(25-09-2020, 12:34 PM)Ruby Novacna Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Excuse me, Geoffrey, I didn't follow in detail your proposal to read the glyphs in the manuscript, on what do you base the attribution of phonetic values, did you do a frequency analysis, or do you rely on your intuition?
Most of the details are discussed in the long "Verbose cipher" thread, but I can try to provide a short summary here:
The most significant new result that I observed in the best version (highest conditional entropy) of Koen's and Marco's verbose cipher analysis of the Voynich ms text was the treatment of EVA [o+glyph] as a single unit. Given the relatively high frequency of both [k] and [ok], [t] and [ot], etc., it makes logical linguistic sense to hypothesize that [o+glyph] may represent the voiced counterpart of voiceless [glyph] for obstruent phonemes (such as /p/ & /b/, /t/ & /d/, /k/ & /g/, /s/ & /z/, etc.). This hypothesis is based on typical frequency patterns of voiceless and voiced obstruents in most natural languages.
Then I considered the glyph(s) EVA [ch] and its combinations and ligatures with other glyphs that are well-known, [ckh] and [cth] being the most significant of them. Now this could logically represent a variety of linguistic features: for example, [ch] could represent /h/ and its combinations and ligatures could represent aspirated counterparts of the phonemes it combines with. However, I observed that [ockh] and [octh] occur as a proportion of all [ckh] and [cth] much more frequently than does [och] as a proportion of all [ch]. If [ch] were aspiration, then the combination of voicing and aspiration in [ockh] and [octh] would be unexpected in most natural languages--yes, it famously occurs in South Asian languages derived from Sanskrit, in the sounds "bh", "dh", "gh", but closer to the likely area of origin of the Voynich ms such sounds are very rare. So I rejected the hypothesis of [ch] as /h/ and aspiration.
I found it makes much more logical linguistic sense to hypothesize that [ch] represents /i~j/ and its combinations and ligatures represent palatalization. The combination of voicing and palatalization in [ockh] and [octh] would be perfectly natural in languages with palatalized consonants, such as the Slavic languages. Furthermore, the relative rarity of [och] would also make sense, as there is no such thing as a voiced/voiceless distinction in the palatal glide /j/.
Remarkably, I have recently discovered that You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. a couple months ago independently suggested the same hypothesis of [ch] as /j/ and ligatures with [ch] as palatalized consonants in Slavic languages! The post even concluded by suggesting "Sorbian or Judaeo-Czech" as plausible languages of the Voynich ms!
Another important idea in Koen's and Marco's work was the treatment of EVA [qok] and [qot] as single units. Since my hypothesis already treats [k] glyphs and combinations as dental/alveolar phonemes and [t] glyphs and combinations as labial phonemes, I had the idea to hypothesize that perhaps [qok] = /n/ and [qot] = /m/.
Those are the most important broad hypotheses behind my current interpretation, which could perhaps be called "Slavic VCI". (I suppose "Selective Letter Alphabet for the Voynich Inventory of Characters - Verbose Cipher Inventory" would be too much.) There are also logical linguistic reasons for other details of my hypothesis: for example, the great frequency of the combination EVA [lk] led me to hypothesize that [l] = /s/ and [k] = /t/, with various sequences with [l] representing various sibilant consonants. Once one's hypothesis is focused on Slavic, then EVA [r] = /l/ makes logical linguistic sense due to the frequency of final /l/ in Slavic past tense verb forms. It remains to assign EVA [s] as /r/.
EVA [d] and [od] fit in the logical linguistic system best as /k/ and /g/, but my hypothesis is that variations in the shape of EVA [d] may distinguish /c/ from /k/ in many cases. Also, I hypothesize that [od] would represent /h/ rather than /g/ in a West Slavic language, in line with the actual historical sound change /g/ > /h/. An earlier version of my hypothesis had treated [o] in isolation as /h/, but now I interpret it as Slavic "ch", the voiceless velar fricative /x/.
So, is that frequency analysis, or is it intuition? I would describe it as intuition based on typical frequencies of phonemes and combinations of phonemic features in the linguistic area.
Geoffrey