Visemes

[Fontanellean]

This is very off-the-wall, but has anyone here yet explored the idea that the text could be representing visemes? The idea would be that a deaf person decided to create a script based on lipreading, in which multiple phonemes would be collapsed. 

I grant that it would be hard to explain the purpose of doing it. Transcribing a speaking person would not be swift enough. Converting a standard text would result in information loss.

[Koen G]

It's a cool idea, but I'm afraid structural rigidity works against this.

[Fontanellean]

It's a cool idea, but I'm afraid structural rigidity works against this.

Could you elaborate a bit? My understanding was that certain types of natural languages were still under consideration by some individuals. This would just be a condensation of a natural language.

[Koen G]

Well, the problem with Voynichese on the level of glyphs (or glyph clusters) is that their position and company is too predictable. 

Deaf people are aware of word boundaries (nouns, names, verbs... are understood as units of meaning). So we assume spaces are unaffected. Now take something like the vowel "a" in Latin, which I assume would be represented separately. We need that to appear word-initially (ad, ab, ac, atque...), medially (infinite examples) and word-finally (infinite examples). Dream up a position in the word (or sequence of sounds), and Latin has frequent examples of words with the a-sound in that position. Changing the underlying mechanism to lip reading does not change the fact that Voynichese does not offer this kind of flexibility by a long shot.

Now, you could say the deaf person makes separate glyphs for "am", "an", "al" etc because people's lips may look different depending on the neighboring sounds. But then you'd need an awful lot of glyphs and still a lot of flexibility. 

So in short, your proposal doesn't seem to solve any problems but in fact might make things worse.

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Deaf people are aware of word boundaries (nouns, names, verbs... are understood as units of meaning). So we assume spaces are unaffected.

IIUC, Rafal's theory about the Rohonc codex is indeed that the Author was deaf and thus the script is an encoding of his sign language.  But that is not a simple word-by-word mapping of the surrounding spoken language.  It is a very different language, with its own lexicon and grammar, quite unlike that of any spoken language family.

All the best, --stolfi

[Koen G]

IIUC, Rafal's theory about the Rohonc codex is indeed that the Author was deaf and thus the script is an encoding of his sign language.  But that is not a simple word-by-word mapping of the surrounding spoken language.  It is a very different language, with its own lexicon and grammar, quite unlike that of any spoken language family.

Right, though I think this is of little relevance when it comes to "visemes". The Rohonc system is approached as if it is something akin to logographs, in that glyphs correspond to units of meaning rather than sounds. In a lipreading system, glyphs still correspond to sounds, only those seen rather than heard.

[Rafal]

Yep, I believe that Rohonc Codex is logographic.

By the way we cannot exclude that Voynich Manuscript is also "logographic" although in such case other descriptions as "nomenclator" or "code" ( You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ) would fit better.

It is only nomenclature but Rohonc words are sometimes iconic - they resemble object they represent and behave this way the same as Chinese signs or Egyptian hieroglyphs while Voynichese words never do it. I would say Logograms refer to a natural script while codes refer to a cipher.

IF Voynichese was logographic/nomenclator/code then  such case we should look for patterns and common words that could mean "herb", "leaf", "Sun", "Moon" etc. Unfortunately we cannot spot such patterns.

[Fontanellean]

Well, the problem with Voynichese on the level of glyphs (or glyph clusters) is that their position and company is too predictable. 

Deaf people are aware of word boundaries (nouns, names, verbs... are understood as units of meaning). So we assume spaces are unaffected. Now take something like the vowel "a" in Latin, which I assume would be represented separately. We need that to appear word-initially (ad, ab, ac, atque...), medially (infinite examples) and word-finally (infinite examples). Dream up a position in the word (or sequence of sounds), and Latin has frequent examples of words with the a-sound in that position. Changing the underlying mechanism to lip reading does not change the fact that Voynichese does not offer this kind of flexibility by a long shot.

Now, you could say the deaf person makes separate glyphs for "am", "an", "al" etc because people's lips may look different depending on the neighboring sounds. But then you'd need an awful lot of glyphs and still a lot of flexibility. 

So in short, your proposal doesn't seem to solve any problems but in fact might make things worse.

I suppose another defeater is the low abundance of two-glyph words on certain pages.