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Numbers, abbeviations, dual-sense endings and similar nuisances

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• Numbers, abbeviations, dual-sense endings and similar nuisances

• Numbers, abbeviations, dual-sense endings and similar nuisances

  Diane > 28-09-2016, 01:43 PM

  I've been wanting to ask the linguists this question for some time, but it always seems to come out as a criticism or challenge.
  
  All I can say is that it's a genuine question from someone who dropped Linguistics 101 after six months.
  
  Are statistical analyses and linguistic analyses able to isolate non-word uses for glyphs?
  
  If you have - for argument's sake - something like [glyph meaning 'city'] + [City name, abbreviated]+ [number]+['degrees' sign/letter] [N, S, W or E]..
  
  would a linguist be able to determine which of the glyphs was being used as a number.. or as probably a number.. and which were abbreviations and so on?  
  
  Second question: If he script is filled with numbers, abbreviations and so on, how does the statistical analysis serve a useful purpose.. again, it's a genuine question.

• RE: Numbers, abbeviations, dual-sense endings and similar nuisances

  ThomasCoon > 28-09-2016, 03:21 PM

  Hi Diane,
  Both are excellent questions. I'll leave the first question to the others because the second one sounds like fun
  
  Statistical analysis can help us because all languages have certain recognizable patterns. For example, if I sent you some Cicero in Latin, you'd see that almost all words ended in a very limited number of letters (-a, -i, -o, -m, -s) which indicates the use of case endings. If I sent you a paragraph of Turkish text, you could pick out the units that repeatedly appear in long words (-et-, -le-, -mek, etc.) and determine that the language is agglutinative (i.e. it stacks endings upon each other to form words). And if you didn't speak Spanish, you could observe the slightly-changing forms of hablar in a text (hablar, hablas, hablamos, hablan, hablo) and hypothesize that this may be a verb conjugation.
  
  When we statistically analyze Voynich, we are looking for these types of linguistic patterns. Some of us (like Emma May Smith) search for phonetic patterns that may indicate what sounds Voynichese uses and what combinations they frequently appear in, while I began searching for grammatical patterns among groups of words. Statistics can be used to show us that something is significant, or that patterns keep reappearing which deserve our attention. If we find those patterns in Voynich like the ones I just described above, we could easily reduce the number of possible language families and maybe even pin-point the underlying language.

• RE: Numbers, abbeviations, dual-sense endings and similar nuisances

  Koen G > 28-09-2016, 03:34 PM

  (Disclaimer: I studied linguistics but specialized in all the kinds that are not very useful in Voynich studies. Just to give you an idea, my master thesis was about spelling innovations in Dutch on the internet )
  
  What I'd really like to see is some solid overview of which linguistic patterns exist in the MS and what they could mean. What happens now all too often is that somebody appears to be on to something and then somebody else comes along and says "yeah but it could also be aan abbreviation" and then the line of research is abandoned. 
  
  My prediction is that if we had such an overview and used it to put proposed "alphabet" solutions to the test, they would all fall short.
  
  
  I'm not sure if linguistic patters could detect the use of abbreviations, since we don't even know to what extent these abbreviations would be used regularly and consistently. I can't think of a way to distinguish possible abbreviations from things like case endings, for example.

• RE: Numbers, abbeviations, dual-sense endings and similar nuisances

  -JKP- > 28-09-2016, 07:09 PM

  (28-09-2016, 01:43 PM)Diane Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
  
  If you have - for argument's sake - something like [glyph meaning 'city'] + [City name, abbreviated]+ [number]+['degrees' sign/letter] [N, S, W or E]..
  
  would a linguist be able to determine which of the glyphs was being used as a number.. or as probably a number.. and which were abbreviations and so on?  
  ...

  
  
  This is both a good question and a good example. The reason I say it's a good example is because the structure of the VMS does, in fact, suggest that the document may be organized in a systematic way, with a possible emphasis on attributes.
  
  By itself, it would be difficult for statistical analysis to decipher the individual parts of information coded in this way unless
  
  

  1. the ordering of the information were hierarchical or consistently ordered, and
     
  2. there were sufficient word-tokens of each kind for a pattern to be discernible.
     

  In a simple-case scenario, if the text had a certain proportion of items like this combined with narrative text, then it should be possible to pick out the two basic patterns and analyze how they differ. Then, if specific languages (or language groups with certain grammatical similarities) were compared against the groups of text, it may be possible to determine which are narrative and which are systematic, constructed, or heavily abbreviated. From there, it's a matter of unlocking one (usually the narrative form) and then using that information to try to decipher the more difficult parts (the systematic or abbreviated encodings).
  
  A pattern like this would not be unusual. Hildegard von Bingen and others combined regular (unencoded) text with constructed text (made up words). In many diplomatic letters, only the sensitive parts were encoded. It's conceivable that the VMS contains a combination of narrative and constructed text in a self-devised alphabet.
  
  In contrast, if the entire manuscript were organized in the manner in which you describe, it would be a bigger statistical challenge, since there wouldn't be two kinds of patterns to compare against one another, but the system itself should be discernible if there is enough text to observe and "map" the patterns.
  
  
  As for figuring out what the individual parts mean if the whole manuscript were systematically abbreviated or encoded, even if the building blocks can be broken apart, it's difficult to attach meaning unless you have references such as illustrations to affirm the process. We have to hope that the VMS text is related to the drawings and, if there's a system, that it's applied consistently.
  
  Assuming the text and drawings are related, then statistics can look for self-similarity within individual sections in the hope that there would be more plant-related tokens in the plant sections and more cosmology tokens in the cosmological sections. Once this is determined, it becomes easier to assess the connections between various sections.
  
  
  Patterns of frequency, self-similarity or hierarchy can be determined and charted reasonably well with statistical algorithms, but making sense of the data still requires a certain amount of "human computing" and insight.

• RE: Numbers, abbeviations, dual-sense endings and similar nuisances

  Diane > 29-09-2016, 03:28 PM

  Thanks so much for those replies.  I am relieved to have the question taken seriously.
  
  So now - how come the iin  or iiin aren't taken as potentially numeric - I mean, apart from Nick Pelling's saying that they read like Latin references? I look at them and think "3 denarii" or "3 drams" or something..
  
  Is it possible to pick out which characters are used as numbers?  I mean if "v' is being used for '5' fairly often in a text, then wouldn't it stand out as over-used when the text was tested against a standard piece of prose in  a given language?
  
  PS. Anyone here know Bactrian? 

• RE: Numbers, abbeviations, dual-sense endings and similar nuisances

  stellar > 29-09-2016, 04:27 PM

  (29-09-2016, 03:28 PM)Diane Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Thanks so much for those replies.  I am relieved to have the question taken seriously.
  
  So now - how come the iin  or iiin aren't taken as potentially numeric - I mean, apart from Nick Pelling's saying that they read like Latin references? I look at them and think "3 denarii" or "3 drams" or something..
  
  Is it possible to pick out which characters are used as numbers?  I mean if "v' is being used for '5' fairly often in a text, then wouldn't it stand out as over-used when the text was tested against a standard piece of prose in  a given language?
  
  PS. Anyone here know Bactrian? 

  Yes I believe the characters are numbers n = 
  
  5
  
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