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On plain texts and ciphers (a thought experiment)

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• On plain texts and ciphers (a thought experiment)

• RE: On plain texts and ciphers (a thought experiment)

  ThomasCoon > 13-09-2016, 12:16 AM

  (12-09-2016, 09:04 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There are a number of ways to look at this. Some examples that come immediately to mind are:
  
  
  1. 4o could be an extension of 4, with 4 being "q" and 4o being "qu". Most languages have combinations that are more common than others.
  
  or...
  
  2. One can think of 4o as being something like "pro" (a common Latin abbreviation) and, if it were, then perhaps 4 by itself might be "pre" (another common Latin abbreviation). Thus, they could be conceptually related in terms of first letter and historic precedent.
  
  or...
  
  3. 4 and 4o could be two unrelated assignments. For example, the Luetz code that I summarized on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., uses the 4 to represent "a" and 4o to represent "p", with a single glyph having the same alphabetic "value" as a double glyph and the similarity in shape being superficial (or intentionally misleading). Thus, in the VMS, the 4o might be "qu" and a 4 might be something less frequently used, like a number perhaps.
  
  or...
  
  4. The 4 could be a character or sound, syllable or concept, and the o could be a modifier. In English, we use -s for plurals, un- to negate, -ly to change the grammatical sense from noun to adverb. These are different kinds of modifiers. Consider the high frequency of the letter "o" in the VMS and how many of them seem to always be in the same position in the word, just as we put -s at the end of words to create plurals. Or it could be that the 4 itself is a modifier, one that's not frequently needed. As long as its meaning is known, it wouldn't matter where in the word it was positioned so the designer chose the beginning.
  
  
  I can think of quite a few other possibilities, but that's enough to get the idea.

  
  These are all very good points! I also considered #1 but I couldn't fit all the 4o- words to any group of "qu" words (in French, Spanish, Latin). I never thought of #2 but that could possibly explain why the 4o- can be separate. Like you said, if it means "pro" or "per" or "pr(a)e", those can stand independently as prepositions or be attached to verbs as prefixes (perduro, pereo, permaneo). Nice!

• RE: On plain texts and ciphers (a thought experiment)

  Anton > 13-09-2016, 12:38 AM

  About q and qo.
  
  Plotting qo in Job's VQP shows the astonishing shift of its density into Balneo and Recipe folios which are Currier B. 77,7% of qo is in B folios while only 20,8 is in A folios (the remainder is undecided between A and B). And it is notable how little the distribution of q differs from that of qo: 77,6% in B with only 20,9% in A. (That's, of course, due to the fact that q is used mostly in qo.)
  
  So the fact that q is rare in labels may be nothing more than the consequence of that labels are not very numerous in B folios - most labels are in Pharma and Astro.
  
  It is notable that the first ever occurrence of qo (and q) - that is in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. line 7 - is accompanied by the horizontal superscored line - like that designating an abbreviation in medieval plain texts. Maybe, this betrays a real abbreviation, and qo is an abbreviation?
  
  Next, in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. qo is a separate vord, not part of any other vord. The next occurrence of qo as a vord - You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. line 3 - features an apostrophe above (like that making s of e)! You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. line 10 shows a similar apostrophe in qoky. And then the scribe seems to have dropped the idea of superscripting qo. Or did he not? I did not follow all occurrences. If yes, then why? Probably because only a superscripted version is ever in place - so the superscript is trivial and can be omitted; while e.g. ch and sh are both required.

• RE: On plain texts and ciphers (a thought experiment)

  -JKP- > 13-09-2016, 12:53 AM

  (13-09-2016, 12:38 AM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
  
  It is notable that the first ever occurrence of qo (and q) - that is in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. line 7 - is accompanied by the horizontal superscored line - like that designating an abbreviation in medieval plain texts. Maybe, this betrays a real abbreviation, and qo is an abbreviation?

  
  There are a couple of other places where this happens (the Latin line for abbreviation).
  
  I've been careful to pay attention to anything in the text that is a "slip" (an unconscious mistake) because I figured no one could create a document that long (even if it were two scribes rather than one) without some of their normal writing habits coming through.
  
  
  So... you see it in the line over the 4o, you see it in the superscripted 9 that appears at the end of a line, and you see it in the letter "p" that shows up one of the pages (I'm pretty sure it is "p" and I'm pretty sure it is a slip that the scribe either didn't notice or decided not to correct or left for correction later and forgot).

• RE: On plain texts and ciphers (a thought experiment)

  Anton > 13-09-2016, 01:01 AM

  In any case, qo is mostly in B folios. That suggests that qo is a representation of something that is generally natural for A and B but is required much more often in B - why? Probably because of the nature of the underlay text:
  
  - different underlay language making much more frequent use of a particular letter combination;
  - different narration style making much more frequent use of a particular word (if spaces are not spaces);
  - different subject of Balneo and Recipe requring much more frequent use or a particular word or symbol (imagine e.g. those crosses from spells mapping into qo) - if spaces are not spaces, again.

• RE: On plain texts and ciphers (a thought experiment)

  Diane > 13-09-2016, 03:11 AM

  Emma,
  Sorry, the thread has moved on so this may seem out of order.  I was thinking more that since the alphabet itself is believed to have been derived in the first instance from hieroglyphic forms, so an alternative system might have been created to represent a series of hieroglyphs or other logograms by a limited set of forms - either to roughly approximate the sound of each, or to represent each by a simpler form.
  
  In some medieval Egyptian works we find Voynich-like glyphs as a sort of mysterious writing, and again in a letter sent to Kircher (from Lyons, actually) where there are three "4"-like glyphs in a row - recalling the "thrice great" sequence in hieratic.
  
  It wasn't an argument, but at the same time I wasn't speaking about abjads either. It seems logical to suppose some such system would have been used by people like Pieresec or Kircher - their personal notes surely wouldn't have reproduced every hieroglphic in full detail.
  
  However - this is just as clarification, not an effort to derail.

• RE: On plain texts and ciphers (a thought experiment)

  Koen G > 13-09-2016, 05:02 AM

  On a similar note, I just noticed for the first time that phoenician or Punic inscriptions look like a whole bunch of 4, o, 9.

• RE: On plain texts and ciphers (a thought experiment)

  -JKP- > 13-09-2016, 05:56 AM

  (13-09-2016, 05:02 AM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.On a similar note, I just noticed for the first time that phoenician or Punic inscriptions look like a whole bunch of 4, o, 9.

  
  
  One thing I have noticed about ciphers after pouring over hundreds and hundreds of ciphers in Latin, German, French, and Arabic, is that shapes like the gallows characters aren't even that unusual. Since "magical" scripts (which were often based on constellation symbols) often were lines with loops on the ends, cipher characters often followed this model, so shapes with a line or two and loops at the ends or corners are common. Even if they don't exactly match the gallows characters, they DO match the kinds of shapes people come up with when trying to design coded alphabets.
  
  As for the rest of the characters, as I've mentioned, they are mostly Latin, even the ones that look strange to people who are unfamiliar with medieval abbreviations.

• RE: On plain texts and ciphers (a thought experiment)

  Wladimir D > 14-09-2016, 08:36 AM

  ANTON.
   Long trait above "40" I, too, (except fv1) is not found. But there is a trait over each character separately.
  
  If the feature - diacritic, it is an argument in favor of the fact that "40" is not a single glyph.

• RE: On plain texts and ciphers (a thought experiment)

  Anton > 01-06-2018, 04:54 PM

  Due to the recent discussion of Abkhaz as a candidate-language, I would like to note that the main problem with the "invented script for a language with no alphabet" approach that I see is as follows.
  
  The most obvious thing one would do to assist writing in a language with no alphabet is try to adopt some existing alphabet to that purpose. That's how things worked many times in history, from Slavonic to Hawaiian. In the case when there are sounds which could not be covered by the prototype alphabet, you will introduce new letters. You typically will not start with less common symbols. 
  
  There might be cases though when the new alphabet is mostly synthetic (i.e does not directly derive from a known alphabet). That's how the things most probably stood with the Glagolitic alphabet. It's far more older than the VMS, but it's a valid example anyway.
  
  But even that being the case, the first thing you would do, having designed a new alphabet for your illiterate friends, is you would write some religious books using it - as many books as you can. Because the main purpose of designing a new alphabet is to extend political influence. Cyril and Methodius were missionaries, not horticulturists. You won't invent a new script to write a herbal in it. You won't even bother to make the local folks happy with a herbal. What you would like them to be happy with instead would be a Bible in their native language and some liturgical texts - of your own confession, of course.
  
  A herbal in a new script could appear even if sufficient mass of people adopted the new script over time and were educated using that script (i.e. studies employing the new script would have been made available, otherwise you just would not be able to express complex notions). That implies, that, in between, you would have many books of religious and official nature available, - which would be better preserved over time, because they are being kept in secured places (like churches, fortified buildings etc). It's virtually impossible that that vast corpus would be entirely lost, while a single obscure herbal survives.
  
  So for me looking for some exotic languages is a waste of time. Of more interest is thinking about what could be done to a fairly common contemporary language to make it resemble the properties of Voynichese.

• RE: On plain texts and ciphers (a thought experiment)

  Koen G > 01-06-2018, 07:38 PM

  You touch upon an important subject, Anton. I've had a discussion with Sam about this recently, and to some extent I agree with you. That is, if the development of Voynichese script had been prompted by the same circumstances as those of Cyrillic, we would have had a different range of documents left. If it was really a script backed by some culture, there should have been more traces left of its cultural traction.
  
  However, I also have some remarks:
  1) Most importantly, it has been suggested (Bax, Emma?) that Voynichese script was a project that didn't really take off well. It seems very possible to me that they first tried to get a feel for the script on a scientific text they had handy, rather than go for a bible right away. In this sense, the VM script would be the preparation for a language's own script, rather than a fully blossoming one.
  
  2) As Sam brought up in our discussion, certain areas throughout history have seen all books destroyed during tumultuous times. Books from entire villages have been burned by the thousands. Obviously, specific demographic groups (like Jews) have been the target of this practice more consistently than others. This means that it's not unlikely that all manuscripts of a certain type have been destroyed, especially if they were still concentrated in a certain area (or even library!) around the time the book burning happened to hit them. Foreign invasions may have had a similar impact. 
  
  
  Now personally I think it's more likely that Voynichese was designed to suit certain very specific needs. Since the script is fairly easy to read, it may have been created for people from various linguistic backgrounds to be able to read. Or for example a foreign script rewritten to make it easier to read for Latins, or the other way around.  I can't substantiate that hypothesis, but it's the type of solution I'd prefer over Voynichese script having been invented for the same purpose as Cyrillic.
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