Re: The digraph <ed> (Currier C8)

["John Grove" <4groves@xxxxxxxxx>]

I wanted to take a closer look at the odd number of double-letters appearing
in the later folios that don't show up at all in the early folios. However,
this discussion about the increased 'ed' may in fact be related. I've
noticed that quite a few of the words on folios 105-116 could be the same
type of 'evolution' of wordforms that Rene speaks of - except that I'm
looking at the increase of words beginning or ending with 'L' -(to the point
that if spacing isn't quite right I'm misreading some doubles like
'pchollarar' on f116r).  I think many of the 'L' words on these pages could
very well be typical 'o'-prefixed lables/words elsewhere, and 'L'-ending
words are frequently 'y'-ending words elsewhere. The major problem is - I
still have some o-prefixed, and y-ending words mixed in on the same page.
Other oddities in these last few pages are 'clipped' words. These words
don't normally appear in use without being part of another word -- air, iir,
iirchal, qo... (Some of these prefixed with single letters to form words not
seen anywhere else - I.e. kiin oiin)
qe, qa prefixes instead of just qo, and words ending in gallows (qeey, qaor,
qool, qeol)
Increase in use of 'x' in words/phrases (f115v): lx or xoiin

On f105v - Two words that jumped out at me were ypcheddy - and - pcheddl.
One 'could' assume that they are the same word with a variation in spelling
due to declination or conjugation: pchedd being the root - y as a
prefix/suffix - as well as 'l' as an 'alternate y' prefix.

dcheodl = dcheody?
lky = oky?
lkl = oky?

Well, gotta go!

John.

----- Original Message -----
From: Rene Zandbergen <Zandbergen@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <voynich@xxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, July 03, 2000 1:44 PM
Subject: The digraph <ed> (Currier C8)


> I wrote:
>
> >     > I'm still lacking a good explanation for the occurrence of
> >     > the character sequence 'ed' (in Eva) which only starts
> >     > appearing little by little in the astro section, to become
> >     > regular in the B language part.
>
> and Stolfi responded.
>
> > There is one good argument for "e" as a letter prefix: the cosmo
> > diagram on f69r apparently shows the word "dolsedy" split as
> > d-o-l-s-ed-y.
>
> Interesting. I had always looked at these as single letters.
> (One of the 7 planet names is dolchs[e|o]dy; that allows for
> further speculation, some other time)
>
> > [...] it turns out that almost all occurrences of "ed" in language-B
> > material are preceded by one of those letters. My interpretation is
> > that the "e" post-modifier, which was relatively rare in language A,
> > became much more common in laguage B. The appearance of "ed" digraphs
> > is only a conspicuous secondary effect of that change.
>
> Now the statistics show a clear and rather spectacular increase
> in this digraph. These statistics say nothing about the cause.
> I am quite open to whether it is e-d which starts appearing or
> Xe-d, where X is one of a set. I'm willing to go along with Stolfi's
> hypothesis of post-modifiers.
> (For reference, see the plot at http://www.voynich.nu/diorder.gif)
>
> A more basic question is: is the new combination something new,
> or does it evolve from something else. If it is part of an
> evolution, then what is evolving? Such an evolution is possible
> for all scenarios: language, encrypted language, pseudo-language
> (glossolalia) and human-created gibberish.
> With a lot of imagination, one could imagine the following
> evolution (Eva and Currier)
>
> chol   =>   cheol    =>    cheody    =>    chedy
> SOE    =>   SCOE     =>    SCO89     =>    SC89
>
> These words do exist in different ratios in different sections
> of the MS, but they also exist next to each other in one section,
> which probaby means that this is not one word evolving into
> different forms...
>
> > Here are the "new" words in each major B section:
> >
> > Stars:
> > [...]
> > Herbal-B:
> > [...]
> > Biological:
> > [...]
> >
> > Note that most of the "new" words of language B end
> > with "{cs|sh|k|t}{e|ee}dy".
>
> Absolutely. Perhaps even more striking is the fact that
> without a single exception, all new words which I did not
> quote above end with -y (unless this was a selection
> criterium).
>
> > Note also that, besides all those "*edy" words, language B also
> > displays frequent new words that have "e" but not "d", such as
> > "okeey" and "oteey" in Stars, "cheky" in Herbal-B, and "qokeey" in Bio.
> >
> > Also "chey" and "shey", which do occur in herbal-A, are almost twice
> > as common in Stars. At the same time, other popular language-A words
> > like "chol" and "chor" disappear.
>
> Yes, all these changes occur, and some of them are quite gradual over
> the sections for which Currier did not have a transcription available
> when he made his A vs. B observation. Note that the introduction
> of 'ed' is not instantaneous, but happens in the course of only
> a few pages.
>
> > So, if the difference between A and B can be described as a
> > spelling change, I would rather say that it was a matter
> > of replacing "o" by "e" as a post-modifier for benches
> > and gallows.
>
> This could well be true. It is one of the options.
> Jacques already described the change from <cho> (and a few
> others) to <che> (and a few others) a long time ago. But the
> question is the same. The change can be the result of a
> trend which:
> - prefers the insertion of a new character
> - prefers the replacement of one character by another
> - prefers the deletion of a character
>
> To come back to the above, I doubt that there are as many <chod>
> in A as there are <ched> in B.
>
> > However, I am afraid that the A/B split cannot be properly described
> > by a change in structure or spelling or whatever.  The difference
> > seems to be a matter of vocabulary ---
> > which may well be due to a change of topic, nothing else.
>
> This is one of several valid explanations, but one which has
> a major consequence. It would mean that Herbal-A and Herbal-B
> are not about the same topic, i.e. the text does not belong to
> the pictures, etc...
>
> I have various (admittedly weak) arguments why there should be
> a correlation between text and pictures, which I'll save for
> another post.
>
> > In language B we see a bunch of "new" and quite popular
> > words. Most of them happen to use the "e" modifier, especially
> > the "Xedy" or "Xeedy" termination; but this is probably because
> > the suffix has some special meaning or grammatical importance.
>
> I'm looking for an explanation of the new digraph, and this
> could be one of the causes.
>
> > By the way, I am getting increasinly disenchanted about n-gram based
> > analysis. It is like feeding all the Louvre paintings through a food
> > processor, room by room, and then trying to reconstruct the hystory of
> > art from the resulting piles of colored oatmeal.
>
> It could work... but wouldn't it be a pity.
> Long live electronic text processing :-)
>
> > What I am trying to get at is that n-gram statistics are not only a
> > blurry shadow of word statistics, but are in fact dominated by a few
> > common words or word families. Thus we should be paying more attention
> > to whole words...
>
> Well, the statistic stands and lacks an explanation. It is also a very
> odd statistic for which I cannot think of a parrallel in any known (to
> me) language. If looking at word statistics can provide the answer, then
> this is surely worth pursuing.
> The nice part about digraph statistics is a purely opportunistic one.
> The sample per page is rather significant, and not too sensitive to
> uncertain readings or uncertain spaces. And there is much more 'signal'
> than in the single character frequency.
>
> So, to summarise:
> yes, there are many new words arising with the digraph 'ed' in them,
> in the course of a few pages in the MS (over the zodiac section in
> fact).
> The question to be answered is what could cause this emergence of
> various words with this one digraph. Spelling is possible. Just
> 'vocabulary' doesn't explain anything, since it would require that there
> is some kind of a rule for the introduction of new words.
> I want to find out what the rule is.
>
> Cheers, Rene
>