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Vords are too short.
- Vords are too short.
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Vords are too short.
R. Sale > 07-04-2022, 08:45 PM
In the discussion of potential translations, perhaps it should be said once again, that proof of a proper interpretation of the VMs text cannot be demonstrated by words alone. Certainly, vords are important, but vords are too short. A vord by itself does not demonstrate that the text makes sense - in whatever way sense can be made in some relevant interpretation.
Any random page of VMs text would do. But why not tune in to what the VMs has left to offer. There are certain markers in the circular texts. A particular pair of heraldic indicators are attached to marker on White Aries.
Finding a viable interpretation of VMs text is going to take the conversion of a given VMs text segment into a coherent statement of some sort. And better than a random text selection, there might be something present in the illustrations as an indicator. One that is paired. One that is both disguised and verified. One with enough historical significance to represent the start of an ecclesiastical tradition. Just a lil' ol' thing like that.
Heraldry helps to interpret the VMs illustrations. And those images reveal what the VMs artist knew. And there is another level of revelation when the techniques of VMs artistic presentation are investigated and the multiple examples of ambiguity and obfuscation are recognized.
The story of the VMs, though still not that well understood, ties in somehow with the era of the Golden Fleece and rise of the Colettine Poor Clares, which are tied together in the C-14 dates and the era of Philip the Good, Dike of Burgundy. The VMs illustrations tell a story that is complex, detailed and fairly coherent. Vords do very little in making sense of the text, they are too short. -
RE: Vords are too short.
bi3mw > 07-04-2022, 09:19 PM
(07-04-2022, 08:45 PM)R. Sale Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Vords do very little in making sense of the text, they are too short.
The average word length in VMS is about 5.6. This is short, but not too short to possibly make sense ( especially since some words are significantly longer than average ). -
RE: Vords are too short.
Koen G > 07-04-2022, 10:00 PM
You cannot use unmodified EVA to determine word length, since it is stroke-based at times. For example, it is almost certain that benches are to be read as single glyphs. (This would imply that benched gallows are stacked, Greek style). What to do with iin-clusters is a more complex question, but again I would say it is wrong to take EVA as the one solution. -
RE: Vords are too short.
R. Sale > 07-04-2022, 10:07 PM
Of course, a vord can make sense, it could even be a valid interpretation of what the author meant to impart. However, with only one vord, it is still quite difficult to discover the meaning of the chosen text.
And how is it know if a vord has been interpreted correctly, if the general content of the text segment is not understood? -
RE: Vords are too short.
bi3mw > 08-04-2022, 10:15 AM
(07-04-2022, 10:00 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You cannot use unmodified EVA to determine word length, ....
I took EVA to have a working basis for measurement in the first place. Of course, this results in the imponderables described by you. However, one would have to find a consensus in the interpretation of the glyphs, which I imagine to be quite difficult. -
RE: Vords are too short.
Koen G > 08-04-2022, 03:14 PM
(08-04-2022, 10:15 AM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I took EVA to have a working basis for measurement in the first place. Of course, this results in the imponderables described by you. However, one would have to find a consensus in the interpretation of the glyphs, which I imagine to be quite difficult.
Yeah, this is really more of a worry about our inability to cope with this problem rather than a direct criticism. EVA offers one option (even though it wasn't meant as one) so we use it because there is no consensus for anything else.
When it comes to statistics like character entropy and word length though, I think EVA sits on the "low entropy" and "lengthy" side of the spectrum. One solution would be to create two "master files": one in EVA (which parses as separate strokes in case of doubt) and one which maximally combines strokes into glyphs. One could then say "average word length in Voynichese is between x and y, depending on how you like to parse".
Edit: just to be clear, if we combine some of EVA's characters into glyphs, Voynichese still has really low entropy for a language. But EVA makes it considerably lower. I don't know the impact on word length and how it compares to real languages. -
RE: Vords are too short.
Juan_Sali > 08-04-2022, 06:20 PM
(07-04-2022, 08:45 PM)R. Sale Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Certainly, vords are important, but vords are too short. A vord by itself does not demonstrate that the text makes sense - in whatever way sense can be made in some relevant interpretation.
Do you mean too short to be a word?
The first step to decipher the text is to determine the set of characters, in my opinion the text is written in a tricky way to create confusion. There are slight variations in the way that some characters are written, in that way it is more difficult to know if some characters are the same or not.
This is a sample of my researh, the starting of f6r, plant identified as Cannabis:
Is there someone working on something like this? -
RE: Vords are too short.
R. Sale > 08-04-2022, 06:48 PM
One possibility would be to go through the VMs text an make all vords as long as possible, and then go again and make all vords as short as possible. That would give values for x and y.
While this discussion is interesting, the shortness I was thinking about (poorly stated on my part) was not the length of the vord, per se, in number of its glyphs, but the place of a single vord in a segment of text - an otherwise unreadable segment of text. This seems to be a practice common to a number of proposed VMs solutions over recent years. However, it is not sufficient. Making sense of text segments is necessary, if an understanding of the text is possible. "Sense" may not be rational, it might be alchemical. It might be nonsense. One vord in a text segment is not enough to interpret the author's intent. A single vord in a text segment is too short.
So, perhaps, there could be some discussion about text segments. VMs plant pages as botanical monographs has so far turned up empty. Nick Pelling's 'block paradigm' might work if the range of potential candidates wasn't so vast. The investigation of text segments, turns to a question of which segments should be examined.
An alternative to the analysis based on a poetic-type of line-length structure would be a structural pattern within a given text created by the repeated use of particular vords. The outer ring of VMs White Aries is a marked text segment that has significant internal repetition.
The growing set of more subtle religious references is hard to evaluate, Clearly the botanical, astronomical/astrological, and pharmaceutical aspects of the VMs illustrations are more obvious. There are also certain mythological clues: Melusine, the Muses, and Philomela. Do all these other influences in some way moderate the religious influences?
Do the marked examples of circular text segments have a greater significance? Are vords in red ink important? If the VMs "wreath" is the 'Wreath of the Virgin', is the circular text around it the "Office of the Virgin', or some similar form of prayer? -
RE: Vords are too short.
Ruby Novacna > 08-04-2022, 07:17 PM
(07-04-2022, 08:45 PM)R. Sale Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There are certain markers in the circular texts. A particular pair of heraldic indicators are attached to marker on White Aries.
You often refer to the White Aries page, do you have any suggestions for the meaning of the text? -
RE: Vords are too short.
R. Sale > 08-04-2022, 07:25 PM
Juan_Sali,
Not too long ago, an effort was made to match the most solid botanical identifications from the VMs with known examples from medieval herbals, in the hope that there might be correspondence in the written text. This was one of the candidates examined. Nothing came of those investigations.
The problem with any interpretive methodology is extending its use beyond single, isolated vords to produce a coherent segment of text.