Just an idea I have had for long
Scarecrow > Yesterday, 08:38 AM
This idea has been in my mind for year or so but I am not clever enough to understand nor prove if this could be something that could work.
I have always thought that the glyphs mean more than letters but not gettin nowhere.
Thinking:
Voynich word are about 4 glyphs long, quite short to convey semantic information.
There must be an expansion method, glyphs must pack more semantic punch in them.
Also, in labels the glyphs can stand alone which also could indicate that they are more than bigram-trigram expansions, but whole words.
Idea:
Could Stolfi's core-mantle-crust model, combined with slot system, provide any clue?
Latin is SOV (Subject-Object-Verb), SVO, VSO and poetical mode (OSV,OVS and VOS) structured language, very flexible.
Both Rosam puella amat,Amat puella rosam are acceptable.
Note to reader, I do not know Latin much.
Most deciphrement proposals do not produce grammatically sound language.
If we assume that VMS is based on Latin language, the words and glyph combinations must convey grammatical information, diacritics.
Coming to core-mantle-crust. If core or core+mantle combinations could indicate word and mantle the diacritic how to read the word.
Rosa, rosae, rosam, etc. all from same core+different mantles
Something like Core = semantic content (1-2 glyphs), Crust = semantic modifiers (1-2 glyphs), Mantle = grammatical markers (1-2 glyphs)
Do not take these fixed that core is and mantle is, they can be interchanged. The idea is that we have three components to codify word+grammar, and Stofi's idea has three components.
Then come the slots, if the latin word then depends also on the slot, so even same core+mantle could mean different word in different positions.
There could be then four codebooks:
Book 1: Core meanings for slot positions 1-3
Book 2: Core meanings for slot positions 4-6
Book 3: Core meanings for slot positions 7-9
Book 4: Mantle diacritics and grammar rules
A bit besides the point, but this could possibly give reason for the Currer a and Currer b differences but I haven't given this much of a thought really.
But the idea in my head is that if VMS was made in two different locations, A location and B location, they could have had also two different sets of codebooks
Possible?
Core combinations:
8 basic cores
With crust combinations: ~8 × 10-15 possible crust patterns = 80-120 core+crust stems
Across 8 slot positions: 80-120 × 8 = 640-960 distinct semantic meanings
To write botanical text just from hat:
Plant names: 20-50 words needed
Plant parts: 50-100 (root, leaf, flower, bark, etc.)
Properties: 100-150 (hot, cold, dry, moist, sweet, bitter, etc.)
Actions/effects: 100-150 (heals, causes, prevents, strengthens, etc.)
Medical terms: 100-200
Common words: 200-300 (and, of, with, for, against, etc.)
In my mind this system could plausibly generate grammatical Latin with sufficient vocabulary for botanical description. Enough words could be generated, the grammatical encoding could be enough to handle Latin's complexity.
Yes, there are still things that need explanation, like how we could distinguish words like malum (apple) and malum (evil), how gender would be conveyed, tense (if present at all).
And yes, it would be quite hard system to learn, but just as an idea that I have had in my mind for long and as I do not have the brain capacity to develop this further, so I hope someone here can say the final word for it.