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A family of grammars for Voynichese
- A family of grammars for Voynichese
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RE: A family of grammars for Voynichese
magnesium > 27-08-2025, 12:23 PM
(27-08-2025, 07:52 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Just to avoid misunderstanding, I do not think that the creator(s) of the Voynich MS used a slot approach to generate their vocabulary. I strictly see it as a potential model to (hopefully) better understand the composition of the words.
The same is truefor the Naibbe approach. It is (can be) a model that may tell us something about the text.
Totally understand—and to that end, I completely agree that the slot approach is an incredibly powerful model. You could think of something like the Naibbe approach, or even the Matlach steganographic cipher approach, as downstream ways of exploring how slot grammars can be reconciled with typical natural language. -
RE: A family of grammars for Voynichese
Mauro > 27-08-2025, 04:07 PM
(27-08-2025, 08:37 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I wonder why ch and Sh are absent from Pharma and Cosmological.
Uh.. it's surely an error on my part, I did not generate the tables automatically but copied them by hand... I'll check and correct it, thanks for noticing. -
RE: A family of grammars for Voynichese
Mauro > 27-08-2025, 04:11 PM
Revised and corrected, ch and sh go together with the other 'consonants' in Pharma and Cosmological:
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RE: A family of grammars for Voynichese
ReneZ > 27-08-2025, 11:33 PM
Just an editorial suggestion, if you use capitalised Eva, the result will look even better:
"Sh" instead of "sh" : Sh
"cKh" instead of "ckh": cKh -
RE: A family of grammars for Voynichese
DG97EEB > Yesterday, 05:04 PM
If you push ChatGPT and Gemini to describe the grammar, they both independently come up with a slot grammar.. unclear whether their training data is the same and this idea is therefore extant or whether genuinely coming up with this. The conclusion in both cases is that same: that Voynich cannot be translated but only decoded as it's fundamentally procedural and not for example compressed Latin which can be uncompressed. I have dozens of different statistical tests both in and out of chat models, and frankly it feels plausible but I wouldn't put my name behind it just yet. -
RE: A family of grammars for Voynichese
Jorge_Stolfi > Yesterday, 05:31 PM
(Yesterday, 05:04 PM)DG97EEB Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If you push ChatGPT and Gemini to describe the grammar, they both independently come up with a slot grammar.. unclear whether their training data is the same and this idea is therefore extant or whether genuinely coming up with this. The conclusion in both cases is that same: that Voynich cannot be translated but only decoded as it's fundamentally procedural and not for example compressed Latin which can be uncompressed. I have dozens of different statistical tests both in and out of chat models, and frankly it feels plausible but I wouldn't put my name behind it just yet.
Several slot models for Voynichese "words" have been published in the last 50 years, so those LLMs may be just picking those up. And not showing due credit, of course.
The "conclusion" is reasonable only if you assume that the language is "European" and that each word in its "standard" spelling is written as one Voynichese "word".
But there are hundreds of languages, spoken by billions of people, where each word is just one syllable long; and syllables do have a rigid slot structure, like that seen in Voynichese "words".
Even if the language is "European", maybe the Author chose to write each syllable as a separate Voynichese "word", with double space between original words. Like "ha be mus pa pam et ma mam". Then the same observation above would apply.
Unfortunately all available VMS transcription have only one code for "word space", irrespective of its length...
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: A family of grammars for Voynichese
nablator > Yesterday, 06:22 PM
(Yesterday, 05:31 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Like "ha be mus pa pam et ma mam". Then the same observation above would apply.
Latin syllables are more structured than most people realize, there are only about a thousand different Latin syllables in large texts. 10 bits of information => 10 slots would be more than enough for a code, because repetitions may be allowed of the some slot, which gives more information per slot, and maybe a few extra slots would be needed if the structure is preserved, in 3 parts (before the vowel, the vowel, after the vowel).
(Yesterday, 05:31 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Unfortunately all available VMS transcription have only one code for "word space", irrespective of its length...
I have one that is much more detailed but I need to finish it and check it. I was thinking lately that I could use combinations of existing IVTFF separators "." and "," instead of specific characters that would break parsers:
,
,,
.
.,
..
...
I don't believe that spaces are significant anymore, so I lost interest years ago and didn't finish the transliteration. -
RE: A family of grammars for Voynichese
Jorge_Stolfi > Yesterday, 08:50 PM
(Yesterday, 06:22 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I don't believe that spaces are significant anymore
Well, labels have basically the same structure as text "words", so that is a bit of evidence that "words" are indeed words. Also, AFAIK all the "word" statistics (like entropy per "word", length of "words" at line start and end) are consistent with them being indeed words of the language. So I am sticking with that hypothesis for now...
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: A family of grammars for Voynichese
ReneZ > Today, 12:21 AM
(Yesterday, 08:50 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Well, labels have basically the same structure as text "words", so that is a bit of evidence that "words" are indeed words.
I would agree that this implies that they are 'units' of some kind, but not necessarily words. That would not clash with your Asian theory, I think.
As you know, in your grammar numerous 'abnormal words' are in fact concatenations of two words. We cannot yet decide if this is due to:
- mistake (space left out)
- undefined spelling (no fixed rules)
- composite word
- something else.
I don't see it as a problem. It happens in many regular languages.