especially if the phonemes are adjacent to one another".Any analysis based on the OCP (which is admittedly a pretty strong cross-linguistic tendency) would have trouble accepting EVA-i as a speech feature, because it is often doubled and tripled up. This is why Hulden's analysis split them up. At any rate, the EVA-i is reminiscent of the minim and may just represent a stroke rather than a letter, making the real symbols EVA-in and EVA-iin, as in the analysis.
The principle is that characters that tend to occur consecutively must have different sounds, while characters with similar sounds never or very rarely appear next to each other. At the light of this, it seems clear why q- and -in end up being considered similar: they never appear in consecutive positions. Similarly, gallows do not appear consecutively, so they must be similar sounds.
The positional constraints of Voynichese are so strong that they make several consecutive combinations impossible or very rare: this could contribute to make the lower splits in this tree unreliable (because they depend on ridiculously small numbers). On the other hand, some of those constraints may very well be a consequence of the OCP.
-JKP- > 18-09-2019, 09:16 AM
(06-04-2019, 08:26 PM)Common_Man Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Maybe this isn't going to be very useful, but just consider this possibility..
What if the author consistently left out the first letter (or consonant) while writing to make it difficult to read for the people who didn't know the system? The idea obviously comes from Derek Vogt's findings (which I still cant get enough of, even though I believe he lost his way somewhere in the middle and ended up in no man's land), and maybe keeping this in mind might help those trying to assign sound values, and such a thing might give rise to a lot of single glyph words, which the VMS has in plenty.
I myself have tried it while trying to transcribe the MS in my own way, but it never really helped.. Maybe others trying to do the same can benefit by keeping this in mind..
RenegadeHealer > 18-09-2019, 06:01 PM
(07-04-2019, 05:26 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.All this is very similar to the classical example of the guy looking for his lost keys near lanterns only.
But never mind. The exercise, even if it has a serious chance of being meaningless, is still interesting enough.