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Why not positional variation?
- Why not positional variation?
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RE: Why not positional variation?
dashstofsk > 19-04-2025, 02:10 PM
(19-04-2025, 01:08 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.unless you consider language-dependence, i.e. some words appearing more in A and others more in B.
I have considered the languages A and B separately. The tables of statistics that I have presented in this thread are for the separate languages. I believe that the split between A and B is significant and that each needs to be examined separately. Statistics applied to the whole of the manuscript are sometimes biased towards A or B ( e.g. distribution of daiin ). If the issue is why there is an A/B split then I have already proposed a scenario for this in
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RE: Why not positional variation?
oshfdk > 19-04-2025, 02:17 PM
(19-04-2025, 01:00 PM)dashstofsk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Unfortunately, my analysis of iin, in does not seem to me to be consistent with the meaningful language hypothesis.
This is assuming the text is a cipher? I'm not sure I understand how any distribution of almost anything in a ciphertext could be inconsistent with a meaningful plaintext. -
RE: Why not positional variation?
dashstofsk > 19-04-2025, 02:51 PM
(19-04-2025, 02:17 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This is assuming the text is a cipher?
No, I do not assume that. I have never had much belief in the manuscript being in cypher. I have posted my disbelief on the subject in the following thread:
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RE: Why not positional variation?
Mauro > 19-04-2025, 07:07 PM
I made some checks on the vocabulary of the different sections of the VMS and I have to say the situation is not as clear cut as I thought before.
I used the RF1a-n transcription, sections 'Herbal Currier A', 'Herbal Currier B', 'Stars Currier B', Pharmaceutical Currier A' and 'Balneological Currier B' as defined in the metadata of the transcription (I assigned manually to each section the pages marked 'Text only').
I checked the most frequent words with -aiin/-ain endings: daiin/dain, aiin/ain, qokaiin/qokain, okaiin/okain, otaiin/otain.
Herbal Currier A shows different ratios between the couplets: daiin/dain = 4.18, aiin/ain = 3.82, qokaiin/qokain = 1.34, okaiin/okain = 1.92, otaiin/otain = 1.92. The dependence of the -aiin/-ain ending ratio on what precedes it supports the idea that -aiin and -ain are different.
Herbal Currier B shows ratios rather similar to Currier A: daiin/dain = 3.7, aiin/ain = 3.86, qokaiin/qokain = 1.33, okaiin/okain = 1.7, otaiin/otain = 1.43. It too supports -aiin/-ain being different.
However....
Stars Currier B has a very different ratio for daiin/dain from both Herbal A and Herbal B: daiin/dain = 2.47, while the other ratios are more similar: aiin/ain = 3.23, qokaiin/qokain = 1.21, okaiin/okain = 1.57, otaiin/otain = 1.48.
Pharmaceutical Currier A has completely different ratios: daiin/dain = 8.23, aiin/ain = 8.8. And this supports, instead, the idea that -aiin/-ain are the same and in those days the scribe was particularly 'aiin-ish'. The qokaiin/qokain ratio is 2 but, while in Herbal A/Herbal B/Stars B they are common words, they are rare in Stars B appearing just 2 and 1 times respectively, so their ratio is a dubious number. The same goes for otaiin/otain: three and zero occurrences respectively, and the only case I've seen where there are more otaiin than okaiin (why Stars B has so few okaiin/otaiin with respect to the bulk of the manuscript I cannot say...).
Balneological Currier B is an outlier: all the ratios are more or less skewed toward -ain, to the point that some even invert: daiin/dain = 1.65, aiin/ain = 2, qokaiin/qokain = 0.52, okaiin/okain = 0.71, otaiin/otain = 0.5 (I'd notice Balneological Currier B is an outlier also when considering its vocabulary as a whole, ie. shedy/chedy/qokedy/qokain are much more frequent than in the rest of the VMS.). This supports both aiin/ain being different (dependence of the ratios on the prefix) and aiin/ain being equal (all the ratios skewed towards -ain).
Tentative (non-)conclusion: inside each section the ratios aiin/ain are different depending on what precedes them, which supports aiin/ain being different (with the notable exception of Stars B, where unfortunately only two ratios can be calculated reasonably). However, the ratios vary a lot among different sections, and more or less in the same direction for each word couplet, which instead supports aiin/ain being equivalent. I still think they are not the same, but not so firmly as before I looked, and all in all: I can't make sense of all the statistical differences I saw between the different sections. -
RE: Why not positional variation?
dashstofsk > 20-04-2025, 07:27 AM
(19-04-2025, 07:07 PM)Mauro Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I can't make sense of all the statistical differences I saw between the different sections
Certainly the ratios are higher in the language A pages. This follows because the frequencies of in are lower in the language A pages. I have attached plots of frequencies for suffices iin and in for the major work groups to show this.
Generally I like to split the manuscript into six groups:
Bio B2
Herbal A1
Herbal B2
Pharma A1
Stars B3
Text B2
These being the most uniform. Each work group seems to exhibit its own language characteristics, in addition to the major differences between A and B. We all know about this, differences in the frequencies of eo,ka,ol,q,d etc. Again, if the issue is why this is happening then the scenario I pointed to earlier might explain this. In short, it might be because the various sections were not written at the same time, and between each there might have been a shift in the author's use of his own script.